Rebel News Podcast - SCANDAL： Mayor Nenshi a no-show at Calgary Stampede (Guest： William McBeath)

00:00:00.000 Hello Rebels, you're listening to a free audio-only recording of my show, The Gun Show.

00:00:05.860 My guest tonight is William Macbeth from Save Calgary.

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00:01:16.100 Calgary Stampede is billed as the greatest show on Earth.

00:01:20.540 So, what was more important than the rodeo for Calgary's own mayor, Naheed Denchi?

00:01:28.040 I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gunn Show.

00:01:30.840 The Calgary Stampede is 10 days.

00:01:51.800 It's held every single July, but it's more than just an epic world-class rodeo.

00:01:58.340 According to the Calgary Stampede Director of Development, Greg Newton,

00:02:03.420 the Stampede brings in 1.2 million visitors during those 10 days in July.

00:02:09.300 Then, the Stampede brings in another 1.2 million more visitors throughout the rest of the year.

00:02:16.780 Again, according to that same person,

00:02:19.380 the Stampede brings in about $400 million in economic impact.

00:02:24.680 60% of that coming during the 10 days of the Stampede,

00:02:28.840 and another 40% rolling in during the rest of the year.

00:02:33.120 That's huge in an economically depressed city like Calgary.

00:02:38.640 But for the first time in a very long time,

00:02:41.680 Calgary's mayor was completely absent during Stampede's 10 days.

00:02:46.320 Instead, Mayor Naheed Denchi chose to go to a Rockefeller Foundation-organized

00:02:52.180 Resilient Cities Conference in the Netherlands.

00:02:56.580 And he snuck away to do it.

00:02:58.460 I guess even then she realized that there would be some serious criticism leveled against him

00:03:03.180 for attending a conference hosted by an explicitly anti-Alberta Oil Foundation

00:03:09.400 instead of the biggest event his city hosts every single year.

00:03:13.760 But really, is any of this any different than the normal secrecy from Nenshi

00:03:19.440 and his friends on Calgary City Council?

00:03:22.460 Joining me tonight to discuss all this and a whole lot more

00:03:26.520 is someone with a very close eye on the mayor,

00:03:29.640 William Macbeth from Save Calgary.

00:03:32.300 He joins me in an interview we recorded yesterday afternoon.

00:03:35.920 So joining me now from Calgary is good friend of the show,

00:03:57.360 William Macbeth from Save Calgary.

00:03:59.260 And we're going to round up all the things happening at Calgary City Hall

00:04:02.860 and touch a little bit on some of the things happening on the federal politics realm.

00:04:11.360 William, thanks for joining me.

00:04:13.260 The first thing I wanted to talk to you about is, you know,

00:04:15.900 it's Stampede season in Calgary.

00:04:19.420 Or Stampede has just wrapped up.

00:04:22.460 And your mayor was out of town for Stampede.

00:04:27.380 Where was he and what was he doing that was more important than the greatest show on earth?

00:04:31.660 It's a little hard to sort of explain Stampede for people who have never really experienced it.

00:04:38.620 But for a 10 day period, it is sort of the only thing occupying Calgary.

00:04:44.940 And politicians from one end of the country to the other come to Stampede.

00:04:49.020 It is a must stop event for anyone running to seek higher office.

00:04:54.560 And, you know, so Premier Kenney's been in town for the vast majority of it.

00:05:00.220 MLAs, ministers, federal MPs, federal political party leaders.

00:05:04.340 And yet the mayor, he decided it was a good time to not only leave Calgary, but to leave the country.

00:05:11.040 He went to a Rockefeller Foundation-sponsored Resilient Cities conference in Rotterdam.

00:05:20.220 And if you don't know what resilient cities mean, you're like the rest of us.

00:05:26.580 I've actually read the website.

00:05:28.740 And having read the About Us section, I still frankly have absolutely no idea what a resilient city is or what a chief resilience officer does.

00:05:38.380 But we're required to have one as a quote unquote resilient city.

00:05:42.920 And yes, and the mayor left town and the mayor didn't tell anybody he was leaving town.

00:05:47.000 He didn't tell any of his council colleagues.

00:05:49.540 He didn't tell Councillor Jody Gondek, who was acting mayor that month, and so would presumably have to take on some of the ceremonial responsibilities during Calgary's largest annual event.

00:06:01.560 So just what was so important in Rotterdam and why, once again, did the Rockefeller family pay for our mayor to go on another summer European trip?

00:06:10.760 Yeah, and you know, I read some of the documents, we filed access to information into the City of Calgary to find out exactly what a resiliency officer is.

00:06:23.640 I still don't really know.

00:06:25.300 And I got back hundreds of pages.

00:06:27.020 But I do know that the Rockefeller Foundation plays a role in selecting the resiliency officer, and they pay for some of the resiliency officer.

00:06:39.240 So you have the Rockefeller Foundation, explicitly anti-Alberta Foundation, paying for their person to be involved in the City of Calgary.

00:06:51.720 And you know, for all the outrage about the Rockefeller Foundation and their foreign meddling in the ability for Albertans to get their oil and gas to market and how that problem has really just hit Calgary's downtown core,

00:07:08.840 I think it is terrible that the mayor has chosen to spend his time with them as opposed to his city during arguably the most important 10 days of the year.

00:07:20.140 You know, I think for a lot of us, we don't understand what this whole Resilient Cities Summit and program is all about.

00:07:30.860 There's very little information.

00:07:32.860 Certainly, we haven't got any detailed reporting back from his worship about what it is they talk about at these things, what are the benefits to Calgary.

00:07:43.120 And, you know, people are rightly concerned about foreign organizations interfering in our domestic political affairs. 0.99

00:07:50.980 The people who make decisions about how we're governed and what our policies are should be Canadians.

00:07:55.660 Certainly, who should make the decisions about how Calgary is being run should be Calgarians, not these large, well-funded international groups who may or may not be pursuing their own agenda, which doesn't have Calgary's best interest at heart.

00:08:10.140 As you rightly point out, the Rockefeller family, across its many tentacles, has supported huge amounts of anti-energy, anti-oil sands, anti-Alberta energy activities.

00:08:21.520 And what exactly is Calgary getting in exchange for signing on the dotted line and taking Rockefeller Foundation money to have this chief resiliency officer?

00:08:31.520 And why don't they ever just sit down and tell us in plain English what exactly it is that this organization is, what they want to achieve, and what the point of it is?

00:08:40.820 Why doesn't the mayor ever say proactively, hey, I'm going to Rotterdam next week.

00:08:46.200 You know, here's why I'm going.

00:08:48.040 Here's what it's all about.

00:08:48.940 Why do we only find out when he's on his way back from these sorts of events?

00:08:53.480 To me, it all leads us with this idea that they're trying to hide something.

00:08:56.900 They're trying to pull the wool over the eyes of everyday Calgarians, just because this council has on so many previous occasions.

00:09:03.940 Yeah, this really is the most secretive council in all of Canada.

00:09:07.200 Now, speaking of the stampede, Trudeau did come to town, sort of.

00:09:13.060 His big stampede appearance was at a Liberal Party fundraiser where Trudeau said some, well, I'm going to say it, pretty crazy things.

00:09:23.560 He said that he thinks the Liberals will not only hang on to their seats, but actually win more seats here in Alberta, and I just can't see that happening.

00:09:32.600 You know, it's possible the Prime Minister may have been out a little late one night, a cowboy, had a few too many drinks, done a little too much line dancing, because it's clear he obviously lives in an entirely different world than we do.

00:09:45.360 There are three Liberal seats in Alberta.

00:09:50.160 There used to be four.

00:09:51.220 Of course, they lost one of those seats to a sex scandal, forcing that one to citizen independence. 0.79

00:09:57.020 So three seats left.

00:09:58.600 I cannot see a way that those three Liberal MPs will get re-elected.

00:10:04.140 I mean, Kent Hare, he himself booted from Cabinet and suspended briefly because of questions around his own misconduct.

00:10:11.560 First, Amrajit Sohi, who has championed anti-energy and anti-pipeline initiatives as one of our ministers, and frankly, only won by the narrowest of margins last time.

00:10:23.780 I mean, it was a real squeak-through win.

00:10:26.300 And I guess the one who maybe they think has the best chance of winning re-election, Brandy Blossoneau at Evidence Centre. 0.73

00:10:32.500 Well, he's up against a great candidate, great Conservative candidate named James Cumming, who has been door-knocking endlessly since the last election.

00:10:40.680 And, you know, was one of the people on the Jody Wilson-Raybould testimony committee on behalf of the Liberal Party and just had the most sycophantic, obsequious questions.

00:10:51.580 You know, towing the Liberal Party line, hook, line and sinker all the way through that, and I think was even an embarrassment to his own Liberal colleagues on that committee.

00:11:00.540 So I don't see, you know, far from picking up seats, I don't know how the Liberal Party retains any of its seats heading into after the 2019 election.

00:11:09.500 I think the Prime Minister just dreaming in technicolor.

00:11:12.320 And you're right, the only reason he came to Calgary was for a Liberal fundraiser.

00:11:16.080 He did claim to have a Trans Mountain Pipeline announcement, but every media who showed up to cover it realized it wasn't an announcement.

00:11:24.500 An announcement means new and meaningful information about something.

00:11:28.620 And he had neither of those things.

00:11:30.120 He had bromides and platitudes and talking about why he thinks the pipeline's important, even though they just appointed a star candidate in Quebec who is dead set against the Trans Mountain Pipeline.

00:11:41.840 So, like on so many other files, Prime Minister Trudeau has no credibility when it comes to either pipeline or Alberta's energy sector.

00:11:49.660 Yeah, that carefully staged photo op with Justin Trudeau in Sherwood Park with regard to the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion.

00:12:01.040 It was held inside a facility, even though the weather was okay that day, because there's no ground being broken outside.

00:12:10.080 So, you can't take a picture where construction on TMX is happening, because there is no construction happening whatsoever.

00:12:19.560 It was held inside, you know, a facility at the refinery where that's the terminus for TMX, because there's just no work happening.

00:12:27.340 They keep promising we're going to have shovels in the ground, but there's none.

00:12:31.720 So, let's go back to the City of Calgary, because you and I have talked about this on, every time we talk, really.

00:12:39.400 We've talked about the spending problem at Calgary City Hall, and you and I have said, you know, like, look, City Hall has to get a handle on their spending.

00:12:50.140 And apparently, the only place that City Hall can find to cut their spending is on emergency services, of all things. 0.54

00:13:00.900 It's the same old story, right?

00:13:03.320 For any big, bloated bureaucracy that doesn't really want to make any cuts and frankly thinks that cuts are heresy to civil servants,

00:13:14.460 they always go for the most popular, most beloved, most supported groups.

00:13:19.360 So, who they go after, they went after firemen, and they went after police officers.

00:13:23.180 And you think to yourself, in a city employing tens of thousands of people with salaries, wages, and benefits in the stratosphere,

00:13:32.720 they're so high and so generous, is that really the only place we can cut?

00:13:36.520 Is it really putting the lives of Calgarians in danger that makes the most sense when it comes to cuts?

00:13:42.100 You know, I would say, and the mayor, of course, who, when several councillors expressed alarm that the cuts were going after,

00:13:51.300 you know, emergency services and emergency personnel, several councillors said, well, we don't think that's the right way to go.

00:13:57.420 The mayor said, well, it's not council's job to second guess the cuts being proposed by administration.

00:14:03.100 And I would respectfully suggest, actually, it's entirely council's job as our elected representatives to provide direction to a bureaucracy that,

00:14:12.380 in my opinion, is completely out of control.

00:14:14.820 They seem to think it is them who runs our city, and they're the ones to make decisions,

00:14:20.640 and they will just have to talk council into agreeing to what they want.

00:14:23.840 And I think Calgarians have had enough.

00:14:26.680 And if you look at a recent Think HQ public opinion poll, everybody seems to think,

00:14:32.520 or at least an overwhelming majority of people, have a very low opinion of council as a whole's job record,

00:14:37.700 and of Mayor Nengshi as mayor.

00:14:39.820 And I think that's the message of we're tired of having bureaucrats, unelected, unaccountable, highly paid bureaucrats,

00:14:46.120 making decisions for us.

00:14:47.100 We will decide where the cuts are, not you.

00:14:50.040 And we will have an opinion on anything we damn well want to.

00:14:55.060 You know, we see this a lot from the left, from the political left,

00:15:00.220 when a conservative or really anybody says, you know what,

00:15:04.920 we need to be a little bit more responsible with taxpayer dollars.

00:15:07.940 You hear it from the NDP all the time.

00:15:09.640 All of a sudden, when we say, oh, you know, like, you know, we need to rein in spending,

00:15:13.800 you'll see the NDP fear monger and say, well, Jason Kenney's going to close schools,

00:15:17.980 blow up nursing homes, euthanize your grandma, and close hospitals, 0.99

00:15:22.000 when, you know, there are savings to be made through, you know, attrition, maybe.

00:15:28.760 Spending cuts, rounding the pennies off.

00:15:32.480 It's not one or the other.

00:15:35.080 It always seems like there's this, you know, the left always goes for the worst case scenario.

00:15:40.580 And they introduced the worst case scenario in the case of Calgary.

00:15:45.240 I mean, when we see the kind of things that the mayor is willing to spend money on,

00:15:50.240 we always bring up the atrocious art,

00:15:52.360 but it is just such a perfect encapsulation of this, the mayor's priorities.

00:15:57.640 When he's erecting art that looks like literal garbage, but can only find money,

00:16:06.560 can only find efficiencies at EMS, we've got a real problem here.

00:16:12.520 I've never spoken to a Calgarian who has said, you know, my streets are just too safe.

00:16:18.240 There are too many police officers on them.

00:16:20.280 Or, you know, we're putting out every fire way too quickly.

00:16:23.660 We should be cutting down the number of our fire departments.

00:16:28.580 But I do hear a lot of Calgarians saying, look,

00:16:31.040 we seem to be spending an awful lot of money on things that just don't have any real,

00:16:36.080 you know, beneficial impact.

00:16:37.400 We tried to hire a walking coordinator and a cycling coordinator,

00:16:40.640 and we do have eco-mentors who are here.

00:16:43.940 And now we have a chief resiliency officer.

00:16:46.560 So there's clearly places Calgary can find savings.

00:16:50.240 And so why should we just let, you know, bureaucracy run amok and say, no,

00:16:56.080 the only place we can find savings is by putting the safety and health of Calgarians at risk.

00:17:00.180 To me, it's just a truly ridiculous statement from the mayor.

00:17:03.900 And it's just because he doesn't want to cut anywhere.

00:17:06.440 To him, the bigger the budget, the more important he feels he is,

00:17:11.480 the bigger a deal he sees himself in the eyes of, well, the world, I guess.

00:17:15.960 He doesn't particularly concern himself with the opinions of everyday Calgarians.

00:17:19.660 But he does really care what the elites and the globalists think of how he's doing.

00:17:24.060 So I think it's a real wake-up time.

00:17:25.920 And I'm told, unofficially, that there's quite a lot of disharmony sitting at city council right now.

00:17:32.880 A lot of councillors are feeling that the mayor has completely abandoned his role as leader,

00:17:38.800 and that, in fact, he is sowing the seeds of discontent and discord between himself and council and other groups.

00:17:45.540 So I'm told it wasn't the happiest stampede for our city councillors while they were out meeting and greeting with everyday voters.

00:17:53.180 Yeah, I think there's a lot of buyer's remorse out there on the streets of Calgary

00:17:57.520 with regard to Nenshi repeatedly being re-elected.

00:18:04.120 There's another thing that you and I talk about quite a bit,

00:18:07.760 and that is the salaries at Calgary City Hall and at the City of Calgary in general.

00:18:16.540 CTV News Calgary has a new story out just, you know, we're recording this Tuesday afternoon.

00:18:22.100 It's about the compensation disclosure list for City of Calgary jobs.

00:18:27.000 I'm going to read to you just a little bit.

00:18:28.680 So, according to the latest findings, nearly 30% of employees make $100,000 or more each year.

00:18:37.680 22.2% of employees earn between $100,000 and $125,000 per year.

00:18:46.180 About 5.7% of city workers make anywhere from $125,000 to $150,000 annually,

00:18:54.400 while 1.5% make more than $150,000 per year.

00:19:00.240 That's up near 60% of Calgary City employees making $100,000 or more.

00:19:09.840 Does that seem crazy, or is it just me?

00:19:13.400 No, you know, it's interesting.

00:19:16.400 In the old days, whatever those were, back in the, when times were booming,

00:19:21.480 there used to, I think, be a trade-off.

00:19:24.700 If you went to a job in the private sector, you expected higher wages,

00:19:29.140 but those higher wages came at the expense maybe of some of the benefits.

00:19:34.160 You didn't get necessarily a pension.

00:19:36.100 You might get RRSP matching in some companies.

00:19:38.040 You might not get any support.

00:19:40.040 You didn't have maybe as generous a benefit package for health and life and things like that.

00:19:45.280 And you didn't have the same kind of job security as you would.

00:19:48.040 So you took a higher salary in exchange for some of those trade-offs.

00:19:52.460 Conversely, if you worked for government, you accepted a lower salary,

00:19:57.300 but you got, you know, great benefits, great pension, and tremendous job security.

00:20:03.740 But now in the world we live in, people who work for government are now being paid far more

00:20:09.040 than people in the private sector.

00:20:10.640 So that whole traditional, you know, agreement, I think, has fallen away.

00:20:16.460 So public sector workers are now getting higher salaries, better benefits, tremendous pensions,

00:20:22.080 and absolute job security.

00:20:23.900 And that just seems to be the opinion that that's what they deserve.

00:20:28.060 Well, respectfully, Calgarians in Calgary, the city, it's still tremendously hurting.

00:20:33.320 And there's so many people still looking for work.

00:20:36.120 People who have found jobs are being paid a fraction of what they were when times were booming in our city.

00:20:43.660 And they look over at a public service who is still getting annual salary increases,

00:20:48.860 that is still increasing in size every single year,

00:20:52.200 and who hasn't seen a single dollar cut from any of their benefits or pension plans,

00:20:57.800 and has even suggested that, you know, talking about the issue amounts to, you know,

00:21:03.860 treason on the part of our elected officials.

00:21:06.400 And everyday people, voters who work in the private sector, say, well, that's just not fair.

00:21:10.020 That's just not right, that there's a protected class of worker who seems to get all of the advantages and higher pay.

00:21:16.520 It's time for a real conversation to happen about how much we pay people

00:21:21.860 and how generous our benefit plans are for them, especially since we just can't afford the government we have anymore.

00:21:28.220 We have built a city government that our tax base cannot support.

00:21:32.100 So we're either going to have to dramatically cut services,

00:21:34.760 and if we leave it up to the bureaucrats, that means we won't have any fire and police service in the city of Calgary.

00:21:40.360 Just, you know, it'll be like the purge all the time on our streets, you know,

00:21:45.340 because we can't have an honest conversation about cutting workers.

00:21:47.900 So, I don't know. It's very depressing, and I think everyday people are finally fed up enough to say,

00:21:54.040 you know, we've put up with this for a long time.

00:21:56.120 We've let this problem get this bad.

00:21:57.580 It's time to turn the corner and take a new direction on it.

00:22:01.420 Yeah, I hope people are waking up.

00:22:03.860 I pulled the numbers just for the average salary range for Albertans in 2017,

00:22:10.600 and I know that's calculated, of course, a little bit differently,

00:22:14.680 but the average salary range for an Albertan in 2017 was just a little under $58,000.

00:22:23.200 So when you see roughly 60% of Calgary City employees making over $100,000,

00:22:29.460 that seems a little bit out of whack with the reality on the ground for many Albertans in this terrible economy.

00:22:39.400 William, I want to thank you so much for coming on the show,

00:22:41.920 but I also want to give you the opportunity to direct people to the good work that you do at Safe Calgary

00:22:48.000 and let people know how they can support you.

00:22:50.900 Oh, well, thanks, Sheila.

00:22:51.620 We always appreciate having an opportunity to come on your show and chat with you

00:22:55.200 because we know that you, unlike so many of our media friends,

00:22:59.140 are actually someone who believes in sensible government and fiscal responsibility.

00:23:04.060 So Safe Calgary, the best way to get involved and to help us out if you're concerned about the direction of our city

00:23:10.040 and you're concerned about the behavior of our council, I would ask you to do a few things.

00:23:14.620 One, please check us out on our website, safecalgary.com.

00:23:18.540 Check us out on Facebook.

00:23:20.100 Check us out on Twitter.

00:23:21.100 We generate and push out content daily.

00:23:23.140 We also put out a weekly sort of newsletter about what's been happening at City Hall.

00:23:28.380 I'm told that behind the scenes, the city is even looking at ways they might be able to stop us sharing that information.

00:23:36.420 They, frankly, find it embarrassing for us to be focusing on some of their missteps and pointing out their actual records.

00:23:43.900 So that's a little, you know, you know you're doing good when you get your opponents trying to actually kick you off the air.

00:23:50.300 So sign up to our site, sign up to our pages, support us on social media.

00:23:54.620 The second way is, if you can, you know, we're not a publicly funded organization.

00:23:59.880 We don't have tax dollars to splash around on conferences and on pet projects.

00:24:06.360 We rely on the support of everyday Calgarians financially.

00:24:09.100 So if you can, please, and it's hard because I know the city bureaucrats have squeezed every last dollar out of your pocket.

00:24:15.780 But if you can, a small financial donation to help us support our work would be hugely appreciated.

00:24:21.420 Again, you can donate through our website, statecalgary.com.

00:24:24.540 And, you know, we're really starting to gear up for 2021.

00:24:28.620 We think that will be a critical election for Calgary.

00:24:32.740 We want Calgarians to have real choices to really understand what and who they're voting for

00:24:38.640 and the consequences of simply staying with the same team of people who got us into this mess in the first place.

00:24:45.640 So that's become our new focus.

00:24:47.500 And we really want everyone to join with us in helping to bring about real change down there at City Hall.

00:24:52.420 Yeah, you know, with what you were able to do with just a shoestring budget in the no to the Olympics campaign,

00:25:00.160 I think that's really a testament to just how far the folks at Save Calgary can stretch a dollar

00:25:06.700 because you were outmanned, outspent, outgunned, and you still won that and saved City of Calgary taxpayers

00:25:15.440 and really all Alberta taxpayers from the financial catastrophe that Olympics would have been.

00:25:22.040 William, I want to thank you so much for being so generous with your time, as always,

00:25:25.780 and we'll have you back for sure in the very near future.

00:25:30.740 Thanks so much, Sheila.

00:25:43.880 In the interest of accuracy, I need to correct something that I said.

00:25:47.660 In my interview with William, I cited a bit of a wrong number, but just barely,

00:25:51.880 and it doesn't change the point that I was trying to make anyway.

00:25:54.600 According to Payscale.com, the average salary in Calgary is about $60,500 per year.

00:26:01.920 When I was talking to William, I said it was closer to $57,000, but that's just the number for Edmonton.

00:26:09.280 But the point remains that all those administrative positions that are earning well over $100,000 per year to work for municipal governments

00:26:18.140 pay anywhere from $43,000 to $83,000 per year for the same job in the private sector.

00:26:25.000 And that's a problem for taxpayers who have to bear this unsustainable burden of these completely out-of-whack public sector salaries.

00:26:34.320 Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.

00:26:37.000 Thanks so much for tuning in.

00:26:38.660 I'll see everybody back here in the same time, in the same place next week.

00:26:43.040 And remember, don't let the government tell you that you've had too much to think.

Rebel News Podcast - July 18, 2019

SCANDAL： Mayor Nenshi a no-show at Calgary Stampede (Guest： William McBeath)

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