We ve got a new troublemaker on the Rebel team based in Calgary, and tonight we re discussing some of the things that we re both passionate about, like gun rights, government transparency, how awful the NDP are, and pipelines.
00:00:00.000We've got a new troublemaker on the Rebel team. He's based in Calgary and tonight we're discussing some of the things that we're both passionate about like gun rights, government transparency, how awful the NDP are, and pipelines. I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed and you're watching The Gunn Show.
00:00:30.000Alberta's election is not even a year away. It's May 2019. Things are going to get a little wild in this province between then and now as the NDP get more and more desperate to hang on to power.
00:00:49.200The NDP, they're going to hide their pasts and hide their lack of action and lack of advocacy on issues that are important to real, normal, everyday Albertans.
00:01:00.780And just last fall, Calgary's Mayor Nenshi was given another term, despite a little bit of a last-minute conservative insurgency.
00:01:08.320Nenshi feels like he's got a mandate to continue with his ongoing policy of governing from behind closed doors and wasting taxpayer money on vanity projects like an Olympics and public art that looks like garbage.
00:01:22.920There is so much going on in our city to the south that we had to call in reinforcements.
00:01:29.460We've hired a new advocacy journalist and some of you may have seen his work already.
00:01:34.660His name is Kian Bextie and part of his job is fighting for issues that you care about.
00:01:40.900So joining me tonight to discuss some of the things that are on the top of his mind and that matter to him is my scrappy new co-worker, Kian Bextie.
00:02:04.660So joining me now from Vulcan, Alberta, is new Rebel contributor Kian Bextie.
00:03:10.740So we started this campaign about a week and a half ago where we after we found out that city council was interested or looking into reducing the speed limit in the residential streets of Calgary.
00:03:25.640Drew Farrell, the councillor who's spearheading this, has a history of of wanting to reduce speed limits in the city no matter where they are.
00:03:35.360Originally, it started back in her single ward in the Sunnyside area where she wanted to reduce the local speed limit to make the entire city more pedestrian friendly.
00:03:47.740And it even went as far as to wanting to block off Memorial Drive, one of the largest arteries in the entire city.
00:03:55.160Just block it off entirely for part of the day so that there could be a farmer's market type pedestrian gathering.
00:04:02.680And she's just the most anti-car person you can find in the city.
00:04:08.700She just happens to be sitting on city council.
00:04:11.300So after that failed the reducter part of her pedestrian strategy a couple of years ago, now that there's a new council, she thought she could have some more support for this.
00:04:26.520So the speed limits aren't being reduced right now, but by margin of I believe it was eight to six, they've agreed to start looking into the idea.
00:04:37.200So they've directed the city administration to start costing it out and working with their shareholders so that by the time September comes around next year, they'll be able to they'll be able to reduce the speed limits from 50 kilometers an hour to 30 kilometers an hour on every single residential street in the city.
00:05:00.960Is it me or does this feel like nothing more than a cash grab?
00:05:06.920I mean, they say it's under the guise of wanting to protect pedestrians.
00:05:11.740But if if that was the case, they would they would opt for a more sensible approach, like raised crosswalks or or less wide roadways.
00:05:24.220But instead, they've decided to just slow the city down or at least the speed limit down.
00:05:30.080Whether or not this is actually going to slow drivers down is another question.
00:05:32.720But they the city collected over 20 million dollars in in revenue from photo radar taxes last like this was 2016 numbers, I think.
00:05:44.540So when the speed limits reduced from 50 to 30, like just imagine how much money they're going to make.
00:05:49.800And you can bet that they're going to be spending this on bike lanes, they're going to be spending on whatever they can that is just going to keep hurting cars and keep hurting suburban Calgary.
00:05:58.720Well, and that's the thing, like we see it all the time in Edmonton.
00:06:03.140But I would say that Calgary is even more sprawling.
00:06:07.860This idea that cities that were built and suburbs that were built for people to live outside of the city and commute like that's why suburbs are built so that you can get in your car, drive to the city and drive back out.
00:06:22.440People don't necessarily want to live in the city and there's this perpetual war on cars that someone who lives in in Airdrie or, you know, one of the surrounding bedroom communities that they should be riding their bike.
00:06:35.560It just doesn't work, especially in Western Canada, with the exception of probably Vancouver.
00:06:42.340We're just not built to operate that way.
00:06:48.360I just want to quote something from the from the resolution that they passed yesterday.
00:06:52.820It says, be it further resolved that all communities currently being planned have local road network designs that do not prioritize speed and flow of traffic over safety of non-motor vehicle users.
00:07:07.780Communities under design shall recognize the need for safe pedestrian infrastructure.
00:07:11.920They just have this warped idea that they need to pit drivers against cars, drivers against pedestrians, like this false dichotomy that only one can benefit if the other one is hurt in the process.
00:07:28.840And it's really frustrating because they just don't seem to give any thought to infrastructure changes, be it speed bumps or raised crosswalks.
00:07:40.160They just they just want to make pedestrians feel unsafe so that so that they can keep up their war on cars.
00:07:49.840I guess that sort of brings me to my next question to you about what's happening down at Calgary City Hall.
00:07:57.360It seems like they're a bunch of cloistered bureaucrats and frankly, a little bit like totalitarians down there.
00:08:06.080They sort of don't think that the public has any right to know what's going on at Calgary City Hall.
00:08:13.540We just received news that Mayor Nenshi has paid out $83,000 to lawyers representing city councillors to basically block the public from finding out what sort of misconduct, if any, is happening down at Calgary City Hall.
00:08:38.500Yeah, well, I'm glad you clarified that was the thing that they were trying to hide from the public because there's a lot right now from the Olympic bid, from the leaked council documents, from the in-camera session to this.
00:08:52.080Like, it's just Nenshi and his band of buddies are trying desperately to hide everything they can from the public.
00:08:59.520Whatever it is, whatever they're doing, the public cannot know about it.
00:09:02.360And it seems to be something that's really special to Calgary.
00:09:05.920There's no other city in Canada that really comes close to, A, how much time we spend in camera, and B, how much time our councillors spend getting sued or suing other people,
00:09:17.960or just spending money on lawyers for whatever reason, whether it be to hide FOIP requests or redact FOIP requests or because they've done other undesirable things.
00:09:35.880It's really disappointing, I think, that it took so much effort on behalf of, you know, got to give the credit where credit is due, the CBC, how much work it took them to actually get this amount of money disclosed to the public.
00:09:53.500Yeah, I mean, when you really think about it in real-life terms, Nenshi paid lawyers tax dollars to prevent taxpayers from finding out what's going down at City Hall when taxpayers pay their salary.
00:10:10.780I mean, it's so sneaky and clandestine, and it's, you know, the opposite of the transparency that he promised Calgarians.
00:10:20.940And you mentioned something that I wanted to touch on.
00:10:25.100Our friends from Safe Calgary were talking about this this week.
00:10:29.740They talked about the amount of times that Nenshi has appeared, or that Nenshi and City Council have met in camera.
00:10:38.320Now, that's like a fancy downtown City Council jargon for meeting in private.
00:10:47.700You can't go down and see these council meetings.
00:10:50.400The way you normally could sit in on any sort of legislative session.
00:10:54.280The City of Calgary, in two years, between 2014 and 2016, so again, under Mayor Nenshi, they've met, as they say, in camera, 700 times.
00:11:07.100And according to Safe Calgary, 25% of all council meetings are secret.
00:11:12.480And, you know, when you compare that to other cities across the country, Toronto has only met 18 times in camera in that same amount of time.
00:11:27.440Fundamentally, there's a problem where, when we go to an election, we are not able to judge our elected officials based off of what they've done because it's so in secret.
00:11:39.180But going back to the $83,000 spent on legal fees, we still don't know which councillors were behind that because it was redacted by the city administration.
00:11:50.300When they go in council, we have no idea what views these councillors are taking on matters that aren't allowed to be disclosed to the public.
00:12:00.140And when someone does disclose it to the public, then Nenshi goes after them like they've just broken the law, like they're criminals, when all they really did was share with their constituents what their government is doing.
00:12:21.460But Nenshi just seems to think that it belongs to him, and if it doesn't go his way, he's just going to go into the council chambers and make it so behind closed doors.
00:12:32.240Well, in this attitude of secrecy and this idea that city council is entitled to information and they're entitled to withhold that information has sort of spilled over into the Olympic bid.
00:12:45.420Yeah, I mean, there was a couple questions being asked of the Olympic bidding CEO.
00:12:58.680I can't remember her name, it's slipping my mind right now.
00:13:01.400But I went and sat in on that council session because I was interested in the 30-kilometer-an-hour speed limit reduction, which was supposed to be happening that same day,
00:13:08.380but it was pushed back a couple weeks because it took so long to talk about the Olympic bid.
00:13:12.300But after, time and time again, the councillor stood up and asked the Bidco CEO questions, and she just kind of gave non-answers.
00:13:21.520And a lot of the councillors were completely fine with that.
00:13:26.460And then it came to Jeremy Farkas, who was really interested in how much money was going to be spent, city dollars was going to be spent,
00:13:34.560on Bidco advertising the bid to the public during the plebiscite.
00:13:39.560And the councillor was, Jeremy Farkas, sort of put the Bidco CEO in a corner and eventually it came out.
00:13:48.840But it was just, he had to fight tooth and nail that the city was going to be spending money on Bidco to be manipulating the public to be voting yes.
00:13:57.320She said, and this is just a rough quote, but she said that they will be trying to inform Calgarians how impressive this bid will be and how, why they should be voting yes.
00:14:11.040Not a two sides of the coin kind of thing.
00:14:13.360It was just why they should be supporting the bid.
00:14:16.120Millions of dollars are going to be spent on that.
00:14:17.560So going forward, it's something that I'm really going to be interested in following and sharing with our viewers,
00:14:22.900because I just think it's just the most dastardly thing to be spending this much money.
00:14:28.800Well, we have yet to find out exactly how much money it will be.
00:14:31.400But to be spending any money trying to manipulate the public in the midst of a democratic vote, I think it's deplorable.
00:14:38.420Well, and I think it is something that while, you know, currently taxpayers are footing the bill for Bidco, this company, that it exists, at least according to its mandate, to decide or to present, you know, evidence whether or not Calgary should even pursue the bid.
00:14:58.660That's why it exists, but it looks like it's already promoting the yes side and City of Calgary is already spending money on that.
00:15:06.060But the bid itself lowball $5.2 billion, and that number keeps going up.
00:15:13.200It's gone up a billion dollars since last spring, and apparently it's supposed to be a cost-sharing initiative.
00:15:20.700The feds are going to kick in some money.
00:15:23.020Rachel Notley is supposed to kick in the money.
00:15:24.940No level of government can actually afford that in this economy.
00:15:27.880But I think it's something that the entire country needs to care about, because every single Canadian taxpayer is going to be footing the bill for,
00:15:35.300what I would suggest is a vanity project and legacy project for Mayor Nenshi and, to some extent, Rachel Notley.
00:15:46.000I think Rachel Notley specifically knows that she's going to be, she's probably going to be gone by the time, but it will be her legacy.
00:15:53.340I want to go back to what you said, though, about the feds, the province, and the city pitching the money.
00:15:59.120It seems like every level of government is trying to say, oh, but look at how much this other level of government is pitching in.
00:16:06.140At the end of the day, Calgary taxpayers pay money to the city of Calgary, the province of Alberta, and the federal government of Canada.
00:16:14.960They say it's the other government pitching the money, but at the end of the day, it's the exact same people time and time again.
00:16:21.340Whether or not you're in southern Alberta, northern Alberta, Quebec, or in Calgary, the amount is variable.
00:16:29.280But at the end of the day, every taxpayer is going to be on the hook for these games, which have a track record of overspending, of losing revenue,
00:16:39.080and being just a corrupt organization that we just don't need to take any part in.
00:16:46.140Now, we sort of wandered into Rachel Notley Criticism Country, which is one of my favorite places to be.
00:16:54.640Again, you know, credit where it's due, but the CBC got access to our energy minister, Marga McQuaig-Boyd, and her chief of staff.
00:17:07.380The CBC filed a freedom of information request to get access to their emails during the time of April 8th and May 28th.
00:17:15.640So that was, you know, basically deadline time for Trans Mountain.
00:17:22.660And I guess the first thing I'll say is I'm always glad when Marga McQuaig-Boyd is in the news,
00:17:28.360because I'm always happy to hear that woman is still alive, because we actually never hear anything from her,
00:17:36.440and she should be one of the most prominent people in Rachel Notley's cabinet, considering.
00:17:40.440So, you know, good that we have proof of life.
00:17:44.620But during that time, when they should have been furiously working on doing whatever they could to save Trans Mountain,
00:17:56.520and how the allegedly non-partisan bureaucrats in the energy ministry could spin the failure of Rachel Notley's government on Trans Mountain
00:18:09.780as somehow Jason Kenney's doing years earlier.
00:18:15.220I mean, time and time again, whether it's the mainstream media or partisan bureaucrats,
00:18:22.840they keep saying that Stephen Harper and his government made absolutely no progress on pipelines,