Western Standard - Anonymous letter blocks new Calgary councillor from key board

00:00:00.000 good evening western standard viewers and welcome to hanaford a weekly politics show it is thursday

00:00:22.720 november the 20th sometimes what seems obvious to people who work hard pay their taxes and play

00:00:28.960 by the rules doesn't seem obvious to the people who get elected.

00:00:33.080 In many cities across Canada, councils were raising the Palestinian flag

00:00:38.020 as though there was something worth celebrating in the terrorist gang 0.96

00:00:41.940 that seeks the destruction of Jews, not just in Israel, but everywhere.

00:00:46.020 If you haven't seen the film Nuremberg, go take a look. 0.98

00:00:48.620 There's a nasty bit in there in the middle,

00:00:51.460 but that's what the Jews have experienced within the last hundred years.

00:00:55.140 now they have a homeland and then they get attacked by their neighbors so anyway calgary hoisted the

00:01:01.540 palestinian flag last saturday with me today is landon johnston newly elected counselor for ward

00:01:07.700 14. landon welcome to the show thank you for having me well first congratulations on your win

00:01:14.340 i appreciate that the word on the ground was that you worked pretty hard for that you were very

00:01:19.540 visible but i guess nothing would have been more visible in your campaign to recall the former

00:01:25.540 mayor uh jody gondek um do you think that might have had something to do with uh name recognition

00:01:33.780 i would think it probably did have a little bit to do with it but that's not why you did the recall

00:01:39.620 no definitely not no no tell us why you i mean i know you've spoken before on this but

00:01:45.620 what was what most people don't bother they just don't vote you know you bothered why did you go

00:01:52.500 after the mayor i think like a lot of people i was just frustrated um and it's just the way i

00:01:58.140 grew up was you know there's one thing to be frustrated but then there's one thing to do

00:02:03.320 something about it and so like uh my sisters and my mom you know we see a problem we try and fix it

00:02:09.760 So when I saw a problem, I saw a mayor that was not a great leader, to be honest.

00:02:17.700 I just felt we could have done better than that.

00:02:19.660 I felt she had a good chance to be the first female mayor in the city. 0.99

00:02:24.380 And she just let that slip past.

00:02:26.420 And I mean, it was just one thing after another with her, just very divisive.

00:02:30.960 And I just had enough of it.

00:02:32.340 and i mean i saw a piece of legislation that was questionable but still accessible to everybody to

00:02:39.860 use and i thought why not why not right so that you know obviously weren't successful a good try

00:02:46.580 but no cigar at some point you said you know i need to get on council why did you want to be on

00:02:54.740 council i guess again it's just you you want to fix something and then okay what do you want to

00:03:02.980 fix on council everything right okay yeah you have my vote now yeah uh let's be specific let's start

00:03:11.300 talking about the flag thing first first of all i mean all right um i guess they took a vote and

00:03:16.740 decided not to make it a priority they'll get to it in due course meanwhile you know everybody's

00:03:22.100 wanting to fly their home country flag is this even a good thing not for me i i don't i don't

00:03:30.260 necessarily i mean i agree with having any foreign flag being flown um not any specific ones and then

00:03:37.860 it's up to the discretion of the mayor for the past since uh 2016 i think it was the discretion

00:03:44.980 of the mayor on which flags to fly right and so we ended up actually doing a little deep dive and

00:03:51.220 to see how many flags actually have been denied so I can share with you that

00:03:56.320 later is interesting you know the the the decline they they use the word

00:04:04.900 decline application right and so some of them were like Star Trek flag some of

00:04:10.600 them would have been pride flags and transgender flags that were actually

00:04:14.200 denied because you can only have it up once a year on that flight pole so it

00:04:18.160 was interesting to see the there's a list about 10-15 flags that actually have been not denied in

00:04:23.520 the past one of them was like church of christ so religious reasons or whatever but it really

00:04:27.920 ultimately comes down to discretion of the mayor and so for me it was the process in which led to

00:04:34.720 the palestinian flag going up that was frustrating for a lot of the council members as well being fed

00:04:40.960 a date that the applicant actually filed was the 29th or 30th or whatever and then

00:04:49.200 you know the confusion was is well then who decided to change it to the 15th or whatever

00:04:55.360 right um and so that would have

00:05:00.160 brought it before when the mayor was going to bring forward a motion to this is all

00:05:06.400 getting a little inside uh inside the council chamber but i mean what's the real issue here

00:05:11.040 is that they uh that that they wanted to fly the palestinian flag um well the mayor would went

00:05:18.740 around and talked to all the counselors asking i don't really know if he asked us what our thoughts

00:05:23.620 were if if we were for it or against it um what did he ask you i can't remember i'll be honest

00:05:30.040 like it was a bit of a rush but he did come to the office and say hey we're gonna um fly the

00:05:35.240 flag. And I said, Well, why? Right? First off, like, you know,

00:05:40.760 you have the discretion. And now to be fair, I didn't actually

00:05:43.400 say this to him. I just he said, let's let's we're gonna fly the

00:05:47.720 flag. Carney recognized Palestine. And so he's gonna

00:05:53.900 follow with what Carney did. And again, I said, Okay, like, we

00:05:58.560 can deal with this through the proper channels, he ran out and

00:06:02.240 it whatever um but the real process kind of started after he left where we started talking

00:06:07.720 with other counselors and they were kind of being fed similar stories but a little again it was just

00:06:12.940 confusion right what why are we flying this flag right should we not maybe think about it should

00:06:18.560 we not have more time to um debate it right and that was why it actually was denied is just that

00:06:26.180 the other counselors felt um you know we should we should talk about it put it to the public to

00:06:31.140 the side um i don't it's the process is what bugged me right either fly all the flags or don't

00:06:37.620 fly any flags right and for me as a calgarian canadian there should only be one flag up there

00:06:43.540 maybe two maybe three but outside of that um okay so your people three flags well canada alberta

00:06:54.060 the city i mean and then treaty seven wants to get a flag up there the metis want to get a flag

00:06:59.600 up there right it's just there's a lot of stakeholders in our country that could have a

00:07:04.640 flag up there um and flags are important to us like i the canadian flag is actually an interesting

00:07:12.920 flag is that three or four years ago or five years ago it was used as a symbol for let's say

00:07:19.380 more right-wing people to rally around during the covid truck trucker protests right and then that

00:07:26.000 kind of swapped around when Kearney got in you know Canada first and now that flag is more on

00:07:31.880 the left side of of the aisle right and so but I like the idea that the flag is a rallying point

00:07:37.780 right people like or don't like as a rallying point why would you want to fly the ballast

00:07:43.440 exactly well that's the problem right why would we fly a flag that was divisive right and the

00:07:48.680 mayor did have the opportunity to not fly it and so that was a frustrating point is like well

00:07:53.840 So why don't we just not fly it and then still have the process?

00:07:58.560 So welcome to the rude world of local politics. 0.95

00:08:01.200 Yeah.

00:08:01.360 Yes.

00:08:02.420 Okay.

00:08:02.840 Well, talking of the rude world of local politics,

00:08:06.560 I gather that you were blocked from sitting on the board of, what,

00:08:12.860 the Calgary Housing, is it an authority?

00:08:16.020 So it's a wholly owned business.

00:08:18.640 So the city of Calgary owns Calgary Housing.

00:08:21.140 It's had its name changed recently.

00:08:23.840 um can't remember what it was called before but uh but basically last year i was uh i went through

00:08:28.820 the procurement process for the for my first time um and i won a contract through calgary housing

00:08:34.780 and that was a few years you're uh what is it that what is your business right so i'm a hvac

00:08:40.300 owner so we do plumbing heating air conditioning uh duct cleaning so for past 13 15 years i've

00:08:48.260 been doing hvac in calgary right so you know the ins and outs of what goes on and when you go to

00:08:53.720 house you have to fix things up and how the billing and everything else works yeah i've got

00:08:58.280 um two tickets and i've got my plumbing apprenticeship so i've got refrigeration hvac

00:09:03.960 i've got my gas ticket and working on my plumbing ticket maybe not so much right now but um yeah and

00:09:09.640 so i got a procurement uh through the city of calgary and then i started the contract and it

00:09:16.520 just from day one it went it went sideways right the very first interview i had with the the team

00:09:22.760 lead um i can't remember his name but he basically said oh you're that guy right the recall guy but

00:09:31.060 he's right and so and in my experience that could either go one of two ways right you have uh the

00:09:38.020 mayor's fans and then the mayor's non-fans right in my opinion this guy was a mayor fan and so he

00:09:44.620 made it very clear that he's upset with me and all this and i was like i don't know how to deal

00:09:49.320 with this and it was frustrating so he ended up getting taken off of the project right and so

00:09:56.620 obviously there was a conflict with him with me and then again the next guy that came in it was

00:10:01.520 just one thing after another just the mismanagement of the entire process it was very frustrating

00:10:06.220 to be giving such a large contract but then have to deal with such mismanagement

00:10:13.020 right and so i it was stressful right so but in the end the job got done in the end they i believe

00:10:21.760 um they lost the contract to the province so the province actually came in and and took the

00:10:27.760 contract away from city of calgary or calgary housing and then i finished the contract through

00:10:33.420 the province and it was actually the province who ended up who had always owned the houses

00:10:37.960 and it was their contract it was just being facilitated through calgary housing yes right

00:10:43.000 and so i i did finish the contract um back in the spring i mean it took about four months longer

00:10:49.240 than it should have um but i mean just it was it was torture but you got paid the job got done and

00:10:56.600 you got paid should have been the end of the story yeah permanent everything was done you get elected

00:11:01.640 to council on the rebound from this uh actually i was i would call it a successful recall campaign

00:11:08.760 in as much as you even got it to happen. But leaving that aside, now you're on council,

00:11:14.920 and did you ask to be on the board of this particular Calgary Housing Authority?

00:11:19.640 It was a big reason why I got hired as a councillor, right? People were very well aware

00:11:24.600 of my issues with Calgary Housing. I talked to people in the ward.

00:11:27.720 Yeah, I talked to them about doors. They'd always ask me where there's mismanagement and

00:11:33.240 waste and that. And I said, well, I have first-hand experience of this, right? And the whole idea of

00:11:37.480 I mean, being on the board isn't too.

00:11:40.260 I'm sure that wasn't the only reason that you ran for counsel.

00:11:42.780 No, but it was a big part of it because there's waste all over

00:11:46.540 and people are wondering why their taxes are going up.

00:11:48.720 And then me seeing firsthand where their taxes are going.

00:11:52.380 And I could be like, well, if I can get in there, expose the mismanagement,

00:11:58.040 maybe we can deal with the level of taxes.

00:12:01.800 Right.

00:12:02.280 That was my idea.

00:12:03.700 Right.

00:12:03.840 And so, yeah, I put my name on the list for committees.

00:12:11.340 And again, it's the process that we're dealing with as council members.

00:12:15.500 So on Friday, I handed my list for which committees I want to be on.

00:12:21.640 At some point during the weekend, a letter was sent to the mayor, right?

00:12:27.600 just in dark of night he got a letter um and then the date of the the organizational meeting

00:12:35.140 he brings me behind closed doors and says hey i received the letter from calgary housing and i said

00:12:41.720 oh well i kind of think i know what that letter is going to say right and so um and i was very

00:12:49.740 vocal with calgary housing of my disdain for their operation right i was very clear about that

00:12:56.780 um they they called me a bully right they said i would bully them um i all i ever said to them was

00:13:03.180 that if i ever become counselor i'm gonna audit you guys right well i was like right and they

00:13:08.560 didn't like that the average snivel service would take that as as bullying i guess that's fine they

00:13:13.300 call bullying whatever i'm never gonna sugarcoat it let's just be very specific about what's

00:13:18.180 happened here you are you run for council right uh part of your engagement with the public says

00:13:25.200 you know i actually have some insight into how things you've done in city hall and the things

00:13:29.120 that i don't like and you wouldn't like it either because whenever there's waste up go your taxes

00:13:36.000 people said you the man we need somebody like that who knows stuff to ask the right questions

00:13:42.080 and maybe bring about effective change you then go get elected you get elected quite handsomely

00:13:48.240 as a matter of fact you're then put down to go on the committee where you can

00:13:53.600 and do the most good.

00:13:55.800 And the administration, somebody within the administration,

00:14:00.680 actually says, oh, we don't want him.

00:14:02.980 So who's actually doing the job?

00:14:04.940 Who's appointing people to committees?

00:14:06.760 Is it the ones that the city administration likes?

00:14:11.480 Or is it actually the mayor and council?

00:14:15.320 Something seems a little...

00:14:16.500 Well, no, the precedent has now been set

00:14:18.680 that administration can pick and choose who they want to be on a council.

00:14:21.840 right as long as they put confidential on any memo they send to the mayor the mayor can now

00:14:26.680 again at his discretion he could have waited on that letter because he read it he's the only one

00:14:32.220 that actually had read this letter um and i do have to be careful because a lot of what was said

00:14:38.920 was said in camera and again that was something he promised not to do as much as the last mayor did

00:14:44.120 it was one of the first things he did was go in camera right and again it was it was a um i can

00:14:50.020 use the word prejudice because that's a behavioral word right and so there was prejudice in camera

00:14:55.720 right and so again i felt that that kept me off of a board um now if you look i did take my name

00:15:02.360 off of the committee but i can't talk about why i did that because of the reasons we're in camera

00:15:08.780 right but and the whole purpose of me bringing this notice of motion forward was to release

00:15:13.620 uh the confidentiality of in camera right so as long as it's in the public we can talk about it

00:15:19.240 And so the idea was to get that memo read to everybody, which I'm still trying to figure out if I can release it, because I had to ask the mayor to allow the rest of council to see what that letter said after we had already picked.

00:15:33.740 Right. So the waters have been muddied. Right. The council now thinks, well, maybe there was a conflict of interest or whatever.

00:15:40.220 So I'm all about finding the truth. I have nothing to hide. I didn't do anything wrong with Calgary housing.

00:15:44.940 I might have been abrasive.

00:15:46.280 I might have been frustrated.

00:15:49.240 But if people and I've been asking for a third party mediator for over a year to look into the allegations that I've made and the allegations that Calgary Housing has made.

00:15:57.940 And I 100 percent believe I'll be cleared.

00:15:59.880 People understand that there is some frustrations and some misdoings at Calgary Housing.

00:16:05.280 And if it's basically based off of what I saw personally, I think people would.

00:16:11.460 So what what committees do they put you on in the end?

00:16:14.940 um there's the intergovernmental committee the federation of canadian municipalities

00:16:21.980 um the pension committee i'm excited about that one committee yeah

00:16:29.100 i could do some good in there too yeah i believe you might yeah no but it's just it's just uh i

00:16:34.700 can sense your frustration and i tend to sympathize it with the one thing that you

00:16:38.700 actually know something about you can make a serious input into but they don't want to hear

00:16:42.460 from you i should i should be on that and you know i just want to have the fair chance of being on

00:16:47.340 that committee i don't know if the rest of the council would vote did you know that the front

00:16:51.100 that administration might be a problem before you always okay i i have more how did you know what

00:16:57.980 did you know well i filed almost a thousand freedom of information act requests right across canada

00:17:03.580 and a big portion of that was in the city of calgary right so i have

00:17:08.380 on every single department i've got thousands and thousands and thousands of emails whatever

00:17:16.340 it's just as a hvac owner who works hard i've got time to play and this is how i i play is i

00:17:23.140 like to investigate things i like to find the truth um in london i mean whether you're forthcoming

00:17:28.100 if you have these uh information requests and they actually get back and give you meaningful

00:17:33.000 information only if you flood them with enough that they can't redact everything right and so

00:17:40.420 if you ask for 10 pieces of paper they'll redact everything properly right but if you ask for a

00:17:47.360 thousand pieces of paper they might miss something so um yeah it was very interesting to to see what

00:17:52.360 i found out during these little investigations um which again i'm not here to burn the system down

00:17:58.220 But if nobody's in there who understands the problems, then nobody's going to fix it, right?

00:18:04.180 Well, I mean, it sounds like you have some experience of dealing with council that goes way back before you were elected.

00:18:14.240 So do you think the council actually runs the city?

00:18:21.000 like does the administration take direction from the council

00:18:25.900 or is it kind of the administration says,

00:18:28.440 well, here's what you can do and gives council safe choices?

00:18:32.280 Well, I went through orientation.

00:18:33.940 That was an eye-opener.

00:18:37.760 Oh, this is where they tell you what questions you can't ask?

00:18:40.300 Yeah, and so I was shut down twice in orientation

00:18:43.360 by administration for questions I wanted to ask them.

00:18:48.180 You were the elected representative.

00:18:49.540 oh yeah it was very disturbing right um so they just say no you can't ask about that yeah so they

00:18:55.460 they hired an air back you up on these things no and that's the frustrating part right he he allowed

00:19:01.260 administration to take control of what council and council can't do right and uh you know he he

00:19:13.560 He made promises that he has her back and he's going to fight for us and stuff.

00:19:16.640 But, I mean, it just seems council is a very ceremonial position right now.

00:19:24.680 I wonder how many voters actually understood this when they went to the ballots

00:19:28.260 and whether more people in Calgary would have gone to the ballots

00:19:33.800 if they knew just what was going on.

00:19:36.420 I mean, we have been saying, there's been lots of people saying

00:19:39.660 that the administration is in control over there in City Hall

00:19:43.440 and that the city council tends to be a rubber stamp

00:19:47.160 for just choosing between pre-approved options.

00:19:50.960 Now you're saying that based on what you've seen so far

00:19:54.540 in your freedom of information requests,

00:19:57.780 in which they try to conceal information

00:20:01.960 that frankly should be available to the public,

00:20:04.040 that's a public organization,

00:20:05.740 and now you're elected and you get told by administration

00:20:09.160 that you're supposed to be controlling what you can

00:20:11.880 and what you can't do.

00:20:13.440 and then you get uh and then the one part where you might actually have some specialized knowledge

00:20:19.940 that would be helpful they shut you off yep well landon it's going to be a long four years

00:20:28.060 i'm not going to waste a second of it right i'm i'm okay with uh doing what i have to do um

00:20:35.700 and honestly besides my little frustrations with government in general i'm not i'm not a

00:20:43.160 small government person i'm just a smaller government person right um but our ward 14

00:20:50.040 has been a piggy bank for the rest of the city for a very long time we have no major capital projects

00:20:55.000 that people can actually use or can enjoy right and so my goal was to to bring engagement back

00:21:02.520 right it was ward 14 i mean for people who don't know the city as well right maybe

00:21:07.080 what part of the city we talked about that has no capital projects yeah so we're in the south

00:21:11.720 we're uh basically south of anderson okay and uh yeah it goes all the way down to legacy uh we've

00:21:18.540 got mackenzie town so it's awesome we surround fish creek it's a great place uh that i've lived

00:21:24.300 almost yes my entire time and okay so you're saying that the tax base down there is making

00:21:29.640 possible a lot of things in other parts of the city and you know i should cost them a lot that's

00:21:33.820 right and so my goal is to bring that engagement back um i'm telling everybody to think big right

00:21:39.720 uh the city owes us a lot right and i want to make sure we get what we're owed right um i get

00:21:45.880 we're not going to get rid of taxes but there is funds available for fun right recreational center

00:21:50.840 like we don't have a pool we don't have a nice drink we don't have um any library we don't have

00:21:55.960 any city-ran facility the only one in the entire city that ward 14 does not have any sort of

00:22:02.840 facility then that that's frustrating for a lot of new families down there where we have to go

00:22:07.320 somewhere else to go to a library go to a pool go to a skating rink go wherever right so i want to

00:22:12.600 bring that back i want to bring some value back to word 14 and that's what i'm going to fight for

00:22:16.740 i'm going to bring that same level of fight that i would bring you know to that recall i did to

00:22:23.040 any frustration i want to bring that fight for word 14 right it's just we've been misrepresented

00:22:28.440 for a very long time um the leadership is just wasn't there for in my opinion a long time and

00:22:35.180 that's why there was such a a small voter turnout just frustration a lot of fatigue a lot of

00:22:41.100 frustration and i think that is why i won i think people did appreciate the fight in me and they

00:22:49.060 want that fight to to fight for them so that's what i'm gonna do so good luck landon yeah well

00:22:55.360 then you got elected now you're finding out what it's like in there stay the course appreciate it

00:23:02.440 four years yep welcome yeah the western standard thank you sir

00:23:07.000 and for the western standard i'm nigel hatterford thank you for being with us

Western Standard - November 21, 2025

Anonymous letter blocks new Calgary councillor from key board

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