Juno News - Fixing Canada’s broken municipalities (ft. Stella Ambler)

00:00:00.000 I want to talk about some battlegrounds that oftentimes do not get nearly the attention

00:00:12.880 they deserve and that is the fights taking place in municipal politics. Now in Ontario we had a

00:00:19.820 round of municipal elections just a few months ago. There were some contentious school board

00:00:25.000 battles as well. School board, another area where I think more people, certainly those on the right

00:00:29.940 need to pay a bit more attention. But a new municipal watchdog has started to take aim at these

00:00:36.300 big bloated city council budgets. They are coming out guns blazing. Stella Ambler, the former 0.52

00:00:41.940 Conservative Member of Parliament, now the president of Municipal Watch, calling out municipal madness.

00:00:48.060 Stella, always good to talk to you. Thanks for coming on today. You were very kind enough to

00:00:52.100 invite me to speak at the Albany Club when my book The Freedom Convoy came out. So happy to return the

00:00:57.780 favor at least a little bit here. You've done federal politics. I know you've been involved

00:01:02.480 at all levels. Why do you think municipal politics is where your efforts need to be focused now?

00:01:08.440 Yeah, actually it does kind of segue into that. I have been involved mostly in my long political

00:01:16.980 career at the provincial and federal levels. And, you know, just recently I realized that there's no

00:01:25.600 opposition built into the municipal level. So in Ottawa we have the House of Commons and

00:01:30.980 question period and everyone knows who the opposition party is and their job is to oppose the government.

00:01:37.720 And it's the same in the legislatures across Canada. Opposition is built right into the city,

00:01:45.680 into the system. And that actually provides automatically a level of oversight. And we don't

00:01:53.340 have that at the local level. And so I've been finding that folks are just ordinary Canadians are

00:02:01.180 very concerned about what's happening in their cities and towns and they just don't know what to do

00:02:07.060 about it. They need help. And so I thought, well, I'd like to help them speak out and call out examples

00:02:14.920 of silliness and nonsense in the municipalities. I call it madness, by the way. You know, I like the 0.80

00:02:22.080 alliteration, municipal madness. So it works. We'll get to some of the specific issues in a moment here.

00:02:29.060 Certainly in an Ontario context, in most provinces, BC is a bit of an outlier here.

00:02:33.520 There aren't political parties at the municipal level. Sometimes you see

00:02:37.380 things that loosely resemble slates, but oftentimes I think the real advantage of

00:02:42.140 municipal politics is that you can have somewhat more independent-minded people. They aren't whipped.

00:02:48.320 But in your view, is this a left-right issue?

00:02:52.440 Absolutely not. Of course, I come at it personally as a small-c conservative, and there's nothing wrong

00:02:59.580 as conservatives, as people who want to see more transparency, restraint, fiscal restraint.

00:03:09.000 But, you know, it's not, municipal politics is not generally partisan. There are no political

00:03:15.560 parties involved other than, as you say, BC. But I find, though, that, so it's not partisan in nature,

00:03:22.840 but it's more to, in my mind, about common sense. You know, we really need to take a look at what folks

00:03:29.860 are doing. You talked about government. There's a whole debate in Canada now. Is government broken,

00:03:37.580 right? And so I thought about this municipally, and I thought, well, I'm not sure if broken is the right

00:03:43.640 word, but certainly there needs to be some perspective brought in. There are far too many

00:03:49.340 municipalities who are overspending, overtaxing, overregulating, and just the kinds of policies

00:03:57.920 and programs that they're putting into place are sometimes not even in their jurisdiction

00:04:03.440 to have any say. And yet they waste resources debating it, studying it. And, you know, I think

00:04:12.500 we really, we need someone to call that out. And I want to be the person to do that.

00:04:17.360 Yeah, I mean, I generally have a years-long crusade against bylaw enforcement, which I feel is probably

00:04:24.740 a department that I would support abolishing wholesale. I won't get you to comment on that,

00:04:29.360 because I don't want you to be off the ground before you're really off the ground with this. But

00:04:33.740 the one thing I will point out is that there have been so many issues where someone is fined for 0.64

00:04:40.020 something so ridiculous. A case in Oshawa recently, where a group of volunteers were fined because they

00:04:46.160 wanted to distribute food and necessities to the homeless, and they didn't have a permit from the

00:04:50.560 city to do it. I once had a ticket because I was legally parked in front of my own house,

00:04:55.920 but the car was facing the wrong direction. And it was just for a very silly reason, because I was

00:05:00.820 rearranging things in the driveway. But very stupid stuff like that that comes up. And every time I hear 0.99

00:05:06.700 about these things, it's like, oh, yeah, it's a $50 ticket. It's a $60 ticket. But it's part of a culture,

00:05:11.940 I think, that is bigger than that in municipalities, which is this really incessant need to regulate

00:05:17.480 these very minute details about people's lives.

00:05:21.220 I have a friend in London, so you two could meet up for coffee, and he could tell you about his

00:05:28.040 fight with the city over a particular tree on his property. I won't go into the details,

00:05:35.380 suffice to say, he wrote many letters to the mayor, to his councillors. And I don't think he won in the

00:05:43.300 end. But the level of bureaucracy needed to deal with that was, it was startling to him. He could

00:05:52.640 not believe what happened. But you know, I think a lot of the issues too, stem from municipalities,

00:05:59.380 municipal councillors wanting to maybe even prove their worth, let's say, and, and they want to

00:06:08.180 signal that they are on top of the issues of the day. So they declare climate emergencies, for example.

00:06:17.220 And, you know, what, what good is that really going to do? Then it that trickles down a little

00:06:24.100 further into, let's say, natural gas bans, which are all the rage now. And, you know, there are places

00:06:33.220 like Montreal, where you can't have a wood burning fireplace anymore. Yeah, it's really, the issues are,

00:06:41.220 are not within their jurisdiction, they're wasting our tax dollars, just by talking about them. And,

00:06:47.780 and if they, if, if, even if, even if the province, you know, Andrew, I saw a report by the Ontario's

00:06:56.500 independent electricity system operator, that said that, yes, we could ban natural gas by,

00:07:02.580 by the year 2050, and it would cost approximately $400 billion. So this is the sandbox that municipalities

00:07:09.860 are playing in now, right? It's just, let's stick to service delivery. There's, there's enough

00:07:16.500 a responsibility to go around. And when your responsibilities are water, water quality,

00:07:24.100 fire, ambulance, police, roads, transit, and parks and records, the more, and there's a,

00:07:31.860 there's a ton that, that, of, that, that they, of policies and programs that they already have,

00:07:38.740 have to do. So, and now they're getting into, you know, how people heat their homes. And, and,

00:07:45.620 and, and, and, you know, frankly, the people who are losing are the people who can afford it the

00:07:50.580 least. The people who can't afford to retrofit their home for $100,000 to, to use a heat pump

00:07:58.420 instead of, instead of natural gas, for example. You mentioned London, the city I live in in Ontario.

00:08:04.660 A friend of mine told me this story years ago that I, I've never actually shared on the show,

00:08:08.340 and I, I should now, because he, he had a visitor that was coming in from out of town who was driving

00:08:13.060 through London and they drove by this, you know, giant multi-million dollar water park the city

00:08:17.620 built. They drove by these stupid metal trees that the city had built and spent money on. They drove 0.99

00:08:23.300 by all of this stuff that the city had spent millions and millions on to bring the city up

00:08:28.100 to this global standard they had set. And the only thing the person noticed was that, like,

00:08:32.580 the potholes were going to destroy his car's suspension. So it's like cities need to do the things

00:08:38.100 that, like, do the bare minimum before they get to these really lofty aspirational things. But right

00:08:42.500 now, like, there's the big discussion going on of these so-called 15-minute cities and

00:08:46.980 redesigning the entire urban planning to make everything a 15-minute, uh, jaunt from your house.

00:08:52.740 And it's like, focus on the basics first. Like, if you were able to do all these core things well,

00:08:58.260 I might have confidence that you could do the big stuff well. But cities aren't doing that by and large.

00:09:03.140 Oh, nothing scares me more than these 15-minute cities. Uh, the more I go down that rabbit hole,

00:09:10.900 and the more afraid I become that municipalities, more municipalities in Canada, won't start looking

00:09:17.620 into this. I think Edmonton, is it Edmonton? Or, uh, a new market has definitely talked about it.

00:09:24.340 Edmonton has as well, I believe, yeah. Yeah, I wasn't sure. Um, I, I, uh, I've been reading a bit

00:09:31.620 about Edmonton because they're proposing, um, I think, I believe it's a seven percent tax hike,

00:09:38.180 property tax hike, over the next four years. So, you know, I mean, compounded, if you think about,

00:09:45.380 uh, what that adds up to. Most people just can't afford this. In my, my old stomping grounds of

00:09:51.700 Mississauga, they just passed what the mayor called a no-frills budget, uh, with a only three percent tax

00:09:59.380 increase, which is twice, I know, right? Twice as big as last year's, uh, last year's increase. And

00:10:05.860 it includes, so, so no frills, which they consider to be, um, um, very, uh, frugal, I guess. Um, and

00:10:15.780 they're holding back. That still includes a two percent increase in salaries and compensation for all

00:10:21.940 non-union employees, including the councillors and the mayor. And, uh, and it includes 22 million

00:10:29.220 dollars more for salaries and compensation. Plus, I hate to tell you, some, I think it was 10 or 14

00:10:37.140 more bylaw, overnight bylaw officers. So if you park your car the wrong way again,

00:10:44.020 there'll be someone in Mississauga who will give you a ticket for that.

00:10:47.140 I appreciate the forewarning there, but, uh, yeah, I learned my lesson, uh, once on that one, but

00:10:52.980 let me ask you then, Stella, do you think the problem is that provinces are being too lenient

00:10:57.540 with how they let municipalities run their affairs? Or, or do you think that the problem is actually at

00:11:02.260 the municipal level and that we have to just change the culture there?

00:11:07.140 I think in certain, in some provinces, the, the, the provincial governments are not helping,

00:11:11.940 uh, but I think they're doing, to be honest with you, the municipalities are doing enough

00:11:16.260 damage on their own. Um, there aren't too many, um, um, I, I don't think you could blame

00:11:24.020 the provincial government, for example, for an Ottawa LRT that doesn't run when there's freezing

00:11:30.020 rain. Um, that really, you know, you can't really blame the province for that as we might try, but,

00:11:34.980 you know, we can't, we can't blame the, we can't blame the BC government when Vancouver decides to buy

00:11:41.940 electric fire trucks that pump 40% less water, um, uh, which, you know, becomes this public safety

00:11:48.740 issue. I, I mean, frankly, in some cases, I wish, I, I wish the provinces would step in. Um, but,

00:11:56.260 you know, you know, I don't think we're, I won't hold my breath for that to happen.

00:12:00.260 I, I know you've just launched a municipal watch, uh, within the last couple of weeks here, but

00:12:04.660 do you have a first big battle in mind? Do you have the Goliath you want to slay first?

00:12:10.580 I'm working on so many things, but I, and every time I, I, I think, okay, I've found it. The one

00:12:19.220 I, I get an email from someone because, because the response has been just incredible. Um, I, I'm

00:12:26.420 already overwhelmed with emails. I'm sure you can understand people have so much to say and so much to

00:12:32.900 talk about. So what, while I'm do, I'm researching a big project, um, uh, on, on increase in number of

00:12:42.020 full-time employees. So, so wait for it. Cause, because I'm going to, I'm, I'm looking into that.

00:12:47.380 I've studied about 20 cities so far and it's already shocking, but I want to gather more data

00:12:54.900 and, uh, and on the, the, the growth in cities. So population versus full-time, but then I'll get an,

00:13:01.540 an email from someone like I did this morning in Calgary who asked me the question, um, why is it

00:13:08.260 that a municipal counselor in the city of Calgary has three staff, three employees in his or her office

00:13:16.580 and MLA's only have one. He is the, so it's little thing. And I think, okay, well, that's not something

00:13:23.940 I need to spend hours researching, but on the other hand, wait a minute, why are things like this

00:13:29.220 happening? And, you know, again, does it pass that common sense sniff test and does it, does it tell

00:13:37.540 you when you hear about things like this, does it tell you that the municipality, the city or town is

00:13:43.060 actually looking out for people and, uh, putting people first or are they, are they putting their

00:13:50.020 own interests first or are they trying to somehow, um, uh, just be politically correct or virtue signal

00:13:58.580 on some particular issue? Uh, so this is, these are the kinds of things, um, that, so I start out on

00:14:05.460 the lofty aspirational level and, and then, and then I stop and think, wait a minute, maybe I should do

00:14:12.420 something about the fact that, that maybe I should call attention and shine a light on the fact that

00:14:18.660 municipal councillors have our, our staff heavy. Anyway, so to be honest, it sounds like you need

00:14:24.100 to run for a Calgary city council. So you'll get three staffers to help you get through the workload.

00:14:28.580 Exactly. Exactly. I do have, I do have some help, some volunteers and some interns and, and that's going

00:14:35.540 very well. Um, but in the, well, my, my hope is that, that I can form with all of these people who

00:14:43.460 are emailing from across the country, I can form a coalition of local watchdogs who will also help me.

00:14:49.700 And, uh, so far that's going pretty well. Well, it's an important battleground and, you know,

00:14:53.940 it's easy to take aim at the Canadian government. There's just one, it's easier to some extent to

00:14:58.020 take aim at provincial governments. We've got 10 of them. When you get to municipalities,

00:15:01.140 you're talking about hundreds of large and medium sized ones, not to mention, uh, thousands beyond

00:15:06.500 that. Uh, so I think it very much needs some scrutiny here. I'm so glad you're doing it.

00:15:10.740 People can learn more at municipalwatch.ca. President of municipal watch, former MP,

00:15:15.860 Stella Ambler. Always a pleasure, Stella. Thanks so much for coming on today.

00:15:19.940 Thank you, Andrew. It was my pleasure.

00:15:21.540 Thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton Show.

00:15:23.860 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

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Juno News - February 20, 2023

Fixing Canada’s broken municipalities (ft. Stella Ambler)

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