Will Calgary taxpayers get saddled with hosting unaffordable Olympics？ (Guest： William McBeath, Save Calgary)
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Summary
Calgary's Olympic bid is falling apart fast, and Save Calgary's William MacBeth joins me to talk about why. Are Mayor Nahid Nenshi's expensive Olympic dreams just melting away? Did they ever really stand a snowball s chance in hell?
Transcript
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Are Calgary Mayor Nahid Nenshi's expensive Olympic dreams just melting away?
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Did they ever really stand a snowball's chance in hell?
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I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed and you're watching The Gunn Show.
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Over the past week or so, Calgary Olympic bid news has been breaking and breaking and breaking.
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We've had dueling taxpayer federations, one in Calgary and one in Sweden, cross-endorsing each other's bids.
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We've had leaks and memos and secret meetings on city council and city councillors saying that they don't even know what's going on anymore.
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We've had the Olympic bid fall apart completely based on Notley's refusal to loosen the public purse and give the Olympic bid a penny more than $700 million,
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which is still a lot of money since we are, you know, broke.
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Tuesday morning when I recorded my interview with my guest today, the Olympic bid was dead and it was buried.
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And then the bid miraculously came back together last night at 10.30 with a cost-sharing agreement being reached between the feds and the city and the province.
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That involves drastic cuts to, of all things, the security budget.
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As I'm filming this right now, city council is meeting to decide whether or not this latest cost-sharing agreement will be enough to continue forward with the November 13th public plebiscite,
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where Calgary taxpayers finally get their say about whether or not they want to pay for the Olympics at all.
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By the time you watch this, Calgarians will know if they're getting a plebiscite or a quick end to the Olympic bleeding.
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Joining me tonight in an interview we recorded what feels like weeks ago because there has been just so much news and political wrangling in the interim
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is our friend William Macbeth from Save Calgary to explain to us how Calgary taxpayers got into this Olympic mess in the first place.
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Joining me now from Save Calgary is William Macbeth.
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William, you're my go-to guy as far as the Olympics, actually as far as everything sort of Calgary taxpayer related.
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And you've been on the Olympics beat from the very beginning and we have a lot to talk about since last time we talked.
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Things are changing so fast. I think we talked about this probably a month ago and there's been a lot of news since.
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Although this thing is falling apart so fast that it's all sort of fun to me.
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Do you see how quickly this is blowing up in politicians' faces?
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But there's these dueling taxpayer organizations that are sort of like pointing at each other saying,
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no, you want this thing, no, you want this thing. Why don't you tell us a little bit about that?
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And so what's happened is that a lot of cities have done the math on hosting the Olympics
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and realized that as the Olympics are being held today, it's just unaffordable to put on an Olympics the way the IOC demands and requires them to be put on.
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It's a number in the billions. Tokyo, for example, had a budget of $12 billion for their Olympics.
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They just came back a few days ago and said it's going to be higher than that.
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It's going to be $25 billion. So more than double in the cost.
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So what we're seeing now are here in Canada, we have the Canadian Taxpayers Federation who have done a lot of good work on scanning up for taxpayers.
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There's a Swedish equivalent to that. Not sure entirely what they're called because their name's in Swedish.
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But the Calgary Taxpayers Federation endorsed Stockholm's bid for the Olympics because Stockholm had said that they would use no taxpayer dollars in hosting the Olympics.
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Stockholm, perhaps not thrilled with the idea that they would be saddled with billions of dollars in Olympic-related costs,
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have endorsed Calgary to host the Olympic Games.
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So, you know, we joke about this being the Olympics that nobody wants.
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It's now the Olympics people are trying to force on to other cities so that they don't get stuck with the bill.
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It's like a big frozen hot potato that nobody wants.
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Now, since we talked last time, the Alberta government has said that they will give money we don't have to the prospect of an Olympics,
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although it was much lower than I anticipated the Alberta government would give in pursuit of an Olympics.
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So that's sort of good when you consider the bad things the Alberta government just willy-nilly spends our money on.
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And we said it before, I think, once on your show, that it was when the province forced the city to hold a vote
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on whether or not to hold the Olympics, that it was a surprising day that it was our NDP government
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who were being the voice of democracy and reason in this.
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They are being the voice of comparative fiscal responsibility when it comes to these Olympics.
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So even though the Olympic Big Committee won't publicly admit this, privately, they were convinced that for this public funding model to work,
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the city would pay about $500 million, the province would pay $1 billion, and the federal government would pay $1.5 billion.
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And combined, that would get us to that $3 billion number that is in the proposed bid plan.
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Now, what happened, of course, is Rachel Notley and her government came out and announced $700 million.
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And announced $700 million and not a penny more, even if the costs escalate,
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which happens, as far as I can tell, in every single Olympics that's ever been held since ancient days in Athens.
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And it meant that there's a hole now in how much money they need from taxpayers from different levels of government
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The Feds just came out late last week through the media and announced two important things.
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One, that they would fund up to $1.75 billion, which is a very big number, bigger, I think, than some were expecting.
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But that they would only be matching the contribution that was coming from the city and the province.
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So if the city's in at $500 and the province is in at $700, that's $1.2, and the Feds put in $1.2 billion,
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then that brings us to $2.4, and that leaves a $600 million hole in the funding plan for these Olympics in 2026.
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Now, I know that Save Calgary sort of did a rundown of how much the Olympics would cost each and every Calgary taxpayer.
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This, and credit to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation who put that out, I would say what it did was look at,
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assuming that $3 billion number was accurate, what would it cost a Calgary household,
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not just for their municipal share, but their share of the provincial taxes that they pay
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and their share of the federal taxes that they pay.
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And they came up with a conservative figure of $2,000 per Calgary household to host these games.
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And again, that assumes that every project comes in on budget.
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That presumes that they sell every event to the level that they're predicting to sell,
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which is virtually sold out, that there are no unforeseen costs,
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there are no unforeseen increases in things like security or transportation
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or any of those sorts of things, which also frequently spiral out of control
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when you're hosting an event of this magnitude.
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Just when you think about the things that the average struggling Calgary family,
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not even struggling, but let's just say decently middle-class family in Calgary
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Nenshi wanted Calgarians to spend it on a legacy party for himself.
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Yeah, no, and it's even worse here in Calgary because, as I think most folks know,
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Calgary's been hit hard by the tough economic times that have affected Alberta.
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Our downtown office towers have a very high vacancy rate,
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which means the amount of money the city normally gets from property taxes from businesses
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is dramatically lower than it has been in previous years,
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which puts more of the burden on house owners, on homeowners to make up the shortfall.
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So they could be faced with the double whammy of not only $2,000 for an Olympics that,
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as we've seen, nobody wants, along with also a massive property tax hike
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in order to just balance the books or even come close to balancing the books at City Hall.
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And Calgary City Hall already wants to raise taxes just to pay for basic municipal services,
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and they still want to pursue this Olympic bid at all costs.
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You know, any sane, rational person who just looked at this from a cost-benefit standpoint
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will come to the same conclusion we did, which is this is not a good deal.
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Despite what the pro-Olympic people will tell you,
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the Olympics do not solve every single problem a city is facing.
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They will not change the minds of British Columbians and Montrealers to let us build new pipelines.
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What they will do is layer on costs to taxpayers,
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and I think that our city council has been used to, for a very long time,
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it's for your own good, trust us, we know what's best for you.
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And this time around, taxpayers said, no, we've had enough.
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We've had enough of you just raising our taxes and spending the money on whatever project you favor,
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whether that's million-dollar cycle lanes or public art that people think is leftover construction material.
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This plan doesn't make sense for Calgary and Calgarians,
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doesn't make sense for my family, so I'm not supporting it.
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You know, it's funny that you brought up Whistler,
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because wasn't Whistler one of the sort of satellite cities that might get part of the events
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And I know that some people were sort of saying, oh, you know, like,
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we can't give Whistler a piece of the pie if BC doesn't let us build a pipeline.
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Give them the pie, the kitchen, all the fruit, everything.
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That's, again, the spiteful part of me acting up.
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Now, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about some of the leaked information
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that's being leaked out of Calgary City Hall about the Olympics.
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We're so used to secrecy around Calgary City Hall.
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They do so much in camera, so out of the view of the public,
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that it's become such a problem that city councillors don't even know what's going on
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Sean Chu said he had no idea about some of the stuff the mayor was saying
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It's become really hard to find out what is actually true in this Olympic saga
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I like to make the joke that city council's left hand didn't know
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what its far left hand was doing when it came to these Olympics.
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As of Friday, what we know is that apparently, according to the mayor,
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the fact that the federal government was going to require matching funds
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from the city and the province came as a surprise.
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Except we know that's not true because in September, there was a letter from the feds
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stating, reminding Calgary about its funding for major sporting events policy,
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which said, we only matched and we weren't prepared to give more than that.
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So for the mayor to say that that was a complete surprise is just not true.
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We also learned that they are considering using money earmarked for other projects
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in order to top up the missing money from the Olympic bid.
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And that could include taking money from Calgary's Green Line LRT expansion.
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So, you know, a project which has been announced half a dozen times
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And, you know, it was supposed to be twice as long as it is now.
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And now they want to take hundreds of millions of dollars out of that,
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which means either building, what, a quarter of what the Green Line was supposed to be
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or delaying its construction for years and years.
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So that gave us a huge surprise, particularly the city councillors who, you know,
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have the Green Line scheduled to run through their wards
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and have been promising this to their voters, you know, during the last election.
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So all of these things just sort of popped up over the weekend.
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And credit to Don Braid, who did release some of these things through, you know, his columns.
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There are a lot of angry councillors that they were kept in the dark.
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And it makes me think, well, now you know how the voters and taxpayers of Calgary feel
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And you're now finally getting a taste of what it's like to be locked outside
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from big decisions about big spending and about the future of our city.
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But what is happening right now with regard to the Olympics?
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Right as we're talking back and forth, the City Council has an Olympic bid oversight committee.
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And that committee is meeting right as we speak in order to consider a motion
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to withdraw Calgary from consideration of the 2026 Winter Olympics.
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If that motion goes through and, you know, unless there's been yet another shocking development
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in the middle of the night, and given how these Olympics have gone, that's entirely possible.
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Unless something dramatic has happened, that motion will be approved.
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And it will go to City Council tomorrow, Wednesday, for the vote of full council.
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And if so, that would be the end of Calgary's Olympic bid.
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We would presumably stop spending money on a bid at that point.
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Because BigCo, the company in charge of our bid, is not yet subject to any freedom of information
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So we have no idea what they're doing or how they're spending money.
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But it would be the last gasp of these Olympics.
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Well, it's pretty clear I wouldn't be mad at that.
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I also know that there are some questions around how the plebiscite was going to be handled.
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And there are some problems with the Calgary municipal election.
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And I know a lot of people were concerned that those would sort of bleed over into the new
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It's kind of funny to think that Calgary apparently has never run an election before.
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And they have absolutely no idea how to run one and have appropriate safeguards.
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So one of the things we learned is that if you've requested an advance ballot, your name
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And that list will be available to scrutineers for the different sides of this plebiscite
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to be able to cross-reference to voters who are voting.
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But that is the silliest way I've ever heard of maintaining voter security.
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In elections that I'm familiar with, there's a list of people who can vote.
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And if you voted through advance poll, you requested a mail-in ballot, then we would cross
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The city just assumes either we'll be able to look through a list thousands of names long
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every single time a voter comes to cast their ballot on the day of the plebiscite, or that
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because there's a penalty for voting twice, no Calgarian would risk it.
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It is frankly a ridiculous position for the city to maintain.
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And it makes me wonder if Calgary has ever had a free and fair election in the last however
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many years, because apparently they don't believe in voter security.
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They don't believe in maintaining the integrity of their own elections.
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It sounds like a weird job creation strategy to overcomplicate the voting process by having
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to put eyeballs on the voters list over and over and over again.
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I wanted to ask you, do we have any idea how much this whole pursuit of thinking about an
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And the reason is, again, because so much of the information isn't publicly available.
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You know, it might become publicly available months or years down the road, but right now
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But what we do know is they've already spent millions and millions of dollars preparing
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And they've now spent millions and millions of dollars on the bid process itself.
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And they've spent however much money on their public engagement sessions, which are being
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held around town and which are discovering, by the way, that people are overwhelmingly opposed
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I would venture that the number so far is in the tens of millions of dollars.
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It cannot be less than that, given how much has been spent to date on staff, on, you know,
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That's some more of that transparency from Calgary City Council.
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Now, I wanted to ask you, who do you think is going to get stuck with this Olympics?
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So there are still three cities in contention for the 2026 Olympics.
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And by the way, this is not the first time that they've come down to having few to no options
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For one of the Summer Olympics, or Winter Olympics, sorry, it was Beijing versus Kazakhstan.
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And by default, it kind of went to Beijing, a city notorious for, you know, not having a
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So not entirely certain how that's going to work.
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If Stockholm follows through on its threat to withdraw, if Italy can't get guaranteed federal
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funding and withdrawals, and if in the next 48 hours, Calgary City Council puts a bullet
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in the head of our Olympic bid, that would leave nobody.
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And so the IOC has spoken to the poor people of Salt Lake City who hosted the Olympics a while
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back and secured them as the backup site for the 2026 Olympics.
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You know, what did Salt Lake City ever do to deserve two Olympics?
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I guess they're just too nice to say no to the big bad IOC and their, you know, who want
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their expensive two week taxpayer funded luxury vacation every two years.
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Now, when the, when God willing, the Olympics gets axe murdered, what is on the agenda for
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What's your next big thing on the horizon to save Calgary taxpayers from, you know, spending
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It's, it's hard to even know what to choose from.
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There's the forthcoming massive property tax hike, because what I love is that the city
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isn't going to present its financial update and preliminary budget until the day after
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Let's wait until after the vote to reveal a more accurate financial picture of, of where
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And we're fairly certain it's going to include a, a simply catastrophic tax hike for, you
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know, certainly homeowners, possibly also businesses.
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And so that's definitely going to the top of our chart.
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This Olympics also, this plebiscite process has showed us the incredible flaws that exist
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And the time to fix that would be well before the, the next municipal election, where we
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hope to, you know, maybe make some real change, especially of this time, the election is run
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And there's some perennial favorites that I'm sure will crop up public art.
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I just saw a new $900,000 piece that was announced and shown today.
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To me, it looked like a bunch of, you know, metal wire that had been turned into a boomerang.
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So not sure what it's meant to be, but it costs $900,000.
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And I have no doubt that when it comes to this city council, there is no shortage of issues
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for Save Calgary to be pursuing in the coming months.
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Well, William, how do people support Save Calgary?
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A few things that we, you know, use to try and stay in touch with voters is through our
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Facebook page, facebook.com slash Save Calgary, through our website, savecalgary.com.
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We have a mailing list and send out weekly emails on issues of concern.
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Those are the best written political emails I get every single week.
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You know, I know that we're not very popular at City Hall.
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In fact, I heard from a friend who works over there that Save Calgary gets mentioned quite
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So certainly through our website, through our email list, follow us on our social media,
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And we very much appreciate the support and enthusiasm, the positive comments we get from
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voters who think, finally, there's someone who actually cares about me and my family and
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my taxes, not just the big special interests down at City Hall.
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And if you go to our website, if you check us out on Facebook, there are links to give
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If you sign up for our email, sometimes we put in a pitch for that.
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And we're very grateful for contributions we get, which allow us to do the research, to
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do the public awareness, to run the issue campaigns that we do to try and keep this City
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Hall a little more accountable than it's been in the past.
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William, I want to thank you so much again for how generous you always are with your time.
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And I want to thank you for, I think you guys really spearheaded the charge against the
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So I think Calgary taxpayers owe you guys a debt of thanks.
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And we, you know, are so happy to be helping make life a little bit more affordable for
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Again, I want to reiterate, as I'm filming this, Calgary City Council is meeting to decide
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whether or not the bid will go forward after a new cost-sharing agreement was reached late
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The new cost-sharing agreement cuts a couple million dollars out of an already low-balled
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$610 million allocated for security and policing to keep the Calgary public safe during the Olympics.
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For perspective, it cost $1 billion to provide security and policing for the Vancouver 2010
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And Calgary's Olympic Games will be held 16 full years later.
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I can't see how the numbers are going to hold up.
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I hope by the time you're watching this gun show tonight, the Frankenstein monster of the
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And if it isn't, the Calgarians will have another chance to kill it November 13th at their
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And in the meantime, you'll have the good folks at Save Calgary looking out for taxpayers'
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Thank you so much for taking the time to tune in.
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I'll see everybody back here in the same time, in the same place next week.
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And remember, don't let the government tell you that you've had too much to think.