Former MLA taking his city back from Liberal rule (ft. Drew Barnes - Medicine Hat)
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Summary
Drew Barnes is running to become the next mayor of Medicine Hat, Alberta. He has been a member of the Alberta Legislative Assembly for the past four years and served as an MLA for the previous three years. In this interview, he talks about why he decided to run for mayor and why he thinks it's important to have conservative candidates running for municipal office.
Transcript
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Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here. We have municipal election season in full swing now in Alberta
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with municipal elections happening in every single major city and town, except I heard
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not on the border of Saskatchewan because they sometimes do them at the same time as
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Saskatchewan. That's just what Sean Newman from Lloyd Minister told me. But I've been
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wanting to highlight good politicians around the province who are conservatives running
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for municipal office because so often in the past, our municipal elections have just been
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dominated by liberal candidates and those backed up by NDP public sector front groups. And today
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on the show, I have somebody I think is a great conservative as well as a friend, Drew Barnes,
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who is currently running to be the mayor of Medicine Hat. How's it going, Drew?
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Oh, it's going great, Wyatt. Good morning. Thanks for talking to me today.
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Absolutely. Well, what did make you, I guess, go from being an MLA to now wanting to be the mayor
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of Medicine Hat? Because usually people go from local office and then they just, you know, leave
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it behind and then go into provincial or go into federal.
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Oh, yeah. Thanks for the question. Three main reasons. First of all, I've lived in Medicine Hat
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since 1974 with my wife, my children and grandchildren as well at times. And we're in a
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situation, Wyatt, where a very dysfunctional, chaotic council making headlines for all the
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wrong reasons, infighting, suing each other, many staff on paid leave and Medicine Hat's not
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growing. We also had the huge displeasure of having our property taxes increased substantially
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last year with the plan announcement of another 5.6% property tax increase. And Wyatt, it seemed
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like everywhere I went in the last year, friends and former constituents would stop me and say,
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geez, Drew, please consider running for mayor of Medicine Hat. You know, we're a conservative
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community and this mayor and this city council doesn't reflect that. And my wife and I talked
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about it, prayed about it. And we came to the decision to jump in about a month ago. Overwhelmed,
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very, very grateful right now, Wyatt. We've got, you know, hundreds of supporters and many signs
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up and we're gaining momentum. We're still looking for more help, of course, but it's a good start.
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Fantastic. And for anyone watching the show from Medicine Hat, in the description below and pinned
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at the top of the comments is a link if you want a sign for Drew Barnes. I fully endorse you doing
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that, getting one. But I was going to, I want to kind of go back to how sort of, I guess, like a city
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like Medicine Hat ends up having a very liberal sort of representation on its council, because this is
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something that we even see in places like Westlock, Alberta. Federally, that's in an area where it is
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deep, deep blue, but they somehow end up electing people on as mayor and councillors who they would
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have never considered even voting for provincially or federally. How do you think that's happening
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in places like where you live? Well, unions, labour are very, very active when it comes to municipal
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elections, especially. I believe it came from the Alberta Federation of Labour, but approximately 10
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days before the last municipal election here, four years ago, they sent out an email with their slate
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of candidates and their mayor that they wanted supportive. And all but one was successful. And of
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course, why does we, as we know, government is so big throughout federal, provincial and municipal
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politics. And when they're organized now with union donations allowed, with union support, with
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organization, it makes a difference. And I also think I think that it's important to realize
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that, you know, government in Alberta, government in Canada, taxation, especially has been so high
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and so large the last several years. You know, Albertans need the opportunity to experience
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conservative values again, smaller government and the opportunity to take care of ourselves and our
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families. And that's another main reason I decided that, you know, I could offer a lot to the people of
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Medicine Hat as mayor. This is one of the things that really annoys me in municipal politics these days.
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Whenever people run on freezing taxes, they don't run on lowering taxes, freezing them, even though
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everyone acknowledges taxes have been too high for a long time. And it's not like the flat rate that
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we're charging people's going up, we're charging you a higher percentage of your home's value over
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time, which means that we should be able to set that price and then forget it, because it will keep
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bringing in more money as housing prices come in anyways. But yeah, like Medicine Hat, you guys had a
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5.6% increase. I think in Calgary, they're projecting a need for a 5.4% increase, all coming
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from a mayor who promised to never raise taxes, and has somehow found a way to do so every single
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year she's been in. Obviously, I'm talking about Calgary's mayor Jody Gondek. But I guess now that
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the province has basically capped out the amount that unions are allowed to donate to third party
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advertisers. Has that been helping? And what do you think about the party slate idea that's now
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being piloted out in Calgary and Edmonton? Well, thank you. Yeah, I'm seeing again that our current
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mayor is running again. Two of the councillors are back running. And it looks like similar support to
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four years ago. So, you know, a $5,000 cap from the union is, I guess, some decrease or some
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limitation. But organized labor is still going to be very, very involved in this election. And it's
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important for all medicine hatters to realize that this council and this mayor have been so
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dysfunctional, so chaotic, that we've experienced like virtually no growth in the last five years.
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One of the stories I've heard many times is when investors or people looking to move to
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Medicine Hat land here, the first thing they say is, what the heck's going on with your mayor and
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your council? It's so dysfunctional. It's just scaring many, many people away. But I'll tell you
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with the other question, with the idea of a slate or a party, I was surprised that the UCP put in the
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law that you can only run a party or a slate in Calgary or Edmonton and not any of the other
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municipalities in Alberta. Whatever the logic was for that, I've been hearing it was on a trial
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basis, but I guess we'll see. But here in Medicine Hat, we have 40 people running for eight council
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spots. And what I'm hearing at the doors, and I've talked to a lot of Medicine Hatters, and one of the
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things people say to me is, who do I pick? How do I decide who, you know, who of those 40?
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You guys are in the system where if there's eight spots, and there are 40 candidates, you mark down
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the 40 candidates, the eight candidates out of the 40 that you want.
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Oh yeah, because then that's really ridiculous. That's really easy to get in if you're the union
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candidates. Because, you know, if there's a dedicated group of people in the town, who either
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because they're part of a union, or because they're, you know, they're just convinced that this is the
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way you should do it, that you're going to be having large groups of people dedicatedly only picking
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those eight. Whereas you get a lot of like, you know, two bit politicians who may be able to win on
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their own efforts, attempting to go around getting enough people to put them down as just one of the
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eight not running in a group. And then we'll inevitably that person's going to get swamped by
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the fact that, you know, there's a bunch of other people going around not coordinating, telling people
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to mark them down, but not that guy and not the union slate. So yeah, I'm actually always been a fan
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of the party slate idea. Everyone's like, Oh, no, it makes our politicians less independent by doing
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so it's like, well, no, not really. The thing is that there's already union slates being run right
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now. So if conservatives then embrace this idea that no, we shouldn't have parties, we should have
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only independence, you're going to end up in a situation where forever, you're all it's going
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to be Lucy in the football, every election, you're thinking it's our time, people are going to want a
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grassroots candidate. It's like, okay, but people also want an easy way of identifying the people they
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want to vote for. And you're going to have the slate team always winning, and the people running
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as independents always losing. Yeah, those are good points. And I'm in favor of liberty, freedom
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and choice all the time. So if somebody wants to be part of a slate or a group, wonderful, somebody
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doesn't want to be that's their choice. And that's great, too. This is a really an election, Wyatt,
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where a lot of family, fiscal, grassroots conservatives are stepping forward. They're tired
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of the chaos. They're tired. There's been a huge amount of financial lack of discipline from this
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council, taking money out of reserves, studying to buy us and build a solar farm after they've already
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invested in it. And so it's a time where conservatives are saying to me and voters are saying to me,
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they want to see medicine had increased jobs and opportunities, they do not want any more property
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tax increases, and they want to do something about homelessness and crime. I have to ask now,
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because you said that the union slate, the sort of labor slate, ended up basically sweeping the
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entire council election, I assume the mayor's office as well last time. How was it then that it's been
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so dysfunctional if they've basically elected on a prefab team in order to lead the city? Like
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what's the kind of been the fundamental problem to cause so much fighting for like, you know, for the
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medicine hat municipal government? Yeah, well, thank you. One of the councillors called in the
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provincial government about a year ago, municipal affairs did an investigation report. And basically,
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the census of that was a total lack of communication between the mayor, the CAO and the council. And
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four years into it, right from the start, Wyatt, they never set a vision, they never worked towards
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long term goal, and got into all kinds of minutiae, rather than, you know, letting good city employees
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do good work. They got involved in details that they shouldn't have. We have some opportunities
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down here, we're a beautiful place, weather wise, people wise, lots of room, we still have our own
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electric generation license. So we make a considerable amount of money selling electricity to the rest of
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Alberta. And this mayor and this council just couldn't come to any agreement at all over four years,
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how to how to spend money, the only thing they seem to unify on was was tax medicine matters more.
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Well, and you get all these seemingly like silly pet projects as well, when you have them investing in
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like a solar farm and whatnot. And it's like, is this even going to be a money generator when it comes
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down to it? Because if you're already generating a lot of money, like in order to sell energy to the
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rest of the province, I assume that is mostly oil and gas type energy that's being created, not solar.
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And so they're only doing this for basically the green trend that's on right now.
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Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Natural gas, electric generation is medicine had specialty right now.
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From DP Energy, they bought the opportunity to build a solar farm. They paid somewhere between
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seven and nine million dollars for the opportunity to build it and then studied the whole process after
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after they bought the the license to build it. The belief is it could cost up to 700 million to build
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the 225 megawatts that's entailed. And of course, what government ever comes in on or under budget?
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It's always well over. It's not even going to work in the winter. It's not even going to work in the winter.
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Yeah. And one hail storm could could wipe it out. But but but it but it's it's past the financial risk
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capacity of the taxpayer of medicine had. You know, I don't say clearly if a big company of Brookfield or Suncor
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wants to come in and use their money to do it, you know, let's look at it. But for us to be doing it
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ourselves, it's just a debacle. And why, you know, we speaking of debacles, this council and this mayor
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adopted something called Strong Towns two years ago. And Strong Towns is all about living, working and
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recreating in the same little small community. They put in some some new roads that emergency vehicles
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and fire trucks can't get down. They're so narrow and the bike paths are so wide. Every time that
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or not every time, but a lot of times when somebody tries to turn onto the roads, they their tires hit
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the curbs and that's causing considerable damage. What's it called again? It was Strong Towns was the
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program they adopted. It sounds like a disease I need to take a pill for. But like every town,
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every, every stupid council thinks it's Amsterdam or something like that. Like, oh, let's have
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narrow, like narrower streets so that the buildings can be closer together. And we can have these kind
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of like art, like art kind of sections of town with cafes and all this stuff and bikes everywhere.
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It's like nobody's going to visit it. The thing is that if you make it that people can't drive to it,
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people don't want to go in a driving province like Alberta. Like every time they try it,
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like I've heard it's a grift that's been going on since like the 1960s. Oh, it's a walkable city.
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Oh, it's a, you know, it's kind of like 15 minute cities, but it's like, oh, it's a walkable city.
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This has been going on for decades where it's like, well, no, what you're going to do is you're
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going to restrict traffic and no one's going to drive into that area because no one's going to park
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their car on the perimeter and then walk in for another 15 minutes. They're just going to not
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show up. Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly what strong towns is, but yeah. Yeah. I think the whole idea
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is based on, on high congestion to maximize tax rates and minimize the cost of public service.
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And, and we have a really nice little park in a very quiet area called Central Park. They put three
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traffic circles, uh, right around the corners of the park on the avenues. Um, I don't know if it
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would be a hundred cars a day that would, would go through those intersections. And a lot of medicine
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hatters are unsure and unclear as to why they're there. And they're just driving right over them.
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I just can imagine the horrific, uh, stuff that's going to happen in the winter when people are less
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clear what they're seeing. Um, it, it's a boondoggle they've thrown away our hard earned tax dollars
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and, and why that's what needs to change. Uh, maybe I just want to, I just want to
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jump over to what your sort of top three, uh, campaign platform points are. And then I just
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want to jump back, uh, or jump into provincial politics. Cause of course you used to be an MLA
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for a few terms. Okay. Sure. Yeah. Top, top three things, uh, other than the dysfunctional and the
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chaos of the mayor and the council, uh, medicine hat has barely grown in the last 10 years. You know,
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uh, last census showed a growth of 11 people over five years. So medicine hatters are telling me
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they want more jobs. They want more opportunities. They want an opportunity for their kids and their
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grandkids to stay here and a broader tax base. So, so property taxes, uh, stop going up. Um,
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and my job as mayor, my job is basically the chairman of the board will be get medicine hat on, on the right
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track and then go sell medicine hat to Edmonton, Ottawa, uh, Mississauga, Surrey, Winnipeg and Calgary.
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And let's, let's get some reasonable manageable growth. So, so our kids and our grandkids can stay
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here. Number two, property taxes. Uh, even though we made tens of millions generating electricity the
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last few years, our property taxes went up 5.6% last year. The council is planning on a 5.6% tax
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increase again this year and over 5% increases in perpetuity. Uh, so I'm running on a three year
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property tax freeze. I will not increase the mill rate for the next three years. It will stay,
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stay the same. And why we used to brag that we were the community that cured homelessness, um,
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six, eight years ago, there, there was very, very few, if any homeless people around now,
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some side of 200 people, uh, sleeping throughout the city, um, give or take 25 of them consistently
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and continually committing crimes. So what I'm going to do is help the homeless. If you're truly
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homeless, we'll give you a hand up. We'll, we'll help you get back into society. We'll, we'll help you,
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with a, with a place and a job. But if you're one of those people committing crimes,
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I'm going to ask the provincial government to ask the crown prosecutors to crack down on all crimes,
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the serious ones like break and enter and theft, but also trespassing and vagrancy. Uh, I'm going
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to ask our police chief and our police commission the same. Um, our good police officers are, are
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frustrated and potentially worn out because of the catch and release situation that's happening. But,
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uh, it is time to, to hold criminals accountable. Why at the same way that you and me are accountable in
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our life? Um, and, and I, and I'm surprised that our politicians, our mayor and our council hasn't
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stepped up and demanded this. I've just read lately that both the Edmonton city police and the Toronto
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city police have sent letters to crown prosecutors and judges, uh, demanding that the catch and release
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be ended. Uh, one was in response to a 12 year old, terrific death in Toronto. Uh, and I understand
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basically from, uh, a potential, uh, the, the criminal was just released, uh, Edmonton. It's
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the same thing that, you know, in medicine hat, we, we have a beautiful historic downtown
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why it, and I'm tired of hearing from my family and my friends that they're scared to go downtown
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that they can't bank after six o'clock and it's not safe. This problem is ours. So, so let's,
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let's own it and solve it. Yeah, no, that's the same exact thing in Calgary. Uh, but to,
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to shift over to, and of course, again, people can check out your website description below,
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uh, into the top comments. Uh, now I just want to shift into provincial politics because of course
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you used to be a wild rose MLA and then you were a UCP MLA and then you were an independent MLA
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as you are one of the, you were the first, uh, conservative, uh, MLA who was questioning the
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lockdowns that Kenny was pursuing during COVID. Uh, and then you just decide not to run again in the
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last election, but I guess I would, here's an interesting question because it's popping up
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recently. What do you think about the current state of electoral politics in the province and the scheme
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to try and rename the Alberta party to the progressive conservatives, uh, that Guthrie and Sinclair are
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running? Yeah. Yeah. Um, I have the, well, the progressive conservatives, they've run their course.
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They've, they've come and gone, but, but for, for Pete and Scott, good luck. I mean, if they want
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to present opportunities to two people, that's, that's great. That's up to them. Um, interesting
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because right now, and of course being focused on Medicine Hat and representing Medicine Hatters
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as a mayor that grows the city, it's important to note that Danielle Smith is one of our two MLA's.
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She represents the north part of Medicine Hat and Brooks. So, uh, it's important for Danielle to,
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to realize, uh, you know, what, uh, what Medicine Hat needs. Um, just this last weekend, we, we didn't
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have specialists, uh, doctors for childbirth, um, at all in our hospital. So if you were, you know,
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a woman in childbirth that needed a cesarean or something like that, um, it was pretty, it was,
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it was, it was uncertain. And, uh, so again, the, the problems of, uh, of the province and the services
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that are provided, um, I'll be calling on, on Danielle Smith to ensure that, uh, Medicine Hat
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gets his fair share. And so what I, uh, here's a question on how you sized up Nenshi as the Alberta
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NDP leader, uh, you know, not to throw a bunch of random, like provincial questions at you. Although
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I think that, you know, the audience would probably find it interesting. Have you been surprised at how
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the NDP has been performing since he became, he came on as leader? My whole impression was,
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oh, three-term Calgary mayor, probably going to be pretty formidable. And then it's just not really
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materialized. Yeah, no, I'm, I'm not surprised. Uh, I had two or three chances to interact with him
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while I was MLA and, you know, he, he, uh, he seemed like he, he at times never really understood,
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you know, the heartbeat of Alberta and just how truly conservative we are, how, how many of us are,
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are truly want smaller governments so we can take care of our families so we can have our churches
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and our community groups, groups do more. Um, never seemed to understand that, that 80% of us,
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you know, sure we want to stay in Canada, but we want to push for a better deal.
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And, uh, I, I never saw any signs that Nenshi understood those things. So I'm not surprised
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at all. He's floundering. Well, and it's like, I look at the, what they're running on these days
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and when they're defending like inappropriate books in school libraries, uh, or saying, well,
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it's only high school kids seeing some of this stuff. It's like, okay, well, some of the stuff
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nobody should be even looking at, but, uh, and then like the other thing was they're going after,
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and I think they're shredding their working class base when you're running on things
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like banning coal mining in the Rockies, just completely shutting down a bunch of local
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small town economies along the, uh, the west side of Alberta, because some people think that this
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could be, you know, I don't even know what their problem is like that. We're going to ruin the
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planet by releasing coal onto the energy markets or whatever at the same time that they don't actually
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really, they don't want to sell LNG to China, which keeps opening up new coal fire plants.
00:23:02.240
Uh, so what, what, what do you think is going to be, uh, do you think that there are any of the
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separatist parties or how do you think the referendum is going to go if ends up going through
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and how do you think the, uh, a separatist party will perform in the next general election?
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Well, I, you know, I'm just focused on Medicine Hat at this point. Uh, so, so I don't really know.
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I just know that we have to push. If Peter Lougheed hadn't stood up for Alberta when Pierre Elliott
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Trudeau wanted to nationalize our oil and gas industry in the mid seventies, my God, we'd have
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been Venezuela. We'd, we'd have been in worse shape than we're in now. So, so I'm glad when I hear
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Albertans, you know, proud Albertans, proud Canadians, proud Medicine Hatters.
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That speak up and say, you know, let's, let's get a better deal for Alberta. So I'm,
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I'm glad for that. Uh, certain, sure. A certain percentage want to take it all the way to separation
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and, uh, in a, in a free, um, society and a free province and a free country, uh, you have that right
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to, to say what you want. Um, back to the NDP, um, remember when Rachel Notley pushed, uh, bill six
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through, even though everybody advised her not to, that may have, have led to her defeat more than
00:24:15.360
anything. Even though it was the farmer's bill, right? That's the farmer's bill where she, she,
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there was no real need to get involved as much as she did. And, uh, it, that lingered on and it may
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have cost her, but the other thing why it is the affordability crisis. My goodness, I've had the,
00:24:32.960
the opportunity to talk to hundreds of Medicine Hatters at the door in the last month and a large
00:24:38.400
percentage are saying, Hey, I might have to sell my house because taxes are too high. I'm having
00:24:43.040
trouble, you know, affording to buy the grocery store because of my tax bill or because of the
00:24:47.440
high cost of living. And we know all about the money that the federal government's borrowed and
00:24:51.840
printed and what that's done for inflation. So when then she comes along singing that same song
00:24:56.800
of more taxes, more, more waste, more debt, more government, you know, smart, uh, Medicine Hat
00:25:02.480
or smart Albertans say, no, no, don't do that. And you get, you get treated like you're simplistic
00:25:07.680
for saying that, Hey, no, maybe instead of building a solar farm, maybe instead of installing a bunch of
00:25:14.800
public infrastructure that nobody asked for, maybe we should just freeze taxes and then move towards
00:25:20.720
actually being able to cut it. Because no doubt if you're in, if you're within the city administration
00:25:25.360
long enough, you're going to be able to find stuff all over the place where it's like, well,
00:25:28.640
why do we spend $5 million a year on this at all? It's not even that the budget's too high. We could
00:25:33.680
just, you know, get rid of this DEI program over here. We get rid of this, uh, you know, random city
00:25:40.160
initiative over there. And you're like, you end up discovering another $75 million that you could
00:25:46.400
have just given back to taxpayers instead of like gouging them every year. But again, you,
00:25:51.200
you bring stuff up like that and it's just act treated like, Oh, you just don't get it. Like,
00:25:56.080
I don't get it. It's like, it's kind of people have to live at the end of the day. And I always find it,
00:26:01.200
you know, mark of a bad politician who doesn't actually understand that tax, how much of an issue
00:26:07.680
taxes are right now. We have this Calgary party running, not a mention of lowering taxes or anything.
00:26:13.120
It's just that we need to, we need to be a world-class city with better services.
00:26:17.120
And it's all just, it's just about investing in random garbage. It's just, it just turns into
00:26:22.560
frankly, union job handouts, creating more HR positions, creating more admin positions,
00:26:27.840
raising wages. And Hey, it's great if people can get a rate or wage raise, but we're just doing it
00:26:33.440
where basically a small portion of the city is holding the rest of the city hostage, where their wages
00:26:39.280
are going to go up by six or 7% every year while everyone else is completely stalled out. That's
00:26:45.040
where I don't follow when it comes to other people getting wage increases, you know, it's public service.
00:26:51.200
It's gotta be understood that it's a secure job with a good pension at the end of the day,
00:26:55.440
but you're not gonna be hard charging on wage increases every single year, the way you would
00:27:00.080
if you went into finance and had no guarantees of a future. But maybe last question here, I guess,
00:27:06.960
like, uh, so how, how many, uh, opponents do you right now have for mayor in, uh, in medicine hat?
00:27:13.440
And, uh, how is it feeling at the doors with people? Oh, thanks. Well, yeah, there's six of us
00:27:18.400
counting myself and the incumbent mayor. Uh, one of the former counselors is running as well. Um,
00:27:24.800
of course they were very much part of this current, uh, chaos and his financial lack of discipline.
00:27:31.040
These two are just fighting each other cause they don't like each other anymore.
00:27:33.760
Uh, yeah, they, uh, they, they were, they were at odds many times at council and, uh, um,
00:27:40.000
but it's time to refocus. It's time to refocus on what medicine hatters need. Uh, as you said,
00:27:45.680
it's been an affordability crisis. It's time to, you know, to at least freeze the tax burden and
00:27:50.640
reduce it where we can. Um, crime and homelessness has grown, so our city's not as safe as it was. Uh,
00:27:57.360
and, and it's time to have somebody that focuses on medicine hatters needs and to sell our opportunity
00:28:02.960
in our great city to the rest of Canada so we can grow. Fantastic. Well, good luck on the campaign
00:28:09.680
trail out there. And thanks for coming on the show today, Drew. Again, last shout out to everybody.
00:28:14.720
Make sure if you live in medicine had to get a sign for Drew Barnes, uh, it does how it does help.
00:28:20.560
The science of it tends to be that if you have a law and sign up it, you know, it's not going to make
00:28:24.880
someone look at it and say, Oh, I'm suddenly now very interested in Drew Barnes, but other people
00:28:29.440
on your street who likes the way that you think as a person, and they see you put up a sign for a
00:28:33.920
candidate, it makes them more likely to look into them or vote for them. If you guys are of like
00:28:39.520
minds, but anyways, well, thank you for coming on drew. And we'll definitely have you back on,
00:28:44.320
uh, next time, hopefully as the mayor of medicine hat. That would be great. Why? Thank you very much.