Rebel News Podcast - Taxpayer watchdog group “punching up” to change the conversation at City Hall (Guest： William McBeath, Save Calgary)

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

00:00:05.900 You know the old saying that you can't fight City Hall?

00:00:09.280 Well, nobody told that to my guest tonight.

00:00:12.060 Joining me tonight is my friend William Macbeth from the Taxpayer Advocacy

00:00:16.280 and Municipal Government Accountability Organization, Save Calgary.

00:00:21.320 William and Save Calgary are trying to shine some sunlight

00:00:25.020 into the darkest corners of Calgary's less-than-transparent City Hall.

00:00:29.280 And tonight we're talking about some of the broader and bigger issues

00:00:33.460 that they've been watching in the last couple of months.

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00:01:38.720 Safe injection sites, a leaker down at the Calgary Sun,

00:01:43.940 and pickup truck driving cavemen.

00:01:46.800 We're talking about all the news down at Calgary City Hall.

00:01:50.440 I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gunn Show.

00:01:53.140 Calgary's mayor, Nahid Nenshi, has had a rough couple of months.

00:02:15.900 And I don't see it getting any better for him in the very near future.

00:02:18.800 That probably has a lot to do with Nenshi's resistance

00:02:22.120 to admitting that he's even done anything wrong in the first place.

00:02:26.220 Late last year, Nenshi's dream of a legacy Olympics was squashed

00:02:29.920 after Calgary taxpayers voted overwhelmingly at the ballot box

00:02:34.420 to put the brakes on his expensive, two-week-long Olympic party.

00:02:39.640 No apologies were had for all the taxpayer money Nenshi wasted on that.

00:02:44.760 Then, just after the Christmas dead time in the news,

00:02:48.400 our friends at Save Calgary broke a huge story.

00:02:51.220 They discovered that someone from the Calgary Sun was leaking columnist Rick Bell's stories

00:02:56.620 over to City Hall in advance of their publication,

00:02:59.940 allowing Calgary's secretive administration to have their spin ready before the news was.

00:03:05.800 Now, new reports are out that show a startling increase in crime in neighbourhoods

00:03:11.020 where Nenshi's city council has plunked a supervised drug injection site.

00:03:16.420 Who could have suspected that if you build it, the drug addicts and the drug dealers

00:03:22.300 and then the criminals would come?

00:03:24.220 And yet, again, no apologies to the communities that Nenshi's bad decisions are harming.

00:03:29.420 Then, late last week, Nenshi put both feet and his legs up to his knees in his mouth

00:03:35.380 when he said this to Global here.

00:03:38.040 People can talk about cruise ships, people can talk about water treatment plants, you know.

00:03:41.440 Look, everybody's got skeletons in their closet.

00:03:43.440 I'm not interested in having that discussion.

00:03:45.440 What I am interested in is just helping everyone in Canada understand

00:03:49.840 that we here in Alberta are not a bunch of, you know, F-350 driving cavemen,

00:03:55.240 that we believe strongly in the environment and we believe strongly in the economy

00:03:59.440 and we believe in financial and environmental prosperity for all Canadians.

00:04:03.840 Nenshi drew the ire of pickup truck drivers, regular Albertans and even Ford dealers over that one

00:04:10.640 and Nenshi still refuses to apologise for his insinuations.

00:04:14.640 There isn't much accountability happening at Calgary City Hall,

00:04:18.040 but my guest tonight is trying his best to change that.

00:04:21.640 Joining me once again is my friend William McBeth

00:04:24.640 from the municipal watchdog group Save Calgary.

00:04:29.440 So, hey William, thanks for joining me.

00:04:47.640 I haven't spoken to you in about two months.

00:04:50.440 Well, you know, we speak all the time, but I haven't spoken to you on the show since before Christmas

00:04:55.240 and I cannot believe the amount of breaking news that Save Calgary is doing

00:05:02.840 and just the amount of impact that you are making in the city of Calgary,

00:05:07.840 but really sort of all over the place.

00:05:11.240 Because a lot of the stuff that Save Calgary looks into,

00:05:14.440 it can be overlaid in just about any municipality in the entire province.

00:05:19.240 And you guys did something in early January that even the CBC was forced to acknowledge that you had done.

00:05:26.840 You guys had filed this freedom of information request that showed that one of Rick Bell,

00:05:32.840 one of the, you know, last true conservative shoe leather journalists out there,

00:05:38.840 you discovered that one of his upcoming columns had been leaked by someone at the Calgary Sun to City Hall,

00:05:48.440 so that City Hall had some leeway and the ability to spin the article before it even came out.

00:05:55.440 Why don't you tell us all about that?

00:05:57.440 Well, sure.

00:05:58.440 It's always nice to be here, Sheila.

00:06:00.040 Two months, it's a long time since we've done the show.

00:06:02.040 Too long.

00:06:03.040 So, over a year ago, a City senior manager named Mack Logan left the City of Calgary under fairly miscarious circumstances.

00:06:13.040 A mutually agreed upon statement of he resigned was released by both himself and the City.

00:06:20.040 But, you know, certainly it raised a lot of questions, especially for someone who had a salary, as it turns out, of over $300,000 a year.

00:06:28.240 And we wanted to know what we could find out about the terms of his departure.

00:06:33.040 Was he paid severance?

00:06:34.440 Did he, you know, what was the behind the scenes that the City of Calgary was prepared to share?

00:06:40.040 Because, like always, the conversations about it happened behind closed doors.

00:06:44.240 Counselors even said they were left in the dark about it.

00:06:47.640 And this, of course, was the person overseeing Calgary's huge Green Line LRT program, a multi-billion dollar project.

00:06:55.640 So, of course, we were curious.

00:06:57.240 So, we filed our FOIP.

00:06:59.240 A short 13 months later, it came back from the City of Calgary.

00:07:03.640 It was 582 pages long, and almost all of it was redacted.

00:07:08.840 However, since I have no life, and I enjoy reading hundreds and hundreds of pages...

00:07:14.840 Your life is government accountability.

00:07:17.240 That's your life.

00:07:18.240 Oh, dear.

00:07:19.240 Well, yes.

00:07:20.240 No, I mean, I should say, I think they made it so long in the hopes that nobody would actually read through it.

00:07:26.840 Yeah.

00:07:27.840 But I did.

00:07:28.840 And buried in the middle were a couple interesting things.

00:07:31.840 The first one, as you've noted, was a Sun columnist, Rick Bell.

00:07:36.240 He had written a couple columns about this Mac Logan departure.

00:07:40.840 That was the name of the city bigwig.

00:07:43.440 So, they called his column Dribble, and they said they didn't know why they even bothered sharing it around.

00:07:48.440 But in this case, it was a bit special, because the column that was being shared with city bureaucrats had not actually been published by the Calgary Sun yet.

00:07:57.840 It was, and it had been written by Rick Bell, presumably shared around the newsroom to everybody who needed to see it.

00:08:05.840 But it hadn't been posted online, it hadn't appeared in a newspaper, and it hadn't been emailed out to a media distribution list.

00:08:11.840 But the city had it, and the city got a heads up on it from someone at the Sun.

00:08:16.840 So, that was a pretty serious leak for the Calgary Sun.

00:08:19.840 And certainly, they were quick to say that that did not conform to the journalistic standards expected of Calgary Sun employees.

00:08:26.840 So, whatever became of that?

00:08:30.840 Did somebody get fired?

00:08:31.840 Are they still undergoing an internal investigation?

00:08:33.840 Like, what's the news on the mole?

00:08:35.840 Our understanding, the Calgary Sun did do an investigation.

00:08:39.840 They posted an update to say that they had determined who the individual was, and that appropriate actions had been taken against them.

00:08:50.840 So, Calgary Sun is a private company.

00:08:53.840 We can't get any really more details other than what they shared.

00:08:56.840 But I think it's safe to say that given the surprise and dismay expressed by Calgary Sun bigwig, this was not something they were happy about.

00:09:08.840 And the question remains, why did whoever leaked the column do it?

00:09:13.840 Now, we don't know.

00:09:15.840 But what we can say is that a city communications staffer named Vicki McGrath, who was the one who shared the column around, had worked for an undisclosed amount of time at the Calgary Sun, presumably in the newsroom, but maybe as an editor.

00:09:29.840 And it's possible that she had friends and colleagues still at the Sun who were willing to provide that information to her.

00:09:36.840 Why would the person at the Sun do it?

00:09:38.840 Well, I think a lot of media people are feeling pressure right now, a lot of cost cutting, a lot of job reductions.

00:09:44.840 And as I've pointed out, and as Safe Calgary has pointed out before, a job at the city of Calgary is a pretty sweet gig.

00:09:50.840 High salaries, big pensions, platinum benefits, the whole kit and caboodle.

00:09:55.840 It's possible someone was trying to curry favour so that down the line they could get a job at the city.

00:10:00.840 That's just one theory, but we think it fits.

00:10:02.840 You know, I think that that is probably the most likely theory.

00:10:06.840 We've seen how many journalists have been sort of gobbled up by Rachel Notley's government over the course of the last three years.

00:10:14.840 You know, and media keeps shrinking and they can never really figure out why.

00:10:20.840 But this is probably exactly why nobody trusts the media anymore.

00:10:25.840 And it makes me wonder just how often and how frequently this happens, like on a grander scale.

00:10:32.840 I'm sure it happens with Rachel Notley's government.

00:10:35.840 Things being shared from media to them before it even happens, likewise with the federal government.

00:10:40.840 I'm sure in some newsrooms it's just a general order of business, but that's just me being a conspiracy theorist.

00:10:49.840 I wanted to ask you about Mayor Nenshi, one of my favourite people, probably yours too.

00:10:57.840 He doesn't like my pickup truck.

00:11:00.840 No, I guess, I mean, Shayla, I don't know what the female version of caveman is.

00:11:06.840 I guess maybe cavewoman. 1.00

00:11:08.840 Cave gal. 0.89

00:11:09.840 Cave gal. 0.89

00:11:10.840 Oh, I think that's great.

00:11:11.840 I would get that deckled on your truck.

00:11:13.840 I'm gonna.

00:11:14.840 So, yes, though, it's true. 0.56

00:11:16.840 When discussing Alberta's energy sector, the mayor was talking about how we need to do a better job of selling the work that's been done on the environment.

00:11:25.840 Which, of course, I had to stop and laugh at because I think everybody who pays even the slightest bit of attention knows how much Alberta's energy companies have committed to environmental stewardship, environmental protection, and adhering to the most stringent environment regulations on the planet when it comes to energy development and exports.

00:11:46.840 So, I don't think we're keeping that a secret.

00:11:49.840 I don't think anybody who's ever read a single news article about Alberta's energy sector would come as a surprise to them that they're focused on the environment.

00:11:57.840 But the mayor felt that he had to reiterate that point and in doing so said because here in Alberta, we're not all F-350 driving cavemen.

00:12:06.840 Yeah, some of us drive dodges.

00:12:10.840 Indeed.

00:12:11.840 I mean, I'm not, I'm certain that if he had the opportunity to take that back, he would.

00:12:18.840 He will never admit that, of course, because the mayor does not admit when he's wrong.

00:12:23.840 But what an insulting thing, of course, to say to the many people in Calgary and outside the city who use F-350s to haul tools, to haul equipment to work sites, who use it because they work in agriculture, they work in the skilled trades, or who, by the way, have to occasionally drive somewhere outside of the city limits.

00:12:44.060 And sometimes those roads can get a little bit snowy.

00:12:47.060 I mean, maybe the mayor hasn't noticed it's freezing cold right now.

00:12:50.060 And sometimes you need a vehicle that can help you get across less than perfect terrain.

00:12:55.060 We can't all drive Priuses here in Alberta.

00:12:57.060 Yeah, you know, and when your Prius hits the ditch, you're praying to God or whatever deity you pray to for some caveman in an F-350 to drive down that road.

00:13:08.060 I just, it's so pretentious.

00:13:10.060 It echoed Rachel Notley's embarrassing cousin sentiments to me.

00:13:14.060 It just felt exactly the same, that there are politicians, unfortunately, our most powerful politicians in this province, who look down their nose at people who work with their back in their hands to build the things we need to be a province and, you know, who feed us.

00:13:33.060 And I just, as someone who drives a bigger vehicle than I need most days, I just, I don't want to say I found it offensive, but it really showed Mayor Nenshi for who he really is.

00:13:45.060 It feels like the mask slipped for a second.

00:13:48.060 I think it's an absolutely condescending statement.

00:13:51.060 And, of course, some of us took some pot shots back saying, well, I'm sorry, Your Worship, that we're not all your aristocratic friends at the IOC who like to eat caviar and drink champagne paid for by taxpayers.

00:14:02.060 Some of us have to go out and do tough, hard work in order to pay our bills and to make ends meet and to create all of the things that people in cities need, that, you know, your house doesn't drywall itself.

00:14:16.060 Your plumbing doesn't repair itself. Your food doesn't grow itself.

00:14:20.060 These are all things that have to be done by people and they can't drive smart cars all of the time in order to get it done.

00:14:25.060 So absolutely. And if you think about it, so we're now cavemen, embarrassing cousins and sewer rats.

00:14:32.060 That's what those of us who support fiscal responsibility appear to now be in the eyes of our city and province elite.

00:14:40.060 You know, there's another thing that I see that's going on in Calgary.

00:14:46.060 It's going on in Edmonton, too.

00:14:47.060 I think it's going on in some of the more progressive cities across the country.

00:14:53.060 And now I think it's bleeding into the United States and that those are supervised injection sites. 0.68

00:14:59.060 And as it's turning out in Calgary, these things are becoming like a black hole that attracts societal problems, whether it's open drug abuse, needles on the ground, open prostitution.

00:15:16.060 Gangs are moving into the area.

00:15:18.060 So in Calgary, it's turning out that all those things that were the supervised injection sites were promised that they would address and alleviate.

00:15:27.060 They're actually now being concentrated in these low income neighborhoods and especially neighborhoods that are going out of their way to try to.

00:15:35.060 What's the right word gentrify to sort of rebuild themselves and become cute older neighborhoods with bigger yards.

00:15:44.060 Now they're just being where everything is being concentrated.

00:15:49.060 And I don't like the fact that these neighborhoods are often painted as people who just say not in my backyard.

00:15:57.060 But it's certainly not in the more expensive backyards of municipalities.

00:16:03.060 And I think there's a reason for that.

00:16:05.060 You know, it's interesting.

00:16:08.060 Six or so months ago, Tristan Hopper, who's a journalist out of Edmonton, you know, talked about how he moved to Edmonton.

00:16:15.060 And one of the reasons his wife was so happy about the move, she had lived in Vancouver, was the streets weren't strewn with used needles.

00:16:23.060 And that was a real selling point to her. And it's why they wanted to raise their kids in a city like Edmonton, because they knew that when their kids were playing in a park or walking to and from school, there wouldn't be the risk of a used, dirty syringe lying on the street that could either pose a problem if they picked it up or just stepped on it.

00:16:42.060 And he was lambasted by the politically correct crew who said, oh, you just want to kill drug addicts.

00:16:51.060 And Tristan said, no, but I am worried about my community. 0.71

00:16:54.060 And I'm worried about my family, which, in my opinion, isn't an unreasonable worry for someone to have.

00:17:00.060 Now, certainly here in Calgary, we feared that safe injection sites, drug, legalized drug injection sites would result in a spike in crime, would result in property damage, would result in violence, and would result in used needles being found by people of members of the community on their property.

00:17:17.060 And it turns out every single one of those things was true.

00:17:20.060 A police report that just came out said there's been a 45% increase in break and enter reports.

00:17:27.060 There's been a 47% increase in violent crime reports and a whopping 200, nearly 250% increase in reports of drug activity to the police line around the safe injection site.

00:17:42.060 And now there are needles.

00:17:44.060 There are needles being found on church property grounds.

00:17:47.060 There are needles being found on sidewalks, in parks.

00:17:50.060 And I ask myself, why did the city not do its due diligence in thinking about, in our Beltline community, which is where this site is located, they have spent a ton of money reinvesting in that community to make it a place where people want to live and work and raise their families.

00:18:06.060 New condo construction, new businesses moving in.

00:18:09.060 And then they undermine those efforts by putting a safe injection site right in the heart of it with inadequate police and community support to make sure that these issues are dealt with effectively.

00:18:21.060 So now the city is left scrambling to come up with an answer to this problem, a problem that they created by rushing to put these sites in without thinking about all of the consequences that have happened in other cities.

00:18:32.060 Well, that's the thing, too.

00:18:34.060 Like, there are lots of other examples that the city of Calgary could have studied and come to the conclusion that this actually doesn't work from a neighborhood impact perspective.

00:18:45.060 And from what I understand, the city of Calgary was proposing like a mobile supervised injection site, like a roving needle van.

00:18:56.060 Is that true?

00:18:57.060 You know, they looked at some of the things.

00:19:00.060 The mystery machine maybe was something that they were going to consider as an option.

00:19:04.060 But to us, I in no way oppose trying to help save lives of people who are deeply afflicted by addiction and illness.

00:19:14.060 But I don't think that can be done at the expense of safe communities and safe families.

00:19:20.060 And certainly not if you lose the support of the community around the safe injection site, which is what's the case here in Beltline.

00:19:28.060 In fact, I'm about 200 meters from the safe injection site in the office that I am broadcasting from.

00:19:35.060 And there has been a noticeable increase in vagrancy, in drug dealers who are profiting off the suffering of others.

00:19:43.060 And, you know, to me, I just think why rush in to fix part A of the problem, the problem of people overdosing and dying from it, without thinking about parts B, C and D.

00:19:56.060 Getting rid of the drug dealers, cutting down on the supply of illegal narcotics, enhancing police safety and police presence and security around these areas so that they don't deteriorate into crime zones.

00:20:08.060 And enacting real punishments for people who commit violent and property crime, which is something that destroys all of the work being done to try and revitalize a community like Beltline.

00:20:19.060 You know, I feel like there's a broader societal question here, even greater than the municipal one, that you don't want the scourge of this sort of activity in your neighborhoods.

00:20:30.060 I don't know when we moved away from getting people clean and productive and happy and contributing to just making sure they stay alive.

00:20:41.060 I think that that that isn't good enough. And I think that is the bigotry of low expectations that we're laying on drug users.

00:20:49.060 I think that they, too, want to be happy, clean, successful people.

00:20:54.060 And I don't think that municipalities should really be enabling the lowest expectation for these folks that are clearly suffering.

00:21:04.060 I absolutely agree with you. I actually think it's immoral to allow people to just merely exist in a miserable state of being because they're they're so addicted.

00:21:16.060 They're so poor, they're homeless and they have no ability to actually get to a kind of quality of life that we would consider a minimum for people living in a rich affluent society like we're in right now.

00:21:29.060 And to to make the claim that 800 lives have been saved.

00:21:33.060 Well, OK, they're still living, but I wouldn't say their lives have been saved if they're still homeless and if they're still addicted and if they're still in pain and if they still have mental health issues that have not been addressed.

00:21:45.060 That is not saving a life that is prolonging suffering. And I think that is just morally wrong, the wrong standard for us to maintain.

00:21:54.060 You know, if you were a family who were who was experiencing drug abuse within the family, oftentimes the advice given to the family is to no longer enable the addict to let them fall down.

00:22:08.060 And instead, municipalities are continuing to enable the addict, which is something that we like families would never do.

00:22:15.060 And I'm not saying good Lord, you don't want the government to be your family, but I don't think they should play a part in enabling people to, like you said, continue to languish in suffering and pain.

00:22:28.060 Now, moving away from such a terrible, terrible, sad topic to a one of fiscal irresponsibility, I wanted to ask you because the Olympic bid or the end of the Olympic bid was one of the greatest successes of Save Calgary, I think, to date.

00:22:49.060 And I wanted to know if there are any sort of outstanding financial issues lingering around just how expensive the pursuit of the bid was in the first place, the bid that thankfully never proceeded.

00:23:01.060 The bid committee, which is being wound down, has committed to releasing how they spent the million, the 30 million, approximately 30 million that was allocated to them for the bid.

00:23:16.160 We don't have that information yet.

00:23:18.460 But one development we do have is that the province has, again, I've said I've rarely ever given Rachel Notley's NDP government credit over their nearly four years in office.

00:23:30.940 But when it came to these Olympics, they were the most fiscally responsible government partner in terms of making sure that money was well spent.

00:23:38.180 The province has actually asked for their share of the money, of the bid money back, saying, look, it didn't go ahead.

00:23:44.220 This was your process. We committed to funding a bid and there was no bid.

00:23:50.120 So could we please have the share of Alberta tax dollars that they sent? Could we have it back?

00:23:56.480 And the city, of course, is gawking at this request, saying, no, no, we've spent it.

00:24:02.760 But how do you spend the money for a bid that never actually proceeds is, I think, a serious question that people have.

00:24:09.940 And I'd be interested to know if they did spend the full 30 million, who got that money?

00:24:17.440 You know, who who was put on to payroll?

00:24:20.260 Which companies were hired to do the printing and the consulting?

00:24:26.540 And, you know, the city loves its consultants.

00:24:28.760 It has an army of them on contract at all times.

00:24:31.500 And I'd like to know for those Olympics, are any of those people people with close ties to either the mayor or to other establishment and elite people at City Hall?

00:24:41.180 You know, was this just an exercise to give money to some friends of the political elite here down at City Hall?

00:24:48.380 That's my question.

00:24:49.540 And we're going to wait for that big report to be released.

00:24:52.500 And if they don't follow through with that, I guess they, if Calgary, will know what its next next FOIP activity is.

00:24:58.240 Well, I mean, if reading government documents is your life and I feel like it's mine some days, I think you're in for a real treat when that report comes out.

00:25:07.780 Because I think there are going to be a lot of tentacles to that octopus that I think it's going to be up to Save Calgary to put the pieces together

00:25:17.300 and really frame the Olympic bid pursuit for Calgary taxpayers, because I don't think that you're going to get it put into any sort of real context outside of that.

00:25:31.180 You know, it's interesting.

00:25:33.100 The money spent was, of course, one resource that the city committed to the Olympic bid.

00:25:39.020 And I'm actually going to suggest it wasn't the most important one.

00:25:42.260 The other resource it committed was time for the better part of a year.

00:25:48.120 This was the focus of our city's senior administration and our city government, City Hall and City Council, to the detriment of everything else.

00:25:57.860 All sorts of things were not focused on because the Olympics became the end-all deal.

00:26:03.300 As we've talked about before, Calgary homeowners are facing the prospect of a catastrophic increase in their property taxes

00:26:11.840 in order to make up for the shortfall of money coming from Calgary's now vacant downtown towers.

00:26:17.840 The other group was going to get hit as small businesses.

00:26:20.240 This seemed to come as a complete and total surprise to city council, who only looked at the issue briefly at the end of the year.

00:26:27.220 Well, we all saw this coming.

00:26:28.680 25% vacancy rates in our downtown core weren't an overnight surprise.

00:26:33.800 But where was council's attention?

00:26:35.360 Well, it was on the vanity project of the Olympics.

00:26:37.700 So while I'm upset about the money, obviously, I'm more upset that we didn't spend the kind of time necessary

00:26:44.000 to figure out real solutions to the problem of our city's finances.

00:26:48.960 And now homeowners and small businesses are going to be the ones who pay the price on that with huge double-digit tax increases.

00:26:55.600 Yeah, you're right.

00:26:57.000 That really is a snowball that we have really yet to see how large it's going to get down the road.

00:27:05.020 Because raising property taxes won't do anything to fill those downtown Calgary towers back up.

00:27:12.860 It's actually going to deter people from moving back into those vacant towers.

00:27:17.480 But the city is so short-sighted that they don't know another way to make up the shortfall, whereas I would just say cut spending.

00:27:28.400 Absolutely.

00:27:29.660 Yeah.

00:27:30.600 Now, sorry, go ahead.

00:27:32.120 Oh, I was just going to say that.

00:27:33.800 But, you know, cutting spending, though, in a smart way takes time.

00:27:36.740 And it takes careful review of budgets, of, you know, money spent versus outcome achieved, all of those things.

00:27:44.740 And none of that was done because we were going to have a big winter party.

00:27:48.760 So that's where the time and attention went.

00:27:50.900 Instead of finding ways to save Calgarians money, we became, or some of our council became enamored,

00:27:56.840 with the idea of hosting the global elite at a two-week VIP party that was going to cost $5 billion at least.

00:28:06.060 William, I want to give you a chance to promote Save Calgary and the great work that you do,

00:28:12.800 because you really are just this little organization that is punching up and changing the conversation.

00:28:20.200 So how can people find you?

00:28:22.040 How can they support you?

00:28:23.220 And what's the best way for them to find out what's on the Save Calgary horizon?

00:28:29.560 Well, I had to laugh about punching above our wake.

00:28:32.080 I understand that one city councillor, we have something called question time at City Hall here,

00:28:37.640 where councillors can send questions to-

00:28:39.520 Did you call it City Hall or City Hell?

00:28:42.100 Oh.

00:28:43.060 Because I know what it works.

00:28:44.920 I, you know, either or.

00:28:46.600 But I understand that one city councillor may have asked the city administration several pointed questions about our little Save Calgary group,

00:28:56.520 because she has felt kind of under the gun from all of the work that we've done.

00:29:01.780 So we're excited that we're causing a little, we're making sitting at the gravy trough a little bit less fun for some of our councillors.

00:29:09.700 To support Save Calgary, the best things you can do are go to our website, savecalgary.com, sign up to our weekly email newsletter.

00:29:17.200 And then if you like the content that we're putting out, if you believe that the issues that we're raising are important,

00:29:25.080 and if you think that there's really no other group out there trying to push fiscal responsibility at City Hall,

00:29:31.600 then we hope that you would consider giving us a financial donation through our website so that we can keep doing the FOIPs,

00:29:38.040 we can keep covering City Halls, in and out, you know, when they're raising your taxes, or when they're hiking spending,

00:29:44.240 or when they're, you know, hiring even more bureaucrats to mismanage our city government. 0.89

00:29:49.600 These are all things that we try and pay attention to.

00:29:52.540 So if you could see your way to giving us a financial donation through our website, savecalgary.com, that would be swell.

00:29:59.920 William, I want to thank you so much for coming on the show.

00:30:02.140 We can't let it go two months before you come back on the show.

00:30:06.300 That's far too long.

00:30:07.800 But I want to thank you for being the, sometimes it feels like the only people standing in between municipal government and taxpayers' wallets.

00:30:17.860 So I want to thank you, and I want to tell you to keep fighting.

00:30:20.800 Well, thank you, Sheila.

00:30:21.420 It's always a pleasure to be on your show.

00:30:23.100 And yes, we'll have to do this more often, hopefully next time when it's a little bit warmer out.

00:30:27.940 You bet.

00:30:28.620 Thanks, William.

00:30:29.380 Thanks, Sheila.

00:30:36.300 As a society, I don't think we give municipal politics the scrutiny and attention it deserves.

00:30:49.920 Municipal politics aren't just about fixing potholes and picking up the garbage, although it is true that if neither one of those things happens efficiently or properly, your quality of life is really harmed.

00:31:02.420 A bad municipal policy, let's say like supervised injection sites, has the ability to make what is often the average Canadian's single largest investment, their home, worth much, much less.

00:31:16.420 And that policy has the ability to make your neighbourhoods much, much more dangerous, nearly instantly.

00:31:23.520 I know I say it all the time, but a long time ago, it feels like Conservatives just abandoned the battleground of our local towns and neighbourhoods for provincial and federal politics.

00:31:35.420 But if, as Conservatives, we want to change society for the better, we need to start our efforts much closer to home.

00:31:42.480 And for that reason, I'm grateful to groups like Safe Calvary for trying to start the conversation.

00:31:47.620 I hope they serve as an inspiration that encourages other municipal watchdog groups to pop up all over the country.

00:31:54.820 Lord knows we need them.

00:31:56.500 Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.

00:31:58.260 Thank you so much for tuning in.

00:31:59.820 I'll see everybody back here in the same time, in the same place next week.

00:32:03.740 And remember, don't let the government tell you that you've had too much to think.

00:32:17.620 Thank you.

Rebel News Podcast - February 07, 2019

Taxpayer watchdog group “punching up” to change the conversation at City Hall (Guest： William McBeath, Save Calgary)

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