Juno News - November 10, 2026


Nenshi’s office ignored warnings before water main failures

Defence expert WARNS Canada's military is being hollowed out Carney says U.S. is a bigger security threat than China

Episode Stats


Length

2 minutes

Words per minute

146.14

Word count

375

Sentence count

18


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 It's come out now that Nenshi's office deliberately ignored warnings and recommendations
00:00:04.280 before two catastrophic water main features that occurred in the city of Calgary.
00:00:09.900 Five of nine priority recommendations from 2015 to 2016 were deliberately withheld from city
00:00:17.160 councillors, including a proposal for independent oversight. So while Calgary's water infrastructure
00:00:23.000 was being neglected and critical warnings were being ignored, what exactly was Nenshi's office
00:00:29.080 focused on. Well, let's take a look at everything they were doing instead of protecting Calgary's
00:00:33.960 water supply. In November 2015, while Calgary's infrastructure needed attention, Nenshi was
00:00:39.400 publicly criticizing Saskatchewan's Premier, Brad Wall, over his comments about the Syrian refugee
00:00:45.880 crisis. Brad Wall urged Trudeau to pause plans to bring 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada so security
00:00:53.240 checks could be strengthened following the attacks in Paris. At the time, Nenshi publicly criticized
00:00:58.440 wall and opposed the proposed pause. In the same month, Nenshi was also speaking about the potential
00:01:04.360 for anti-Muslim backlash following the Paris terrorist attacks, warning about a growing
00:01:09.480 hostility towards Muslims. And earlier that month, he was making national headlines discussing racism
00:01:15.720 in the Syrian refugee debate, saying he was shaken by the rhetoric surrounding refugees. In December
00:01:20.920 of 2015, Nenshi was also settling a two-year defamation lawsuit with Calgary homebuilder
00:01:26.600 Cal Wenzel and issuing a public apology for previous statements he'd made about him,
00:01:31.160 and those statements including suggesting he was involved in criminal activity.
00:01:34.600 In January 2016, he travelled to Davos to participate in a World Economic Forum discussion
00:01:40.840 titled Reimagining Urban Life. In February, Nenshi launched a national poetry challenge,
00:01:47.400 encouraging mayors across Canada to open council meetings with poetry readings. And in April,
00:01:53.080 Nenshi made national headlines after footage emerged of him calling Uber's CEO and the company's
00:01:59.800 executives insulting names during a conversation with the rideshare driver in Boston. Now that
00:02:06.120 conversation was being live streamed on Periscope without Nenshi even realizing it and he went on
00:02:12.920 to criticize Uber's business practices. Now listen, while Nenshi was busy picking fights
00:02:18.120 and launching poetry challenges, critical warnings about Calgary's water infrastructure were being
00:02:23.880 kept out of the eyes of city councillors. And the warnings were there. So why wasn't
00:02:29.160 protecting Calgary's water supply a priority? For Juno News, I'm Melanie Bennett.