The city of Calgary just avoided having to host the Olympic Games. Now, will this be a gut check to city council about their irresponsibility with taxpayer dollars? We re discussing all that and more on this week s episode of The Gunn Show.
00:00:13.840I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed and you're watching The Gunn Show.
00:00:30.000November 13th, Calgary's residents wisely voted against a two-week-long legacy party for their mayor, Nahid Nenshi, held in 2026.
00:00:44.440In a municipal plebiscite, over 300,000 ballots were cast, with over 56% of them going against Calgary hosting the 2026 Olympic Winter Games.
00:00:55.840Thank God, between IOC corruption and multi-billion dollar expenses that Calgary residents should not be forced to pay for, this is finally a real victory for common sense.
00:01:08.420Calgary residents saw right through the pro-Olympic publicly funded propaganda being pushed by most of Calgary City Council and the yes side of the debate.
00:01:18.460Now, will this whole expensive debacle that brought Calgary precariously close to a mistake that would have taken literally decades to pay off be a wake-up call for Calgary City Council?
00:01:30.540Or does it just mean that now they move on to the next expensive pet project to be laid at the feet of Calgary taxpayers?
00:01:38.580Joining me tonight to discuss how Calgary dodged the Olympic bullet and what's on the horizon next for Calgary taxpayers suffering through the very worst economic recession in a generation
00:01:51.900is one of the leading voices of the no-vote side of the Olympic debate and a fearless advocate for municipal accountability.
00:01:59.900My friend, William Macbeth from Save Calgary.
00:02:28.020But first off, I want to congratulate you on being outmanned, outspent, outgunned, really out everything in Calgary up against, you know, the full forces of the city and the Chamber of Commerce, the business community, or rather the crony capitalist community in Calgary.
00:02:51.660And yet you guys were able to register an overwhelming victory in the Olympics plebiscite.
00:03:22.320We know that the yes side spent millions of dollars and had every piece of institutional support in the city.
00:03:29.620But when it was left up to the common sense, everyday voters of Calgary, they made the right choice, the responsible choice to say no to the IOC, to say no to higher taxes, and to say no to an Olympics that Calgary, frankly, just can't afford.
00:03:48.060I watched it very closely and with a lot of interest, and it never really changed.
00:03:53.960The early voters, the advance polls showed that the no side was winning, and that held right through all the way to the very end.
00:04:05.340And it was actually a much more decisive victory than I thought it would be.
00:04:11.160So that, I mean, it's just phenomenal news and great work and a true testament to really the power of the people when highly motivated and well-informed in Calgary.
00:04:23.040And I think you guys played an instrumental role in that.
00:04:26.740And I would say, certainly, it was the first time that I think a lot of our establishment in Calgary, from big business to city council to all of the taxpayer-funded groups that exist, like the Chamber of Commerce, really got a pushback on the part of everyday voters who said,
00:04:46.340we're sick and tired of you telling us what to think and what we should be doing instead of listening to us about what our concerns are.
00:04:54.200How can we be talking about hosting an Olympics when we can't even plow the roads and fill potholes successfully?
00:05:01.600Yeah, and I mean, it was the first time that the people who are footing the bill for these sorts of things got their say in how their money is spent.
00:05:11.740And, you know, direct democracy is a wonderful thing.
00:05:15.660We're just overwhelmingly thrilled that, first of all, we had this vote at all, because that was back in the summer, that was by no means guaranteed.
00:05:23.040It was, you know, one of the few times you and I have ever said something good about Rachel Notley and the NDP was the fact that they required a vote.
00:05:31.260And then to watch the yes side become increasingly more frantic and flailing towards the end of the campaign when they realized that the promises they were making just weren't resonating with Calgary voters,
00:05:46.360that Calgary voters didn't believe they were going to get a 10 to 1 return on investment,
00:05:51.180that Calgary voters didn't believe it was going to boost Calgary's economy by 7.4 billion,
00:05:56.080that they didn't believe that it was going to address affordable housing in this city.
00:06:01.680Calgary voters said, we just don't believe you.
00:06:05.860It was almost like the yes side didn't think that Calgary voters had access to the news or the internet or like Google to see how other Olympics had worked out.
00:06:52.200As I've said, one of the things that I would love to see is an Olympic cycle where no city ends up bidding.
00:06:58.700I don't think you could send a stronger message to the International Olympic Committee that we want change,
00:07:04.840that we need to do business differently when it comes to the Olympics than if nobody bids for an Olympics one cycle.
00:07:11.120I think that would be tremendous if that happens.
00:07:13.920What a powerful message that would send to those oligarchs and aristocrats at the IOC.
00:07:20.100Now, things are sort of getting back to usual at Calgary City Hall, back to usual meaning back to the unaccountable business of Mayor Nenshi.
00:07:31.140You know, things as usual as wasting more money on hideous public art.
00:07:37.620I hear there's another art installation going up.
00:07:41.120It's $900,000 and it appears to be a wire mesh boomerang.
00:07:46.880And, you know, it's one of those ones where you look at it and you'll never be able to tell if it's finished or if it's still in construction because it's just so ungainly.
00:10:48.400You couldn't go to a website without being bombarded by pro-Olympic things.
00:10:54.120They had hundreds of paid people working in the final days.
00:10:59.300So we know that the number is going to be in the millions.
00:11:01.460If we, I don't know, we're ever going to find out what the full and complete number is,
00:11:05.180from when the Bid Exploration Committee first started its work through to when BigCo finally stops all operations and stops spending money.
00:11:15.340I don't know if we're going to get that number.
00:11:19.100We're just going to have to trust Mayor Nenshi because he never holds, well, not never,
00:11:25.400but rarely holds council meetings in a manner that is available to the public.
00:11:32.080I think, you would know better than I, but I think that Calgary City Council holds the most in-camera meetings of any city council in the entire country.
00:12:47.240Now, I don't think ours is in a hollowed-out volcano, but maybe I haven't looked at the bunch of projections closely enough yet.
00:12:53.780If they called it public art, they would put it in a hollowed-out volcano.
00:12:59.280Now, but I heard Nenshi is saying that he thinks the city is very, very, very well-run.
00:13:06.780Yes, I've heard him make that claim, too.
00:13:10.620I've heard him say that the Olympic bid process, which so many Calgarians objected to so strongly that they,
00:13:17.980you know, at the first available opportunity sent to packing,
00:13:20.960was a model for how other cities should pursue an Olympic bid.
00:13:27.000And to me, that's mystifying, given that this was a bid where they couldn't even get their other government funding partners on the same page
00:13:35.680until a week before the vote actually happened.
00:13:38.960And even then, there was still a lack of clarity about who was paying for certain parts of the Olympics,
00:13:45.080where they had to be kicked and dragged in order to provide even the most high-level financial information.
00:13:53.060And then again, they did not provide it by the one month before the vote deadline the council had set.
00:13:59.280So, you know, to me, how can you call this a model for other cities?
00:14:03.220I mean, maybe it is a model, but it's a model of what not to do,
00:14:05.980not a model of how to hold the most open, transparent Olympic bid process ever.
00:17:03.480They don't go on vacation that summer.
00:17:06.000They tighten their belts in tough times.
00:17:08.220And it's something that the city, in our opinion, hasn't looked at closely enough or maybe they just haven't accepted the reality of how bad the times are here in Calgary.
00:17:19.740Because when the administration put forward its budget proposal, it contained a series of tax increase options on families, on businesses, on families and businesses.
00:17:29.920But what it didn't contain was a meaningful spending reduction plan to make running the city of Calgary cheaper year after year.
00:17:39.120And that is something that Save Calgary is advocating for quite strongly in this budget cycle.
00:17:43.020Well, and, you know, it's tough economic times.
00:17:46.660You would think that the city of Calgary, with the vacancy rate downtown, would be trying to encourage businesses to move into Calgary, to replace that tax base, to, you know, get businesses moving back into those empty office towers.
00:18:00.520But nothing discourages businesses from moving into your jurisdiction like, I don't know, higher taxes.
00:18:07.760And when we were asked during this whole Olympic odyssey what our plan was, we said quite simply, look, an Olympics doesn't fix Calgary's economic problems.
00:18:18.240Boosting Calgary's economy by having private sector businesses set up and grow their operations in this city, hiring people, making investments, that's what's going to turn around the tough times here in our city.
00:18:31.160And what you're doing, though, is sending the message that you don't want people to come here and set up businesses.
00:18:36.320You want them to go outside of Calgary jurisdiction because taxes and red tape are too high for businesses to be able to operate here and still make money.
00:18:45.360So for us, the concern we've had is the city has found some savings, and I want to credit the city for the work they've already done.
00:18:53.220But the single biggest line item in the city's budget remains salaries, wages, benefits, and pensions.
00:19:00.060And that's a number that's increased by 42% between 2010 and 2017.
00:19:07.860So in just seven years, the spending the city does on salaries, wages, benefits, and pensions has gone up 42%.
00:19:29.280We need to look at how we make benefits more affordable.
00:19:33.420And maybe that means employees shouldering more of the premium costs for those benefits.
00:19:38.320And we have to end defined benefit pension plans for city employees because just like they have in almost every other case,
00:19:45.200those pension plans can bankrupt a city once too many people start drawing out money from them after they retire.
00:19:52.760You know, and that is shocking when you say that it is over 40%.
00:19:56.660When you compare that to the private sector business experience, especially in Calgary right now,
00:20:05.360I mean, it is appalling when public sector workers are sheltered from the reality that the people who are paying their salaries have to live with every day.
00:20:17.300But I don't know if Calgary can put off having this conversation for much longer.
00:20:22.040Well, for us, this wasn't even and still isn't even on the table as something the city is considering.
00:20:29.640They never presented this as an option.
00:20:32.940And I have to tell you, they're also planning to still increase city employee salaries year after year for the next four years.
00:20:40.680They've got agreements in place that they sign with unions and they intend year after year to raise salaries, to raise benefits and to maintain those pensions.
00:20:49.400And I think for many Calgarians who have faced layoffs, who have faced their own salary cuts,
00:20:56.040who have faced, you know, not having any form of retirement assistance from their employers,
00:21:01.740they look at what the benefits the city employees get and the pretty good deal that city employees are getting.
00:21:09.120And they think during these tough economic times, why am I paying more and more taxes in order to pay for a city workforce that we just can't afford?
00:21:17.400And to give you a size of the number, the city of Calgary's budget is somewhere between $3.7 and $4 billion a year in total spending.
00:21:28.440And salaries, wages and benefits is $2 billion of that.
00:21:31.720So one out of every $2 the city spends is on salaries, wages and benefits.
00:21:36.940So that is shocking when you put it that way.
00:21:41.780Do you know if the city of Calgary has seen like a hiring boom?
00:21:45.760I know we saw that, we see that still in Rachel Notley's government that the, you know,
00:21:51.320there was a hiring boom in the public sector as soon as she took power and it sort of continued to mushroom and mushroom and mushroom.
00:21:59.840Did or have you seen that at Calgary City Hall?
00:22:06.100So right now, because times are so tough, city councils instructed the administration to restrain itself from adding new positions.
00:22:16.120I don't know if it's a full hiring freeze or, but I do know that that's a message that was sent to the city of Mint.
00:22:22.580But I can tell you that over that same seven year period from 2010 until 2017, 2,000 more full-time equivalent positions were added to city payroll.
00:22:32.460So we've added 2,000 more workers over a seven-year period and the amount of money we're paying for the city's bureaucracy has gone up 42%.
00:22:42.920Neither one of those numbers is sustainable.
00:22:45.300And I think not only do we need a hiring freeze, we need to take a serious look at how we can reduce the size of the city's workforce while maintaining services,
00:22:56.460because it's becoming just too costly an operation for taxpayers in Calgary to afford year after year.
00:23:03.200You know, and there are solutions that aren't scary, but for some reason, public sector unions are so resistant to them.
00:23:11.180For example, attrition, just not rehiring somebody when they retire and finding ways to streamline or automate their job.
00:23:19.580In the age of automation, you would think that there would be places, at least in the bureaucracy, that could become automated or, you know, jobs combined.
00:23:29.720But that doesn't happen in the public sector at all.
00:23:35.560You know, we think that these changes should be implemented as kindly as possible, as thoughtfully as possible.
00:23:42.180We're not calling for, you know, indiscriminate firing and salary cuts.
00:23:46.980But I think the fact that this isn't even getting talked about, to me, is part of the problem.
00:23:52.000That City Hall and the admin haven't really wrapped their minds around the fact that we have a structural tax problem now here in Calgary.
00:24:00.280That some of the people who have been footing the bill year after year just aren't there anymore.
00:24:04.700And they're not going to come back overnight.
00:24:06.980And so how are we going to make the city run without those hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes that we used to collect from the downtown towers?
00:24:15.400For us, we think, look, if you can't have an honest conversation about these issues during a budget cycle, then when on earth can you have these conversations?
00:24:26.200We're in the middle of a terrible economic slump.
00:24:28.840Can't we have a conversation about things like transitioning new hires at the city to a defined contribution benefit plan or an RRSP matching plan?
00:24:38.940Things that you find in the private sector, unlike defined benefit plans, which pay out at the same amount regardless of how much money is in the pension fund.
00:24:50.100It was, you know, even a few years ago, we were paying out tens of millions of dollars in pension.
00:24:55.500And now we're paying out hundreds of millions of dollars in pension.
00:24:58.660And I can only imagine what it's going to be like when, you know, a huge chunk of the city retires and moves on to those pension plans for 10 or 20 or 30 years.
00:25:09.140William, I think that's a great place for me to give you a chance to tell people where they can find Safe Calgary, how they can support Safe Calgary, and where they can educate themselves on this information about what exactly it takes to run Calgary City Hall a little bit more efficiently.
00:25:45.940Make sure that you're getting, you know, the other side of the story, the side that isn't being communicated by city administration, by the mayor, by his supportive councillors.
00:25:56.740You know, there are some hero councillors on this city council.
00:25:59.740I would say two of our favourites are Jeremy Farkas and Sean Chu, two people who have always tried to do their best for Calgary taxpayers.
00:26:13.780We want to make sure that you know how your tax dollars are being spent and the decisions the city is going to make that will define the future of Calgary for not just the next few years, but for the next few decades.
00:26:25.200So for us, visit our website, safecalgary.com.
00:27:12.180If the garbage isn't picked up and your hubcaps are falling off because the pothole in front of your house is that deep,
00:27:19.960you know, people often don't make that connection between that massive check that you send to the city every year and the disrepair of your community.
00:27:32.120They don't often make that translation.
00:27:35.200And I'm glad Safe Calgary exists because you do that for people.
00:27:39.520And your victory against the city in the Olympics is just a testament to your efficacy.