Western Standard - Edmonton Mayoral candidate Mike Nickel

00:00:00.000 Yeah, I'm sitting tonight with, well, or at least speaking with Ward 11 councillor from

00:00:07.400 Edmonton, Mike Nickel. The last time I spoke with Mike, he was in the soup fighting with

00:00:12.900 some members of city council and such who were trying to censor some of his social media views

00:00:18.280 online. These kinds of battles are pretty familiar to us in Calgary too, with city councils and

00:00:23.140 mayors. But now we're into the 2021 election year. Your mayor is not running for re-election,

00:00:31.140 so you're going to get a new one one way or another. And Mike has thrown his hat into the

00:00:36.740 ring. So thanks for joining me, Mike. No problem. Happy to be here. It's funny you should talk about

00:00:44.620 the code of conduct because this was all about some memes I put out just on my own platforms,

00:00:51.600 my own stuff I pay for. Some listeners might recall, some viewers might recall. And so they

00:00:58.800 sent a motion. It didn't pass. And I didn't get sanctioned. Unlike your poor ward councillor down

00:01:05.680 there. God, poor Mr. Farkas. I just shake my head. I don't think I've ever been escorted out of city 1.00

00:01:12.900 chambers. I don't think I can top that one. And anyways, we had a review of our social policy and

00:01:19.940 council just trashed it zero to 13. They said, no, we're not going to bother. Social media policy.

00:01:26.540 Yeah. They dipped their toes a little too far there. But I mean, it's a good subject to start

00:01:30.780 with because in a sense, and not that way in particular, but as people like to often remind,

00:01:36.620 I mean, a mayor represents a lot, but they are only one vote on council. But a very important role of

00:01:41.820 mayor, of course, is a leadership role. And it's keeping a unified, you know, to a degree unified and

00:01:46.560 functional council. And I know in Calgary, we've had a hornet's nest for 10 years. They spend more

00:01:51.340 time fighting with each other and, you know, splitting on petty issues than getting things

00:01:57.640 done. It really frustrates us as constituents. And I imagine you do some of the same things at

00:02:02.440 Edmonton. So as a mayor, what could you bring in to address those kinds of issues?

00:02:06.260 Well, I'll be honest with you. We have the exact opposite problem. We have a block on council

00:02:10.720 that votes with the mayor, and in my opinion, rubber stamps, whatever the administration puts

00:02:15.480 forward. I don't see very, I don't see the critical thinking, the policy competition that's

00:02:21.300 really deserving of what a city council should be. The great thing about municipal politics is,

00:02:26.300 is that you don't have to be a new Democrat or UCP or you can just be yourself. And for example,

00:02:33.800 half my ward, ward 11 is covered by Rachel Notley, you know, leader of the opposition, 1.00

00:02:39.200 and they vote for me, because I tend to be very pragmatic, and I tend to rock the boat a bit.

00:02:46.040 And maybe that's what they like. Maybe they like the fact that I challenge our administration. And

00:02:50.800 that gets me in trouble quite often with my colleagues on council as they moan that,

00:02:56.920 oh my goodness, you can't say this, you can't do that. I've just gotten to the point now where a lot

00:03:03.320 of people have asked me to run for mayor. And I just stopped talking to council for the last,

00:03:07.820 for the next part of this election cycle. And I think we just got to take it to the streets.

00:03:13.080 Six of the six of them aren't coming back. And so we're gonna have pretty much a brand new council.

00:03:17.580 I think some incumbents are in trouble.

00:03:20.080 Yeah, well, it's something you mentioned there. So there is a philosophical issue. And again,

00:03:24.440 we do have that in Calgary as well, with the roles of administration versus the elected officials,

00:03:31.040 like we would have in Calgary, they would spend day after day fighting over individual applications

00:03:36.040 for basement suites. Yet at the same, they've changed that finally. But when it came to anything

00:03:43.180 from city administration, councillors would be chided by the mayor for daring to question the

00:03:47.380 representatives from city administration coming in, it seems it was backwards. At least I would 0.72

00:03:51.480 envision a city council role should be high level. And and administration should be dealing with

00:03:56.120 these more micromanaging aspects. But they've made it almost blasphemous to question administration.

00:04:01.160 And I'm guessing you have some similar challenges there.

00:04:04.120 Absolutely. And if you're not of a particular, what do we call downtown core urbanist agenda,

00:04:12.040 you're you're the you're a bad person. For example, if you live in the suburbs, drive a truck,

00:04:16.600 have a nice lawn, you know, those kinds of things that I am, right, I'm quite proud of those things.

00:04:21.880 And I don't think we should have to apologize for them. Instead, we're talking about gondolas,

00:04:27.000 bike lanes, and and funiculars here. So it's really coming down now to just you just can't take what

00:04:33.960 the administration says every day, because government doesn't drive the solutions we do.

00:04:38.760 And that seems to be the divide. And I think on our mutual city councils, there's some people that

00:04:43.160 think bigger governments the answer. And some people like me believe smaller governments the answer,

00:04:47.880 but with rigorous metrics. Great. Well, and you're assuming that you win this race, you're gonna

00:04:53.720 be coming into some very challenging times. What a bizarre time to be alive. Everybody's dealing

00:04:59.960 with more scared of winning than losing. I guess that's what every politician should feel.

00:05:06.040 And I'll be quite honest. But you know, I I've been in business a long time and faced many challenges.

00:05:13.160 I see nothing but opportunity for us. But this is the time for that complete mechanical

00:05:18.680 and philosophical overhaul of our of our cities. I think Edmonton and Calgary should be hunting

00:05:24.360 together. I think Edmonton and Calgary should be better on the value for tax agenda. So we can go to

00:05:30.440 the province and say, you know what, stop pointing fingers at the province who's ever in power,

00:05:35.400 we're going to take care of our own problems. And you just need to get out of our way.

00:05:38.920 And I think that that is something we need to change and stop putting our hands out to the

00:05:43.000 other orders of government and start dealing with our own problem.

00:05:46.760 Well, it's a near and dear to my heart that the way you're speaking, you know, it applies to the

00:05:51.800 energy sector where I do some work and things. I mean, we're not asking for government to buy

00:05:56.040 pipelines and manage our oil field. We just want you out of the way. I promise you, we could do this

00:05:59.960 well on our own.

00:06:00.760 Well, here's our challenge, Kerry, is that we seem to be fighting a culture that has taken over our 0.99

00:06:07.160 municipal councils, where it's big government, big ants, big government answers, tax and spend.

00:06:13.160 And what I think people are starting to discover is that they can't deliver the value. But matter

00:06:17.160 of fact, I argue quite often, government's terrible at solving complex problems. They're good at writing

00:06:22.600 checks. They're great at writing checks, especially when it's your money. But they're terrible at solving

00:06:27.640 complex problems. And that's where you have to push power and authority down to either industry or the

00:06:33.000 community leader, or who's ever on the files, because they know the answers. And then but you got to have

00:06:39.320 discipline and rigor, you cannot, we're so tight now in our budgets, we cannot afford frivolous things. And this is

00:06:47.960 where this is very going to be very difficult. You know, I'm not afraid to say no. And some people love me for it. Some

00:06:55.160 people hate me for it. But it's got to be done. But you know, we get back in quickly to your question of

00:07:02.200 leadership, you have to lead with good ideas. And then you got to put it to council to mechanically vote

00:07:08.840 on whether they like it or not. Just recently, I put out a policy paper calling for an independent

00:07:13.880 project management office, off of Office City Council. So basically, what I'm calling for is a

00:07:20.200 creation of a chapter nine company that just delivers large capital, would have its own board,

00:07:26.120 it would have its own governance structure. And we would separate the administration that designs

00:07:32.120 and builds the budget. And these guys would actually actually deliver it because we've had

00:07:37.400 tremendous problems building anything on time on schedule, particularly if it's over 100 million

00:07:41.960 dollars. You can check it out on my website, Mike Nickel.ca, it's called the IPMO. But what you really

00:07:48.360 get out of this, Corey, is that in the long run, what happens is not only do you save money, we think

00:07:53.240 we can save 10 to 20% on our large capital. But you get what I call policy competition. If the

00:07:59.480 administration comes up with a budget that's unrealistic, they can send it back. If they come

00:08:04.360 up with specs that are unrealistic, they can send it back. If they come up with a ridiculous schedule,

00:08:09.880 they need to send it back. Enough of these boondolls. I don't know what you have some capital 0.96

00:08:15.160 and project going south. But I can tell you what our LRT lines up here, they're not going so good.

00:08:21.080 No, we've been similar up here, they did the West LRT, I think it came in at double the budget. And

00:08:26.360 the green line that we keep talking about, they keep saying it's not, it hasn't blown the budget,

00:08:31.880 but what we have done is cut the size in half, and we're still going to spend $5 billion. Well,

00:08:36.200 in my measure, that's a blown budget.

00:08:37.880 And here's our challenge, right? You're not an LRT line builder guy, right? And neither am I.

00:08:45.160 So we got to, we got to create something out there that we can create some friction,

00:08:49.080 some policy friction between the established administration, the people who actually have to

00:08:53.480 deliver it. And then council can have two points of view. Right now, we just have administration's

00:08:59.320 point of view. And like you said, they just tend to rubber stamp that how dare you question the

00:09:03.960 administration? Well, you should. But you need information to do that, good information to do

00:09:08.200 that. So who knows, they may agree. But sometimes I think they will not.

00:09:13.800 Yeah, well, I mean, you don't necessarily want an adversarial relationship with administration. I mean,

00:09:19.080 the goal is to work together and do something. But as you said, the rubber stamp, I mean, we know

00:09:23.320 administration can put out, in fact, often puts out some stinkers. I mean, that's, that's the nature of

00:09:28.200 bureaucrats. And maybe if they had some questioning, they could come up with some better things. So you've

00:09:33.080 come from a business perspective all the way through your, your political career. And I mean,

00:09:38.280 I think we agree that, I mean, small business, large business, but business in general is going

00:09:41.800 to be integral for the economic recovery from, from this, this pandemic mess, we're all in and

00:09:47.320 plus, you know, energy resource collapse and many things. So what as a mayor and city council do you

00:09:52.920 feel needs to be done and can be done to help facilitate businesses to recover and, you know,

00:09:57.160 really get the economic engine going again? Well, the first thing is, is that instead of handing out

00:10:02.200 grants to particular sectors or whatever, I strongly believe in tax relief for all, right?

00:10:07.240 That's residents, industrial and commercial property taxpayers. We have a real problem here

00:10:12.120 in Edmonton, where we've lost a lot of industrial commercial just to lower competitors in the region.

00:10:16.840 We have to get a handle on that because our assessment is in a lot of trouble. And then the

00:10:21.320 residential rate payer just needs to see, you just can't keep increasing the bill. We've had 20 years

00:10:26.680 of constant tax increases. And I've asked on council, when is, when does it stop? When is it enough?

00:10:32.760 Right. In the good time, you've heard this argument, Corey. Oh, times are good. We have to raise taxes.

00:10:37.640 Oh, times are bad. We have to raise taxes. Well, there's a third or cut services. That's the other

00:10:43.160 choice, right? There's a third answer and it's called productivity gains, right? As a business guy,

00:10:48.600 you know, we very often went to our frontline, our shops, our frontline staff and said,

00:10:52.840 here are the numbers. What do you think we need to tool up to get it done?

00:10:57.320 Right. And so I do think labor can drive a lot of our answers because they're not the enemy here.

00:11:02.600 Not I don't know what they're like in Calgary, but here my my unions offered to take zeros across

00:11:08.200 the board, several unions, as long as everyone got a zero percent tax increase. I don't know what they

00:11:12.680 said in Calgary, but I got two big unions here said we'll take zeros. If you give everybody else a

00:11:17.480 zero, let's share it. So that's how far we've come over here about just trying to drive that.

00:11:23.560 And then we have to then we have to focus on creating that regulatory environment where we're

00:11:28.520 just getting out of the way and enabling deals to be done. I very often point to a former mayor of

00:11:34.200 yours by the name of Dave Bronconi. Some people liked him, some people didn't. But I'll tell you

00:11:39.080 something that mayor knew how to make a deal happen. And he was good at it. And very often up here,

00:11:45.160 I'm jealous of Bronconi's ability to get business moving. And that's what it takes.

00:11:49.560 It takes some leadership and some people actually on council that knows how to read a cash flow

00:11:53.400 statement, I think. Well, I wasn't a big Bronconi fan, but I had to admire, as you said,

00:11:59.720 and he could put people together. That's kind of back to what I was talking about before. I mean,

00:12:03.720 council would still have their spats and their moments. But when push came to shove, they could tend

00:12:08.680 to collaborate and get some stuff done, which we really they're getting it done in Calgary now. But boy,

00:12:13.720 it's an ugly, ugly sausage making process. Yeah. And we don't have the time. I just put out a paper

00:12:20.360 where I say, you know, basically saying time is our most precious resource. You can't make any more of

00:12:24.760 it. You know, I knew a large contractor here. And I'll just tell you a little story. I met him in a

00:12:29.800 tile shop. I was in the stone business. And he was major big all across Western Canada. And

00:12:35.560 the guy was dying of cancer. Right. And he said, Mike, and we did work for him all the time. He said,

00:12:40.280 Mike, I give all my money back. If I could just have my health, that means more time. We're out of

00:12:45.400 time. We're out of money. And so we cannot afford these kind of venture kind of big government ideas.

00:12:52.600 No. So another challenge you're going to have getting more to the nuts and bolts is you're

00:12:56.520 campaigning during a pandemic. So have you got how are you going to approach this? I mean,

00:13:01.960 events are going to be a little more difficult to hold door knocking. Is it certainly challenging?

00:13:06.280 Just a little on how's the campaign going or what you may be looking forward to this year?

00:13:11.160 Well, obviously, on the mechanics side, we've been stepping up the social media presence quite a bit.

00:13:16.120 Just after this, I'm doing my podcast called Mic Check that we've been doing for a couple of years.

00:13:20.600 And it gets quite a quite a solid viewership. Let's just put it that way.

00:13:26.200 And then, you know, it's minus 30 out. So we really haven't taken to doing lit drops and the

00:13:31.720 standard sort of things. We're just going to continue to put out some good policy and drive

00:13:37.160 it through social media till it warms up a little bit. And then we can actually do some

00:13:40.680 lit dropping and some COVID safe door knocking. So you're in for a busy year.

00:13:47.960 So maybe I'll just close off, you know, where can we then just repeat, you know, where we can find

00:13:52.680 more info on your campaign and what you're up to and staying up to date. And I'm sure we'll check in

00:13:56.520 again later. You can go to MikeNickel.ca and check check it out. And we've got the IPMO on there and

00:14:03.880 some of our other policy statements. You should be seeing something pretty soon again, hopefully in

00:14:09.400 about two weeks, another major policy announcement that really will speak to some of the core Edmonton

00:14:15.160 values with regards to our environmental policy. There is a better way. And it's going to be one of

00:14:21.000 these cases. Well, you know, provincial government, you just need to get out of the way and let us take

00:14:25.480 care of it. And I think we can. Great. Well, thanks very much for

00:14:29.080 talking with me. And I hope we can check in with you again as the campaign unfolds and

00:14:33.160 looking forward to watching to see how it goes. Anytime.

Western Standard - February 12, 2021

Edmonton Mayoral candidate Mike Nickel

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