Alberta conservatives divided on new Flames arena deal (William McBeath of Save Calgary)
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Summary
Calgary has struck a deal to replace the aging Saddle dome with a brand new, multi-million dollar arena for the Calgary Flames. Will it be enough for the city of Calgary to support the Flames in order to keep them in the Stanley Cup Playoffs? In a new episode of The Gunn Show, host Sheila Gunn-Reed is joined by William MacBeth from Save Calgary to debate the deal.
Transcript
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Hello Rebels, you're listening to a free audio-only recording of my show, The Gun Show.
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My guest tonight is William Macbeth from Save Calgary. If you like listening to this podcast,
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Calgarians love their hockey team, but do they love the Flames enough to build them a brand,
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spanking new, multi-million dollar arena? I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gunn Show.
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The city of Calgary has just struck a new deal to replace the aging Saddle Dome Arena. Now,
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conservatives are divided on the issue. For example, Franco Teresano from the Canadian Taxpayers
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Federation is staunchly against the new arena deal. He says, Calgarians shouldn't be forced to fork over
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hundreds of millions of dollars to the wealthy owners of a professional hockey team, especially
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when other Canadian teams built their own arenas. We all want to support the Flames, but with tickets,
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not taxes. Now, on the flip side, Municipal Watchdog Save Calgary is in favor of the new arena deal.
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While at the same time taking issue with the manner and speed in which the city came to the decision
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to support the arena with tax dollars. So, here we have two different groups of fiscal conservatives
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with two very different opinions on the new Calgary arena deal. But the arena is not the only thing
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happening in Calgary political news, no siree. Supervised injection sites are still creating a
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policing black hole, just sucking up resources and police manpower from all over the city.
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And an LRT deal is approaching a $5 billion fiasco. So, I need an expert in Calgary. Joining me in an
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interview we recorded last week is William Macbeth from Save Calgary.
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Joining me now from Calgary, from Save Calgary actually, is my friend William Macbeth. We've got so much to talk about happening in Calgary.
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And then, I guess, federally, this is, whether the Liberals like it or not, election silly season.
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So, big news. Calgary's getting a new arena. Edmonton got theirs a few years ago.
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You guys at Save Calgary, normally staunch critics of the public sector spending and the wasteful ways that go on at the city of Calgary.
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You guys have made the conservative case for the arena. I'm an open-minded person. I would love to hear it. I think our viewers would love to hear it. So, let her rip.
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You know, it's so interesting. For our position on the arena, we've been asked for, you know, several years now, ever since before, in fact, the last election, where we stood on an arena deal, a new arena.
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And we said, well, we'll have to see what the deal actually says, because, as in everything, you know, you can't judge something until you actually get a look at what's being proposed.
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So, for us, our issue, you know, when we opposed the Olympics, wasn't because we're just inherently against, you know, elite sports, but because we, when we saw the deal, we saw what was being proposed, we thought it was a bad deal for Calgary taxpayers.
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So, in the case of the arena, this is the second deal that's been put forward by the negotiating team.
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And so, this time, it's a 50-50 split between the Flames and the city for putting in the money to build it.
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The Flames have to pay rent every year in the form of a facility fee.
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The city gets a ticket tax back from patrons who use the facility.
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And even though economic development numbers are always anyone's best guess, the city is arguing that it will help spur economic growth in that region in downtown, at the edge of downtown, which has been an area that they've been focusing on.
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So, leaving that aside, because, of course, we have some questions about how they've done their math on economic benefit.
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But looking at the other side, it seems to be a pretty reasonable deal for getting a new arena, which will ensure the Flames remain in Calgary for the next 35 years.
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I think one of the things that was concerning for, say, Calgary was, what would Calgary be if we lost our home hockey team?
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Well, we'd be Winnipeg, as it was back in the day.
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And that did not seem like an appealing option for us.
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So, we said, look, if we're going to have an arena, in order to have a sports team, can we at least work out a deal where taxpayers aren't being overly burdened for the next 30 years of cost?
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Which is actually, you know, was the deal we had with the Saddle Dome.
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We weren't getting any payments from the Flames organization for their use of that facility.
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And we have strong objections over how little consultation time there was for Calgarians to provide their feedback and their opinion to their city councillors.
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They moved, they really rushed this through quickly.
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But if the argument is going to be, do we want to make sure the Flames stay in Calgary and we have an arena that's going to support that,
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and can we work out a deal that doesn't put taxpayers on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars year after year after year,
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it seems to us that this deal was pretty reasonable.
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Now, how does this deal compare to what Edmonton got?
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I mean, I can't tell you the specifics of the Edmonton deal, although I was an Edmontonian at the time it was being discussed.
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What I can say is that it looks like Calgarians are getting a bit of a better deal for their arena.
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We're not putting in as much money as Edmonton ended up putting in across the whole range of things that Edmonton actually invested in,
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which included things like extending an LRT system linkage to it and a few things like that.
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We, of course, fully understand why some people are concerned about it and why they're questioning,
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Certainly, in our opinion, Calgary has tremendous fiscal problems,
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and we've made it clear that we think we need structural reform.
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We thought maybe there were other places to try and figure out better financing and better options than this arena.
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We thought, actually, that the negotiation was pretty reasonable.
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But at the same time, why aren't we having a good hard look at city spending?
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We know that one out of three city employees earns over $100,000 a year,
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that the average cost to the city for one of its employees is over $115,000 a year
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when you consider pension and benefits and all of those other things.
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We haven't taken any real action to cut those costs.
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So for us, rather than not having an arena, maybe losing the flames,
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losing having a major concert venue for us in the heart of our Scampi country,
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our Scampi grounds, wouldn't it be better to take a lack of trying to fix the out-of-control spending
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Now, you pointed out something that makes a great segue into my next thing that I wanted to talk to you about.
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Edmonton had to put out money for an LRT as part of their arena deal.
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Calgary's got a serious problem with their LRT system and the cost of the Green Line.
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It's turned into a $5 billion debacle, and there seems to be no end in sight.
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I mean, I think, you know, my family lives in Edmonton, and I've, you know,
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talked to them about all of the challenges Edmonton has faced with its LRT system,
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from a signaling system that never fully worked to trains having to run so slowly
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that it's actually faster to take the buses on the same route than it is to take the trains.
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But Calgary is well on its way to beating Edmonton and to making worse LRT decisions.
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We've been planning this Green Line for years, years and years and years.
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It's designed to create a new LRT line that goes from the deep, deep south of Calgary to the far,
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far north, connecting all of those new communities with transit.
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But in the space of just a few years, the wheels really have come off this project.
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First of all, the head of the project quit and quit quite suddenly.
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And the city really doesn't disclose why that is, but they're gone.
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And then, you know, a few short months later, the deputy head of the project quit and said,
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look, you know, again, we don't know why, but just simply said, no, I'm not going to be involved anymore.
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You've seen senior Calgary business people come out and say that the plan,
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the plan that we were following, and we're going to start putting under construction
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in just a few months up until very, very recently, that said this plan is totally unfeasible,
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that you cannot complete the project as is being envisioned.
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One of the things they wanted to do was build a super deep tunnel through the downtown core
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And when we say super deep, you know, at least seven stories underground deep,
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you know, sort of core of the earth deep for this tunnel.
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And then have it go under a river until, you know, and this was the official plan.
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And all the city council, you know, nodded their heads and said, absolutely,
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this is, you know, we want to get it right the first time.
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Sorry to interrupt, but there's these things called bridges.
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Well, the cost of the tunnel meant that instead of being this long,
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the green line was going to end up being that long, but still cost the same amount of money.
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So it was going to be $5 billion to build the green line from here to here.
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And it was going to be $5 billion to build the green line from here to here,
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And then they simply said, look, we've looked at it.
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There's too much stuff already happening underneath of downtown Calgary.
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You know, sewer lines and power lines and parkades and structural engineering and all
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And to me, the question is, well, wait, because Safe Calgary's waved the flag a couple
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of times saying, we have some issues with this green line.
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And city council wrote back and said, no, no, we've done our homework.
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This tunnel will ensure that this project is, you know, meets the needs.
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And finally, it took getting to the eve of construction before city council said, wait,
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maybe this technically impossible tunnel that's going to cost $5 billion to the LRT isn't something
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So I don't know where they're going to go with this.
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They've now paused to have a conversation about the green line.
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And to us, it's like, why wasn't this conversation held years ago when this ridiculous plan was
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It seems to me the only success of the green line so far is its ability to allow politicians
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I mean, how many times have we seen politicians, all the way back to Stephen Harper, keep re-announcing
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how they're supporting the green line and they're throwing more money at the green line?
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That actually seems to be the only thing that has been a successful aspect of this whole
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I mean, I've seen a half a dozen at least government announcements about money.
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It really is the only thing about the green line that seems to be there is the green the
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governments have announced they're putting into taxpayer dollars into this project without
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a single piece of track being laid down anywhere along the route.
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So, you know, in other cities, Edmonton is just one, but other cities have major problems
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Ottawa has built, you know, has been building an LRT.
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It built a tunnel through heading into its downtown and the tunnel caved in over and
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And then, of course, when they were, you know, finally getting to the point of putting trains
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on it, well, turns out the trains they had chosen don't work so well in either the snow
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Both things, by the way, that you find in an Ottawa winter.
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So those train cars, by the way, made by Canadian engineering firm SNC-Lavalin.
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Yeah, it seems like the only green in this line is coming right out of taxpayers' pockets.
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Now, another thing in Calgary I want to touch on.
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Rick Bell had a great column on it in the Calgary Sun, and it's about the horror show.
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Those are his words, not mine, although I'd probably use them also.
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With regard to the Beltline supervised injection or supervised consumption site.
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He has the statistics for the police calls to the area.
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They're up 452 percent, while the rest of the city's up 9 percent, which is, I suppose
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that's counterintuitive to the reason these harm reduction activists say we need to have
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these supervised injection sites all over the places because it will reduce the amount
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of police calls and take pressure off police resources if we have these places where people
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I mean, Rick Bell lives in Beltline, and, you know, our little Safe Calgary crew work
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out of Beltline, in fact, only about a block and a half from the safe injection site.
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It's hard to have a real conversation about this problem.
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I mean, first of all, it's hard to even get consensus that there is a problem, but there
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Anybody who owns a business or who has a home or parks a car in this region knows that there's
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a problem because they've seen their cars being broken into by addicts looking for things
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We've seen people who are passed out in the streets, in alleys, from overconsuming.
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The area has become littered with syringes, used syringes.
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And all the people that the advocates of the safe injection sites are coming back with is
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When we come to think about drug addicts, simply allowing someone to continue living a miserable
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drug-addled existence, but for many more years than they might otherwise, isn't good enough.
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In fact, in my opinion, it's morally just wrong.
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We need to be talking about how we're going to help these people get better.
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We need to be talking about the rights of property owners and families who live here.
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Calgary has invested significant dollars into Beltline revitalization.
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We've been trying to make this community a place where young working professionals want
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to live and work and spend their leisure dollars on going into attractions.
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But if you fill the area with people with crimes and with people who are addicted to drugs
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and just dropping syringes, you're underdoing all that hard work that the community in the
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city did to try and make this a better community.
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So for us, our answer is look at some of the jurisdictions who have grappled with this problem
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and then also look at some of the jurisdictions who have ignored this problem and not done
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And I'm thinking, for example, of Seattle, which has such a tremendous problem on their hands right
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The police have basically just given up on trying to do any form of community safety enforcement
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And actually, I misspoke there from Rick Bell's article.
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I said that police calls are up 452 percent while they're only up 9 percent in the rest
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It's actually that they're down 9 percent in the rest of the city.
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But going back to my point about Vancouver, Vancouver, what has it been two decades that
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they've had these supervised consumption sites, they promised us that people would that this
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would be a pathway to treatment somehow, that this constant contact with health care
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officials of health care professionals would be a pathway to treatment.
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They said that it would reduce the amount of property crime if we're giving people drugs
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And that's clearly not the case playing out in Calgary.
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We have a lot of evidence that this doesn't work for the addict and for the community it's
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placed in and for the taxpayers of the city as a whole.
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And yet still, we have these people who claim to be advocates for the drug addicted and advocates
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for these inner city poverty stricken communities continuing to advocate for this.
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I guess it's corralling of drug addicts in certain neighborhoods.
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And people will say stuff like, oh, you know, the opioid crisis, the opioid crisis.
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Well, I think statistics are playing out that the opioid crisis is affecting all demographics.
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It's affecting people in suburbia and affluent neighborhoods, affluent families are being
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hit by this and rural communities are being hit by this.
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So what good does it do to hold people up in low income communities and concentrate the
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violence and the property crime there when this is a society wide problem?
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And to be honest, for the advocates who say safe injection sites solve the problems, I
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mean, I don't think they spend enough time talking to people who actually live and work
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in these communities, because when you see crime spike, when you see cars being broken into
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and windows and homes being broken into and drug addicts leaving syringes everywhere, all
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you're doing is actually eroding community support to try and meaningfully fix this problem.
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Eventually, it just turns into we want it out of here, just move it somewhere else.
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Well, no, because the problem with that is it just moves the problem to another location,
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whereas we need to really think about how we're going to solve it.
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And simply prolonging suffering, which is what I think a lot of these safe injection sites
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It's not enough to just condemn people to these lives.
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And that, I think, means a combination of more treatment options, a combination of better
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police enforcement and of having a zero tolerance policy for people who commit property and other
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And I think it means, you know, taking a hard look about what are we doing to cut off the
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Right now, drug dealers set up shop a block away from the safe injection site.
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And to me, how on earth can that be helping addicts when you're allowing the people who
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make money off this evil to be setting up shop right down the street?
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Well, especially when, you know, it seems to be a black hole around these communities of
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Police just, like you say, they throw up their hands and say, look, it's too much.
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And so the drug dealers know that there need to be stiffer penalties for people who are peddling
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Um, but I this is a topic I could literally talk about all day.
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Um, but I wanted to move to the federal election.
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You are, you know, you're at Save Calgary and you're, you know, very adept in Alberta
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provincial politics, but you are also a wise, wise man when it comes to federal politics.
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And that's one of the reasons I wanted to have you on the show.
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Uh, Justin Trudeau was just found guilty of another ethics violation in the SNC-Lavalin
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And it is, you know, we've got a real problem here when the ethics commissioner is numbering
00:22:12.580
Um, with regard to a prime minister, we certainly didn't see that sort of thing with Stephen Harper
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He, he made history when he became the first prime minister to break sitting prime minister
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And he's just made history again, by being the only prime minister to break those same
00:22:37.900
The, the ethics commissioner has to label which Trudeau ethics report this is because again,
00:22:46.040
And, you know, the arguments coming from Mr. Trudeau and his team are that they've never
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done anything wrong that in the, and not just on this issue, they've never done anything
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It's only us poor folk who aren't clever enough to understand what they're trying to do and
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what's the, you know, uh, what the, if we were just a little bit more sophisticated, we
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would be able to see that the great good of this prime minister and his team outweighs
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all petty considerations like breaking rules and violating the law.
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So, I mean, I hope that Canadians do take a really good hard look at the fact that this
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is a prime minister who's been sanctioned several times for breaking law.
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This is a prime minister who claims to be a feminist, but then drummed two of his most
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senior women ministers out of office for raising, as it turns out, entirely legitimate concerns
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This is a prime minister who claims that First Nations reconciliation is his top priority.
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And yet, when the justice minister, the first First Nations justice minister raised concerns
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about his interference in an impartial investigation and prosecution of a corporate villain, he totally
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overruled her and then shoved her to the side and has now even suggested, well, she just,
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So to me, I hope voters really do take a good hard look at this prime minister.
00:24:15.680
You know, the federal conservatives under Andrew Scheer have been running this campaign
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saying not as advertised, well, Justin Trudeau.
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He is a preening bully who, if he doesn't get his own way, will throw everybody else under
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And he's not sorry because in his mind, he couldn't possibly ever do anything wrong.
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You know, it's funny, the conservative election ads or rather the attack ads from the last
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election cycle, they really eventually turn out to be like a crystal ball when they said
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And then right after the election, Ignatieff left when they said Justin Trudeau just wasn't
00:25:07.880
Uh, yeah, still four years later, he's just not ready.
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It's, it's funny how, uh, people thought those election attack ads were silly and, uh, sort
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of childish, but they turned out to be, uh, a glimpse into the future.
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And a lot of people probably should have listened.
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Do you think this, um, elections violation or sorry, this, this ethics violation finding
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Do you think people who are committed Trudeau voters care?
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Because I mean, I think for some people, they will love Justin Trudeau regardless of what
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he says or does there, you know, for them, if this isn't a question of leadership, their,
00:26:00.560
So no, I mean, I think that this, in that case, if you're one of those people, then no,
00:26:05.240
I don't think this ethics report is going to make a difference.
00:26:07.740
If you're an everyday voter, typical voter living in say, suburban Toronto, um, what I'm
00:26:14.780
really hoping is you're going to have a think and say to myself, is this really a leader,
00:26:18.800
a prime minister who understands the difficulties, the challenges me and my family have this
00:26:24.260
prime minister, this millionaire prime minister born into a trust fund into an elite family
00:26:28.840
of celebrities and, and business and the political elite.
00:26:32.860
Does he really understand what it's like to try and pay the mortgage bill or to try and
00:26:37.260
pay the power bill or, you know, to try and afford to send your kids to hockey practice
00:26:41.800
and, and, or, and the answer, I think, I hope that Canadians are going to come up with
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is no, in fact, this prime minister has absolutely no idea what it's like to try and struggle
00:26:52.380
He took a vacation on a billionaire private Island, uh, with it from his friend, the Aga
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And so that was by the way, why he was found guilty, uh, the first time of an ethics violation,
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but no, that's not an everyday experience for, for Canadians.
00:27:09.300
And so to me, I'm hoping what this latest thing does is help create more of the picture
00:27:17.440
And when his government tries to say he's on the side of middle-class Canadians, I really
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hope that the facts point to a very different story in the minds of voters.
00:27:27.440
I mean, it'll be hard to say, we know what's coming.
00:27:29.940
We know that Justin Trudeau will accuse his opponents, Andrew Scheer and the Conservatives,
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of everything under the sun, of being misogynists, of being bigots, of being racist and homophobes
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and of supporting white supremacy, uh, you know, ad nauseum claims of hatred that simply
00:27:50.980
So to me, uh, I'm hoping that anybody who pays the slightest bit of attention knows that
00:27:55.480
those liberal attacks are nothing but lies and smear.
00:27:58.280
And that when Justin Trudeau talks about being on your side, he can't because he's really
00:28:02.700
Yeah, I, I think back to a couple of weeks ago when Justin Trudeau tweeted out about how
00:28:08.780
he understands how hard it is to save for your first home.
00:28:12.300
And he touted this liberal, you know, plan to help with, uh, your down payment.
00:28:17.440
And it's like, uh, excuse me, didn't you get gifted, uh, a mansion that's now a Canadian
00:28:27.320
Like he, he thinks that we don't know his history, that, that we're just, we're incapable
00:28:34.120
of plugging into Google search, you know, what did Justin Trudeau inherit?
00:28:38.720
Um, but I, I do think you're right about, uh, the tenor and tone of the coming election.
00:28:46.360
Um, I think it is going to be really tough on conservatives.
00:28:50.620
And I don't mean conservative MPs and conservative candidates.
00:28:54.140
I think generally conservative voters are in for a tough go of it.
00:28:59.580
This next little bit, they're going to be called all manner of names, malicious, libelous
00:29:07.400
I can only hope that after putting up with those same names for the last four years that
00:29:12.820
our hides are a little thicker and we don't take it personally.
00:29:15.980
We just shrug it off and vote, uh, the way our hearts and minds compel us to, um, I want
00:29:22.700
to give you a chance, um, to let everybody know where they can find the great work that
00:29:28.640
you do at Save Calgary and how they can support you, um, in your efforts to hold city council,
00:29:34.340
uh, accountable and to force a little bit of transparency down there.
00:29:40.840
I, you know, um, it, we are the little engine that could, uh, municipal watchdog groups.
00:29:46.600
We, you know, we, we started off because there just wasn't anybody else really take, you know,
00:29:53.320
And I think as a whole conservative sometimes ignore municipal politics and to their own
00:29:58.120
detriment, uh, that they do because so many bad decisions can get made at the, at the municipal
00:30:03.900
Um, and then, uh, you know, those people go on to become MPs and MPPs and MLAs and bring
00:30:12.140
So Adam Vaughn, Adam Vaughn, who, uh, I had really never heard of until, uh, yesterday when
00:30:19.300
I discovered, uh, he apparently is a complete raving lunatic.
00:30:22.020
So that's an exciting, exciting development in my book.
00:30:25.720
Um, so for Save Calgary, there's a couple of things you can do to help us out.
00:30:29.720
The first is please, um, sign up to our weekly email list.
00:30:33.620
We, we put out a weekly email, even right now when city council's on summer vacation,
00:30:38.560
we're still putting out our weekly update emails and you can go to savecalgary.com and
00:30:44.320
sign up there to, uh, to keep on top of what our issues are.
00:30:48.120
Uh, if you have the means increasingly difficult under this municipal and under this federal
00:30:53.800
government, but if you have some extra money, we would very much appreciate a donation to,
00:30:59.040
We don't receive taxpayer money, uh, unlike so many other groups do.
00:31:03.160
Uh, and, uh, and we never will based on our highly critical position of, uh, of municipal
00:31:08.900
government, but we think it's an important message and that the voice is important to
00:31:13.460
And the third thing is, you know, give us a follow on our social media.
00:31:16.020
We're both on Facebook and on Twitter, uh, you know, facebook.com slash savecalgary,
00:31:24.080
And if you have any leads for us on these things, you know, we have some great, great
00:31:28.600
supporters who tip us off about some of the things happening in and around the city.
00:31:32.860
So those are three things you could do that would be really helpful to us as an organization.
00:31:37.260
And certainly think about that next municipal election coming up in 2021.
00:31:43.520
There's a real opportunity to make some change if we can get ourselves organized and if we
00:31:48.120
can lay the groundwork right now to make, uh, Calgarians vote for change.
00:31:52.420
Yeah, the process to identify candidates and get them some name recognition in advance
00:32:02.060
Um, if Calgarians are tired of, um, Lord Nenshi, now's the time to, uh, put some money
00:32:09.500
where their mouth is and maybe throw a little support behind save Calgary.
00:32:12.280
And I got to tell you, those emails that you send out are pretty well written.
00:32:17.000
And I get a lot of emails from a lot of political groups and advocacy groups in the course of a
00:32:22.220
And I got to tell you, save Calgary's are probably the only ones that I open.
00:32:32.300
William, I want to thank you so much for coming on the show and being so generous with your
00:32:40.040
And of course, as the federal election approaches, um, because even the federal election affects
00:32:46.940
municipal politics and we're going to see a lot of funding dumped Calgary's way to
00:32:54.400
I think, uh, I think you could well be right on that.
00:32:58.060
I'd be interested to know if they're going to be able to announce their support another
00:33:05.500
William, thanks so much for coming on the show.
00:33:08.820
Agree or disagree with William on the arena deal.
00:33:24.440
There's beauty in the fact that conservatives can hold different opinions and not be excommunicated
00:33:31.940
You see, instead of acting like a bunch of liberals and marching in ideological lockstep
00:33:36.400
with each other while also simultaneously proclaiming that diversity is our strength,
00:33:42.240
conservatives can actually engage in debate and discussion and reasoned, rational arguments
00:33:54.700
I'll see everybody back here in the same time, in the same place next weekend.
00:33:58.520
Remember, don't let the government tell you that you've had too much to think.