Exposing Fake Conservative running for Calgary mayor!
Episode Stats
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Summary
A Calgary mayoral candidate who is trying to project himself as being conservative, tried to attack his closest conservative opponent, and ended up highlighting how unfit he is to actually be the standard bearer for conservatism in the city. This is one of the dumbest things I've ever seen a mayoral campaign do.
Transcript
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Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here. I need to tell you guys about some incredibly dumb drama
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coming out of Calgary's mayoral election. Now, if you don't live in Calgary, you may still find
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this interesting, because inherently drama can be interesting. But this is the dumbest form of
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drama. A Calgary mayoral candidate who is trying to project himself as being conservative tried to
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attack his closest conservative opponent, and ended up just highlighting how unfit he is to
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actually be the standard bearer for conservatism in the city. So I have endorsed Sonia Sharp in this
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mayoral election. I don't agree with Sonia on everything. I'm more conservative than she is on
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many issues. But she actually has committed to cutting wasteful spending, putting police officers
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directly on C-trains and on C-train platforms to cut down on crime, especially retail theft. And
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there's a few other aspects of her platform I think are quite positive. And also, all these other people
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saying, I'm going to freeze taxes. Like, well, if you're not going to cut bad spending, you are going
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to end up raising taxes. And even just freezing the rate isn't good enough, because as house values go
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up, they can just tax you through the elevated value rather than increasing the rate. But whatever,
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I just want to get back to this issue. So Jeff Davison has been attacking Sonia Sharp recently.
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It's not just been him. It's been all of his campaign surrogates, his campaign manager,
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all these people going after Sonia for not being conservative enough. And their complaints always
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tend to revolve around a single vote she had. She voted for the climate emergency motion that Mayor
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Gondek put forward. And by the way, I disagree with Sonia voting for that. Even she regrets having
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voted for that. But overall, her voting record is quite good. But we have Jeff Davison, who had a
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garbage voting record when he was on council between 2017 and 2021, trying to cast aspersions
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against her now on a potential corruption issue that I can tell you doesn't exist. This is one of
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the stupidest things I've ever seen a mayoral campaign do. Accuse your opponent of having a conflict
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of interest that doesn't even make sense that only highlights that in fact, you actually had some
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fundraising scandals back when you last ran for mayor and got crushed, by the way. So I'm just
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going to get right into this in a second. But I do just want to plug that, hey, if you live in the
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city of Calgary, go into the description below or go to the top of the comments and get yourself a
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Sonia Sharp sign. Because I think we actually do need to be able to muscle out fake conservatives like
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Jeff Davison from this race before we get into late September or early October. Jeff cannot win.
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Sonia can win. So back her and don't split the vote with this guy who came in a distant, distant third
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last time. And now he's having to run against two people who already beat him in the previous
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election. But yeah, go check that out. But here is something that Jeff Davison and his campaign
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posted nine days ago. It says for immediate release, August 18th, 2025, Calgary mayoral
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candidate Jeff Davison calls out conflict of interest between Calgary taxpayer owned and Max
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and Mark Henry, party architect of Communities First Municipal Party. Now Communities First is the
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municipal party slate that right now Sonia Sharp is the mayoral candidate of. But this statement goes on
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to say, the Jeff Davison mayoral campaign is raising what appears to be a troubling conflict
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of interest involving NMAX, the Calgary taxpayer owned utility, and Mark Henry, party architect of
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the Communities First Municipal Political Party. Henry's polling firm Think HQ is currently under
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contract with NMAX, as confirmed by an NMAX executive to the Davison campaign last week.
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At the same time, Henry is actively leading a municipal political party that is running a number
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of council candidates, as well as councillor Sonia Sharp as its mayoral candidate.
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Quote, this is outrageous conflict of interest, said Jeff Davison. Quote, Mark Henry cannot both
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profit from a taxpayer owned entity and simultaneously run a political organization that is fielding
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candidates for mayor and council. This gives the appearance that NMAX is paying Henry to campaign
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for Sharp and others. How can Calgarians believe in our democratic process? What is he flipping on about?
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What does that even mean? That Mark Henry, who runs a polling firm, who has contracted work with the
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public utilities company NMAX, that's somehow a conflict of interest, because he also founded the
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Communities First Party. What do you think they're paying him under the table? NMAX, a public, like,
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crown corporation, effectively, is wanting Mark Henry to, like, I don't know, do something for them?
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What is, how does that even work? What's the, what is even the angle that you're going for here? And he
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doesn't work for NMAX. He does contracted work for NMAX as someone who owns a polling firm. Or do you
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think they're only paying his polling firm for a firm as a go-between to try and benefit Mark Henry and
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have him skew Sonia Sharp in a way that's going to benefit the public utility? It doesn't make any sense.
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It's like saying someone cannot run for office if they work for any public institution, because maybe
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they're a front for that public institution. If you run for office as a former cop, are you doing this
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for the police? And now it's the, like, the police's mafia that's trying to take over counsel?
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Well, this is incredibly stupid. This is fake drama that is causing real drama between the Davison and
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Sharp camp. A little bit later in this video, I want to go over with you the voting record of
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Jeff Davison, because again, him and his surrogates, who have been pretty nasty to me up to this point,
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for no reason. Great campaign strategy, guys. Maybe just attack Wyatt, and then he'll like you better.
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But we're going to get to the voting record, but this is something that Jeff Davison was caught up
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in back in the 2021 election when he got absolutely destroyed. Complaints levied against
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Councillor Jeff Davison's fundraiser in Calgary mayoral race. Now, this is an actual big issue
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that he basically just pretended he had nothing to do with, even though saying that he didn't know this
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was going on is probably the stupidest offense, because nobody running for office in Calgary doesn't know
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there's a massive fundraiser going on to benefit them. But this article from Global News back during
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A mayoral candidate in the upcoming Calgary municipal election is under fire following complaints a golf
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tournament fundraiser may have violated campaign fundraising rules. The complaint accuses Ward 6
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councillor Jeff Davison campaign of colluding with a third-party advertiser to raise funds and
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violating the local authority's election. The tournament to be hosted at the Heritage Point
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Golf Club on July 29th is being put on by a third-party advertiser called Calgary Tomorrow
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to raise funds for advertising to support Davison in his bid to be city's next mayor.
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And they have it right here that it is Jeff Davison's premier fundraiser hosted by this third-party
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advertiser. And then he ended up just playing dumb about the whole thing, acting like they have
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zero. No clue. He had no clue this was going on. Do you think that Jeff Davison didn't know that a
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third-party advertiser was specifically fundraising money to make him elected as mayor? Now, third-party
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advertisers can recommend candidates. But if you're specifically fundraising specifically for this guy,
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you are no longer just a group that has a bunch of policy concerns, who's saying that we're going to give
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people letter grades, and we're going to recommend the best people on the issues that we care about.
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You are now effectively a part of the campaign, because it is about getting this guy elected. It's
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not a recommendation. It's this guy needs to be elected. And so Davison just played dumb about it.
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And now he is here to cast aspersions at Sonya Sharp, because Mark Henry on Communities First
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owns a polling company and does contracted work for the public utility. And by the way, I've had them
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call me about questions. It's not like he's doing fake work. He's been doing this for years.
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You will get questions about how much you spend on utilities and satisfaction with
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their services and whatnot. I don't understand how this could be a conflict. But the thing is,
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the Davison campaign doesn't have anything to work with right now. They don't really have a leg to
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stand on. He's not a popular candidate. Let's even just look at the 2021 mayoral election results. It was
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bad. He's not a popular guy. He's not somebody who's an experienced winner in municipal campaigns.
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He won as Ward 6 counselor and then got crushed in mayoral election. Check this out. Gondek got 45.13%
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of the vote. Jeremy Farkas, 29.91. So Farkas got demolished by Jody Gondek. But Davison got even
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more demolished, only getting 12.99% of the vote, getting less than half of what Jeremy Farkas got.
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But now in a new election where Farkas and Gondek are both running and we have Sonia Sharp, who was
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just objectively better organized than Jeff, we are now going to say that, no, no, guys, we need to give
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Jeff the second shot. We just need him. He's just so much more conservative than Sonia.
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Well, Sonia's voted against every single tax hike that's been proposed in front of council. In fact,
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Jeff has voted for every, voted in favor of every single one of them. Sharp voted against them. He
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voted in favor of them. So the organization Common Sense Calgary did a council tracker on the three
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councillors who were running for mayor last election, Davison, Gondek, and Farkas. Now let's just go down
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here so we can look at some of these votes. So continue the Olympic bid. Vote impact is spend
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even more on the Olympic bid. So the city was paying money basically to advertise the Olympic
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bid and to get people to vote yes on it. Now, Jeff Davison and Jody Gondek both voted yes in order
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to extend funding to this, while Farkas voted no. I will say the reason I will never endorse Farkas
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for any office after the last election in Calgary. I voted for him and for mayor. The thing is that
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he's become so left-wing since then, despite being like a conservative firebrand back in the day,
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that I just don't trust him. His entire website is just full of like spending initiatives.
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And by the way, did you know that Jeff Davison's website, up until I pointed it out to his campaign
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manager, who I didn't even know was his campaign manager at the time, he had a land acknowledgement
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on his website. I did another video where I talked about him. I can bring up that screenshot later.
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He had a land acknowledgement on the campaign website. And I'm supposed to believe this is
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the super conservative guy. I even need to just quickly show you something he posted recently on
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social media. Now, does this mean anything? No, but I think there's a certain level of incompetence
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to his campaign. So either his new campaign organizer or his new manager, I don't know,
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Brett Pierce on the left there. For some reason, this was a winning photo for Jeff Davison to post
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on his social media to advertise that he is running from air. Him feeding Brett Pierce a cupcake
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while at some event at the Canada Olympic Park. Yeah, so that was something that happened. I just,
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that was baffling to me. So I need to bring it up. So another one here on the Common Sense Calgary page.
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Pike corporate welfare. Vote impact. Increase corporate welfare by $90 million. Now, I assume
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this is some economic investment plan where the city is going to pay out money in order to attract
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business or to help grow businesses or whatever. We had Jeff Davison and Gondek both vote for that.
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The motion was that council approve an additional allocation of $90 million for the long-term funding
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of the Economic Development Investment Fund for a total of $100 million. Now, I have some history
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with Calgary Economic Development. I think they should probably be defunded from most of their
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money. They are entirely useless and throw money at stupid projects. But we had Jeff vote with Gondek,
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which you will notice is a pattern over time. We have, this one I actually don't care about as much.
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We have freeze councils pay. Gondek and Farkas both voted freeze councils pay. Jeff Davison didn't.
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I actually don't necessarily disagree with Jeff on this one. It's populist-y to say let's not give
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councillors more pay because those politicians work for us and screw them. It's always a little bit
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dicey to say that like, oh no, they don't deserve more money. Councillors don't get paid all that much,
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honestly. But here's the next one. Vote impact. Council expenses cut 15% for 2019-2022.
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They all voted for that. That's good. Council should have, like, you know, we should, that's a
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great cost-saving measure where it's not impacting people's salaries, but you have to operate on a
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smaller budget. We have this one. Cut pay by 7.5% and freeze pension plans. Another one I don't care
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about as much. They both voted no and Farkas voted yes. But here's this one. A $290.4 million subsidy
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for the new arena. We had for the Calgary Flames. Jeff Davison, Gondek, voted in favour of it. Farkas
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voted against. Find $50 million in savings. Vote impact. Cut $50 million excluding 911 services and
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transit. The motion says find additional savings of $50 million in all tax-supported business units
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excluding Calgary Police Service, Calgary Fire Department, 911 service, and public transit.
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Jeff Davison, the fiscal conservative, apparently, and Gondek, voted against trying to find $50 million
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in savings. It's just a motion saying that we should attempt to find savings, and they didn't
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want to do that. Here's another one. Reduce corporate welfare by $50 million. It says the
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motion is that council redirect $50 million from the Opportunity Calgary Investment Fund into the
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fiscal stability reserve. Davison and Gondek voted against that. Let's not try and save money for a
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rainy day. Screw that. Here's another one. Cut PR and comm spending. The motion is that council
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direct administration to reduce public and employee engagement and communications by $1.2 million to
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2014 levels. Basically, that the communications department that doesn't actually add that much
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value to the city should have its funding reduced so that, you know, we can spend it on more useful
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things. And Gondek and Davison voted against that. Reduce art spending by $5 million. Jeff Davison
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cannot find a reason to vote against $5 million in bad, ugly art spending. You know, all of the
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Beaufort Towers and that stupid famous blue ring? Yeah, let's have less of that and take that $5 million
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and maybe spend on public safety. Maybe more transit. Maybe we can just give people back a couple bucks
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every year. Maybe we can have better snow removal services. But no, Gondek and Davison voted against
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actually finding saving that money. And then we have a 7.5% residential tax increase. We have Jeff
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Davison and Gondek voted in favor of the tax increase. And basically, it was to trying to shift
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some of the tax burden away from companies because we have what is a commercial taxes are extremely high
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in Calgary. But I agree with Farkas voting no on this because while, yes, commercial shouldn't be
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having to lug as much of a burden, the problem is, is that we should be cutting taxes in general. We should
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be cutting wasteful spending so everyone has to pay less taxes. But they voted in favor of increasing
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taxes, but they've been voting out against every single attempt to actually have fiscal responsibility.
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This is the green line. And we had Davison and Gondek vote in favor of continuing their green line
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spending. And I oppose the green line. It's going to be extremely expensive. We are fundamentally a
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driving city. And right now with the crime rates, I don't want another train heading south bringing
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more effectively crime down a publicly funded transit thoroughfare. Okay, we'll keep going. And
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Anya Sharp, I believe, is against it too. Basically, vote impact cap payouts for defeated councillors.
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And right now it says basically report C-2020-1081 be amended by deleting the words if a member of
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council leaves voluntarily, i.e. chooses not to stand for re-election, retires, resigns. So you don't get
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like a big payout for having basically not run for office. That if you don't run for office again,
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you get some like retirement bonus or something like that. And Jeff Davison and Gondek did not want
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that. And they want councillors to keep getting money for quitting their jobs. Defund the police.
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Vote impact. $20 million cut from the police budget. The motion was council to consider the allocation of
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up to $10 million in 2021 and $10 million in 2022 in base budget to the implementation of this
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framework. Jeff Davison and Gondek voted to defund the police. Farkas did not. Although these days,
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I wouldn't be shocked if Farkas would have the new that today's Farkas, if he was back voting back
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then would have voted in favour of reducing the police budget. I've had people like former
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councillor Ward Southern try and gaslight me on the reason that Davison voted for that. Oh, no,
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the police actually told him to defund them. Oh, they actually told them to just defund them,
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but move it over to basically a community support fund or something that they had. It's like,
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well, then why did Joe Magliocca and Sean Chu and others? Urquhart, all those other Calgary
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councillors, there's like five of them who voted against this because they had their heads screwed
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on straight. But apparently Jeff and Ward Sutherland had a super good reason for why actually
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defunding the police was the pro-police thing to do. I don't trust these people. They are running
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a bad campaign and that's why they are lashing out. But in the future, I will be putting up all my
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endorsements for all the different ward positions, for all the councillors, for all the school board
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trustees. And of course, I already have Sonia Sharp for mayor that I'm endorsing. Again, go get a lawn
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sign if you want. And in other municipalities, I will also be endorsing people. Medicine Hat,
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Drew Barnes, the former MLA, is a great mayoral choice. Edmonton, you're going to have to bite the
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bullet a little bit in Edmonton and probably vote for Raheem Jaffer. And then I'll probably find some
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other guys in places like Red Deer and Airdrie that might be good as well. But with that being said,
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that's probably it for this video. I, again, I've just been so annoyed by all of the purity testing
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of Sonia Sharp. At the same time, Jeff Davison couldn't even stand up to his own measuring stick
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that his campaign is using to attack Sonia. And I don't even like all the things that Community First
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does. I didn't agree with them making Alison McSweeney their Ward 9 candidate. She used to be
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very NDP-ish. She seems like she still is. Their campaign's logic is that it's a more
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lefty riding or more lefty part of the city, so they put a more lefty candidate in.
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Okay, whatever. She's probably not going to win anyways. And I just want communities first
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to get Sonia Sharp across the finish line and a lot of their good councillors in,
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and that's all we need. So, like, it's not really that big a deal. Again, in my ward,
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Ward 6, Jeff's former ward, I've endorsed Joanne Burse. In Ward 9, I'll probably recommend voting
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for Gargar. He's a good guy, and he's also been taking it on the chin in very dishonest ways.
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Because municipal politics, and I say this as a very ideological conservative,
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municipal politics is genuinely less ideological. You're going to get more people who you don't
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agree with on everything, but they will do these three or four things you really need them to do.
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That's what you should be voting for. The person who can win who's going to get actually substantial
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progress done. So far, Davidson's campaign is just like platitudes that he wants fiscal efficiency.
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He wants more cops or more security. It's like, okay, well, you didn't really run on that last
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time, so I don't know what you're talking about. It seems like you're just trying to adjust yourself
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in order to win this one, since you got so hammered in the last one. But anyways, that's it for me
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today, guys. This was a bit of a rant, but hopefully you didn't mind the update on what's going on in that
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crazy city of Calgary that I live in. But with that being said, I will see you guys all later.