Recall Mayor Jyoti Gondek! (Calgary's Union Mayor)
Episode Stats
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190.28639
Summary
Jody Gondek is the mayor of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. She's a radical, progressive, and deeply incompetent mayor who has been in office since she was first elected in the early 2000s. In this episode, I discuss how she got into office, why she got there, and why she should be recalled from office.
Transcript
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If you're a Calgarian and you're watching this video, I assume you're already very well aware
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of the petition floating around attempting to gather signatures to recall Calgary's radical
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progressive and deeply incompetent mayor, Mayor Jody Gondek. I fully encourage all of you to
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find a way of signing this petition or even getting involved to gather signatures yourselves.
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It's a very healthy practice in trying to hold corrupt politicians accountable,
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incompetent politicians accountable. At the same time, though, I will say that it's very
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unlikely that this recall movement will actually succeed. At the very least, it will gather a lot
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of data to be able to use to try and elect a real conservative mayoral candidate in the next
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election. But at the same time, the Recall Act in Alberta passed in 2021 under Kenny's UCP government
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effectively makes it so that you can't recall any politicians, at least not a politician in a large
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jurisdiction. The Recall Act in Alberta makes it so you need 40% of all registered voters to sign a
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petition within 60 days, a paper petition only, in order to get rid of an incompetent elected
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official. And even then, they still have a chance of being reelected in the recall election that is
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then triggered if you get the 40% of signatures. And they do, you know, signature verification,
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all the details of people who signed it verified. And if you even mess up on one name, and that puts you
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below 40%, the petition does not go through. It's incredibly unfair. And obviously, Kenny and the UCP,
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in the middle of COVID, only passed this in order to pretend that they take holding democratically
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elected officials accountable seriously. At the same time, they made it so it's effectively
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impossible to hold anyone accountable. You would need in Calgary 8,800 signatures per day,
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every day of the 60 day period in order to recall Gondek. There's just too many people who are checked
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out, even if they dislike her, they're too checked out to actually pay attention enough to sign the
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petition. At the same time, again, we might be able to get hundreds of thousands of Calgarians
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to show support for anyone but Gondek, who we can move towards a more conservative candidate later.
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But now I just want to turn my attention to just who Jody Gondek is. I don't care about who she is
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personally, doesn't matter to me. What I care about is who is she as a politician? What is her movement?
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And how did she get elected into office? Because if anything, she's a fairly who cares counselor
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before she was mayor. She's a high spending anti-police kind of mayor that usually would not
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appeal to a typical Calgary voter. Yes, you might say, well, Calgary voters voted in
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Bronconnier and Nenshi back in the day. But at the very least, they both acted like softer liberals.
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They didn't go too hard and end up sort of getting a bunch of conservatives out there to rally against
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them. Nenshi almost had conservatives rally against him in like 20, I think it was like 17 with Bill
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Smith. But at the same time, there just wasn't a strong enough conservative candidate in order to
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get conservatives to turn out. That was also the problem in 21. Farkas and Jeff Davison, at least in
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my opinion, ended up taking each other out because neither of them were the obvious conservative. So
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they ended up splitting each other's votes. And even if you combine them together, I think they would
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have still been beaten by Gondek. But regardless, I want to get into specifically who Gondek is.
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Who Gondek is, is effectively a union backed Manchurian candidate. I don't mean that in the
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conspiratorial way where she's just, you know, been activated to act as a hyper progressive when
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she really wasn't before. Everyone knew she was a hyper progressive candidate, but she ran as a
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candidate who cares about the taxpayer, not going to raise taxes, not going to do anything crazy,
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just going to rely on highly effective social services. But then she gets in and starts doing
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all this climate emergency stuff, bans plastic bags, starts trying to force people to pay for
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their bags at fast food restaurants, raises property taxes every single year she's been
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mayor despite running on a tax freeze, all this other stuff. And the reason that she flipped so
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quickly is because all of her money for her campaign, not directly for her campaign, but all the money
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that ended up trying to boost her campaign was mostly union money. And so she freaked out today on
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Twitter at the very good Ward 13 counselor, Dan McLean, because he simply shared a CBC article
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about all the money that went to third party advertisers, because the most amount of money
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went towards an organization that was effectively just a union front group in order to get Gondek and
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a slate of other union backed counselors onto council. So look at this. This is her response to Dan
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McLean, who didn't even exactly swipe at her directly. He just quoted the article and now she's mad.
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She said, my dude, maybe attending meetings in person instead of phoning in from a golf cart should
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be your top priority. And now while that's true, Dan McLean did skip a couple meetings and was golfing
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while like on Zoom. Yeah, that did happen. It's bad. At the same time, Dan McLean's a far better
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counselor than Jody Gondek ever was and would be a far better mayor if he was a mayor. I actually don't
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blame him for going golfing. Council's pretty incompetent and it's full of progressives who he cannot
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convinced on any policy. So if anything, I would say golf away, Dan, and even apologize for that.
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So her bringing it up just is very petty. But that's a response to Dan just bringing up the fact
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that Calgary's future, again, a union front group, was able to raise $1.7 million for the 2021 election.
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It had a bigger budget than I believe than any other mayoral campaign. And I think it was probably
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many of the mayoral campaigns combined. It had a bigger budget then. And a lot of its money came
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from unions. As a union or a corporation, you're actually allowed to donate up to $30,000 to a
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third-party advertiser. And every union associated with Calgary ended up maxing out donations to
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Calgary's future. And then many union members who are very loyal to the political causes the union backs
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also gave large donations, probably not $30,000 donations. But it was obvious that the vast
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majority of people who were basically funding Calgary's future were union activists or progressive
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activists. Jodi Gondek ran as a very bland, slightly liberal politician. And then when she gets into
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office, she starts attacking parents for not liking drag queen story hours and raising taxes. And it's
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purely because the people funding her, who she has to please in order for them to do the same
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third-party advertising racket for her again, wants her to raise taxes and do all this hyper-progressive
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stuff because she funnels a lot of money into more union jobs, raises the wages of union members just
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like Nenshi did. In 2020, when there was less work for any union member to do than ever before because
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it was during the pandemic, they were given like 16% wage raises. It was nuts. And Jodi Gondek has been
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doing the same thing. Union wages in Calgary, the civil workers' wages have been skyrocketing.
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There's a reason that although she fearmongers against developers and many developers funded
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third-party advertisers associated with Jeff Davison, they also funded her campaign because
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at the very least, she will potentially give individual developers favors to build housing
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on land that was previously blocked from actually being developed. It's not because that land shouldn't
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be developed, but it's because if you want anything done, you have to sidle up to certain politicians
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who might give you waivers to be able to speed up the approval process for those actual developments
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to start. But here is a chart that a friend of mine posted to Facebook showing just how much money
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was given to like Calgary's feature and spent. They had about $1.7 million given to them and they
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were advertising before and after the mayoral election, before in order to get progressives to unite
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behind them. And then after in order to push progressive policy during council sessions,
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but they spent $506,000 during the election. That's more, I believe, than the vast majority
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of the mayoral campaigns. As much as people go after Alberta Proud, oh, it's a conservative front
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group funded by conservatives to elect conservatives. They only spent $24,000. It's an obvious grassroots
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organization. If it wasn't grassroots, I think they would have raised more than a single maxed out
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donation. They did not. Calgary's future, when you look at the people elected council,
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it's almost all Calgary's future candidates outside of a few ridings where they backed a
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progressive in a riding that was just so conservative that they were obviously going to
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elect a man like Richard Poopmans. And even Dan McLean barely won. When I say barely won,
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he actually won with a pretty sizable margin, but he ran against an incumbent council candidate who was
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deeply incompetent and progressive. And then there was a Calgary future candidate that was also
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probably going to be incompetent, but also super progressive. So they took each other out. And
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then Dan McLean came up the middle on that ride and getting like 40% of the vote. That's great
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that happened. But in the future, in order to get rid of Gondek, either we need laws cracking down on
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how third party advertisers can get money. I don't think that corporations and unions should be giving
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money. Individuals should be giving money or at the very least open it up. So at least there can be
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municipal parties because the problem is in Calgary is that nobody seems like the union candidate
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on paper. They all run as a mild-mannered liberal, a mild-mannered, slightly progressive person who
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cares about the taxpayer. And then they get in and they immediately flip and just start doing everything
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they can for the unions. So at the very least, we should at least have a party brand that goes with
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each council candidate so that people can identify over time which ones are the lefties and which ones
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are the conservatives. Because conservatives will start winning in Calgary if the conservatives realize who
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the obvious conservatives in the area are. That's why for mayor, even if we don't have municipal parties,
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we need a conservative mayoral candidate who is the obvious conservative mayoral candidate.
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Rob Ford is deeply out of step with the typical liberal progressive culture of Toronto, but every
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single conservative got behind him when he won the mayoral race back in, I think, like 2013 or so,
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because he was the obvious conservative. The problem in Calgary is you had Jeff Davidson,
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you had Jeremy Farkas, you had Zane Novak, and you had a few other people who were decently
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conservative all splitting the vote. It's not the voters' fault for not getting behind one of them,
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it's frankly their fault for not being the obvious enough conservative that everyone can consolidate.
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They were each a little bit more conservative on a different issue, and then they were each kind
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of progressive on other issues. So the conservative vote ended up getting confused and not showing up.
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It's the problem with Aaron O'Toole federally, and it's the problem with our municipal candidates
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locally. Anyways, that's a bit of a rant for me, but this is really who Gondek is. She is a union
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front, and in future, Calgarians need a mayoral candidate for the conservatives who is an obvious
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conservative who can get by. We need a Peter Polyev or a Rob Ford to run for mayor so that we understand
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who the man is we need to back in order to defeat the progressive union activists. Anyways,
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that's it for me today. I don't believe the Recall Gondek people have an actual site up yet. I will
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endorse Kian Bexty's recallgondek.ca website. I believe he's just doing an online petition,
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but I believe he will be connecting you with the places you can go in order to sign the anti-Gondek
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official paper petition. It's key that at least we get 100,000 people to sign this to demonstrate
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that Calgarians do not like Gondek. Anyways, that should be it for me today. I'll see you guys in
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my next video. Again, I'm running for the Calgary Signal Hill Conservative Party nomination. My name
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is Wyatt Claypool. Check out my website in the description below. Also, if you live in that area
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of Calgary, it'd be great if you'd all back me because we need real conservatives representing strong
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conservative ridings. If you like my videos, you'll definitely like me in Parliament, so try and do that
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for me. Buy a membership. Vote for me if you live in Calgary Signal Hill.