Western Standard - June 01, 2022


CORY'S RANT: The insane climate plan proposed in Calgary.


Episode Stats

Length

5 minutes

Words per Minute

177.70305

Word Count

916

Sentence Count

51


Summary

Jody Gondek is the new mayor of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and she's already proving to be one of the worst elected mayor s in the city s history. She's a climate crusading environmentalist, and has a climate change plan that sets the city on the path to becoming a net zero city by 2050.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 The city of Calgary, and this applies to anybody with a municipal government, it really does.
00:00:04.320 So I mean, despite never having campaigned on it, the first thing Jody Gondek did as the
00:00:08.720 newly elected mayor of Calgary was to declare a climate emergency.
00:00:12.800 Her declaration was received with all the approval of a fart at a funeral.
00:00:17.260 Undeterred, Gondek continued with her climate crusade and managed to get the Calgary Event
00:00:22.460 Centre project cancelled within her first month as mayor due to rising costs, not the least of
00:00:28.080 which were new climate change measures being applied to the project unexpectedly by the city.
00:00:32.860 With all these efforts, Gondek managed to win the dubious honour of being the least popular
00:00:36.560 newly elected Calgarian mayor in living memory, as her approval numbers plummeted to 38% within
00:00:41.860 months of being elected.
00:00:43.500 There is an emergency in Calgary, and citizens want it addressed.
00:00:46.680 That emergency has nothing to do with the climate, however.
00:00:49.340 I mean, over the course of the pandemic, Calgary's downtown has deteriorated into something akin
00:00:53.540 to a dystopian scene from a movie.
00:00:55.580 Ground-level businesses are all graced with for-lease signs, while 30% of the office spaces
00:01:00.340 remain vacant.
00:01:01.660 Addicts and homeless people are everywhere, while discarded needles and human waste have
00:01:05.380 become common sites on the streets in downtown Calgary.
00:01:08.740 People don't feel safe downtown in response.
00:01:12.240 Calgary constantly attacks their police force, though, with threats of defunding and demoralizing
00:01:16.740 them with the ordered removal of a patch that commemorated fallen officers.
00:01:20.700 It's not going to make us any safer, guys.
00:01:22.080 Calgary's transit service is still at only 60% of the use it was prior to the pandemic.
00:01:27.840 The reason, again, for this is clear.
00:01:29.700 Addicts are passed out in bus shelters.
00:01:31.820 The only thing that drowns out the smell of piss on trains is the wafts of meth smoke
00:01:35.840 as it's openly consumed on the cars.
00:01:38.320 People have been randomly attacked on train platforms, and the city closed a number of
00:01:43.020 expensive train stations rather than deal with the addicts who had set up camp within them.
00:01:46.760 The city's latest effort to get people to use transit is an initiative to cut fares
00:01:51.020 in half for a couple of months.
00:01:52.820 They have also implemented a policy calling for heavy fines for a person if they can't
00:01:57.820 call a woman on a sidewalk.
00:01:59.340 But they have no plans on dealing with aggressive addicts.
00:02:02.460 Even if transit was free, people aren't going to ride it if they don't feel safe.
00:02:06.560 But these cloistered, naive city councillors will never understand this as they drive and
00:02:10.500 park in their secure indoor parkade.
00:02:12.200 Whether Calgarians like it or not, Gondek's climate crusade is the city's top priority,
00:02:17.620 and the climate plan the Calgary's administration released is shocking.
00:02:22.400 Calgary's climate change plan is set to come in at a cost of $87 billion over the next few
00:02:28.780 decades.
00:02:29.520 It's not a typo.
00:02:30.520 It's not misreading.
00:02:31.760 $87 billion in one city, with fewer than a million people of taxpaying status in the
00:02:37.700 city, that amounts to over $87,000 per taxpayer, or about $3,100 a year.
00:02:44.900 So, I mean, think of that in a household with a number of people.
00:02:48.200 What are we looking at?
00:02:48.780 $7,000 tax increase to do this?
00:02:50.920 The plan sets an impossible bar of becoming a net zero city in emissions by 2050, along with
00:02:56.780 forcing 60% of Calgarians to travel without personal vehicles.
00:03:00.360 They will have somehow eliminated all non-electrical vehicles by then, or as well, by the way.
00:03:07.100 New building codes and retrofitting is going to cost a fortune.
00:03:10.160 Calgary is already in an economic crisis, and these ludicrous regulations are going to
00:03:13.340 make the city an investment pariah.
00:03:15.440 Neighboring municipalities have been reaping the benefits of Calgary's woke administration,
00:03:19.380 as citizens and businesses alike have been fleeing the city to escape the taxes and regulation.
00:03:24.200 The city's latest plan is going to cause nothing short of an outright evacuation.
00:03:27.180 The bill for the city's climate action dreams are only going to be filled with massive tax
00:03:32.680 increases upon businesses and homes.
00:03:35.460 The actions of the city are only going to exacerbate the existing problems downtown.
00:03:39.320 Calgary's downtown is going to be increasingly morbid, and budgets are going to fall short
00:03:42.820 as producers flee the city.
00:03:44.980 Calgary's myopic.
00:03:47.020 Mayor and city council will likely only respond with further tax hikes to fill the budget void.
00:03:50.940 They can't seem to think any farther than that.
00:03:52.720 This city, the once and great thriving city of Calgary, is on the path of becoming another
00:03:58.580 Detroit, or maybe San Francisco, where one has to avoid stepping in human excrement while
00:04:02.560 trying to navigate through the endless tent cities.
00:04:05.140 Calgary's far from alone in this.
00:04:06.600 Many municipalities have allowed their governance to be taken over by delusional, woke politicians,
00:04:11.380 and we're all paying a hard price for it.
00:04:13.300 And in the end, the responsibility still falls on the voters.
00:04:15.440 If we keep refusing to pay attention to who's running for office, it's inevitable that a
00:04:20.600 gang of clowns is going to rise to the top, as they have in Calgary.
00:04:23.760 We keep our eyes too focused on federal and provincial politics at times and forget who's
00:04:27.860 controlling our lives locally.
00:04:29.720 For that electoral error, Calgary and many other cities are on the road to economic ruin,
00:04:34.140 and it won't do a damn thing to help the environment.
00:04:36.960 Pay attention, folks.
00:04:38.140 It's only going to get worse.
00:04:39.300 We'll see you next time.