Western Standard - HANNAFORD： Do Calgary's new councillors have it in them to repeal open zoning？

00:00:00.000 Good evening, Western Standard viewers, and welcome to Hannaford, a weekly politics show

00:00:21.000 of the Western Standard. It is Thursday, October the 23rd. In Alberta, we've just had municipal

00:00:27.840 and school board elections, and we see a lot of new faces. But in Edmonton and Calgary, at least,

00:00:34.220 to me, it doesn't look like the political center of gravity has changed much. But I could be wrong.

00:00:41.820 Here with me tonight is somebody who will know, Patrick Polyerve, who for the past four years was

00:00:47.780 a political staffer in Calgary City Hall. Welcome, Patrick. Good to be here, Nigel. So look, Patrick,

00:00:54.800 first thing people are going to want to know, Polyerve, are you part of that family?

00:01:01.980 Proud to say that I am. Yes, indeed, I'm Pierre Polyerve's brother, and grew up with him in South

00:01:06.960 Calgary here. All right. Well, thank you, Patrick. Thought we better lay that out right away. Patrick,

00:01:12.400 after all the outrage around zoning, I was expecting a revolution. But it was a low turnout. What was

00:01:18.000 it, sort of 30% something? 30 wasn't 40%. That's not a revolution. That's not outraged taxpayers coming

00:01:24.520 forward and saying, we demand change. And up in Edmonton, where they face the same things,

00:01:30.360 we got a new mayor who calls himself center-left. Andrew Knack is his name. I don't know much about

00:01:35.420 him. But at any rate, in Edmonton, that's who they chose. Probably no surprise there.

00:01:42.680 But has anything changed in Calgary City Hall?

00:01:46.460 Well, Nigel, I feel like that has yet to be seen. You know, we have, we've got a new mayor here in

00:01:52.700 Calgary, pending a recount, of course. And, you know, Jeremy Farkas, I think, has stated from what

00:02:00.260 I've heard, that he doesn't want to define himself as right or left. He wants to work with other

00:02:04.280 councillors and, and see what he can get accomplished for the city of Calgary.

00:02:08.420 That sounds a purple thing.

00:02:09.820 A purple thing, right.

00:02:11.580 Another ninchy.

00:02:12.740 Yeah. Well, I mean, I certainly hope not. You know, from what I've seen from Jeremy in the past,

00:02:17.540 he's taken principled stands on some issues at personal cost. And we'll see if he has the

00:02:22.160 ability to work together. And there has been a bit of a reputation from his last term on council,

00:02:26.660 where he was sort of opposed from, from the majority. And from my view, that's not necessarily

00:02:31.520 a bad thing. If the majority is wrong, I'd like to see someone show leadership and oppose them.

00:02:36.200 So we'll see what, what comes from Jeremy. He's going to have some work to do. He's got a lot of

00:02:40.480 new councillors. Um, 10 of this, uh, 10 members of this council are brand new and, uh, have never

00:02:46.000 been on council before. So he certainly got some work to do to get, uh, council working with them.

00:02:51.300 Now, when you're looking at, uh, I mean, in Edmonton, it's a left-wing city. You get a left-wing

00:02:57.960 council. You, you, you get a left-wing MP, you get a left-wing MLA. We kind of know what, roughly what

00:03:03.400 the gain is up there, but Calvary still thinks it's conservative, even though it hasn't really

00:03:08.240 elected a conservative council for, for what, uh, 15 years, nearly. Uh, these are on, you just said,

00:03:16.080 these are an unknown quantity. These new aldermen, I'm sorry, councillors, these new councillors,

00:03:22.140 we don't, 10 of them, we really don't know very much about at all. But what's your sense? Has

00:03:26.280 there been a little bit of a, an ideological shift on council? Well, I can say, you know,

00:03:31.660 for a generation now, Calgary has failed to elect the conservative council. And, and you can see the

00:03:36.960 reasoning for that when you have a turnout in the mid thirties here, like we, we seem to have had

00:03:41.200 this election. And, uh, it, it seems the people who are most likely to turn out are those who have

00:03:45.560 a vested interest in, in who's elected, uh, such as the public service workers in the city of Calgary,

00:03:51.200 they'd show up in much larger numbers than the average. And I think that's why we end up having,

00:03:56.280 uh, a more left leaning council than what's reflected in the wider public. So, um, when it

00:04:01.080 comes to has, have things shifted at city hall, I would certainly say they have, uh, last election,

00:04:05.820 we on day one probably had 12 or 13 councillors who were leaning towards the left of the spectrum.

00:04:11.240 Whereas in this council, it seems we have a pretty even mix on day one here. And I do think things

00:04:17.000 shifted over the term of this prior council where we had five or six who were voting in a more sensible

00:04:22.100 direction closer to the end of the term. Uh, but from day one, you know, we had 13,

00:04:26.280 14 people declare a climate emergency on day one. So I think that shows the ideological leanings of

00:04:31.240 the people who were elected. What's the chances of seeing that turned over?

00:04:37.000 Seeing which turned over? Uh, well, you know, make one of the first orders of business to

00:04:42.280 take away the climate emergency, which is kind of farcical. And there's a few other things that,

00:04:47.880 like, uh, renaming Fort Calgary and so on, which could be undone by council that wanted to

00:04:53.080 show that new people are running it with new ideas. Right. You know, I, I certainly hope that,

00:04:58.600 uh, the current council would consider rescinding the climate emergency in the near future. It's,

00:05:02.680 it's not something a lot of people discussed on the campaign. I do think the first order of business

00:05:07.160 is going to be the rezoning. They're going to get to that quickly and, uh, we'll see if they can get

00:05:11.240 the 10 votes required to overturn it. Um, but these, these other issues that most Calgarians

00:05:16.840 were shocked to see happen, especially then renaming a Fort Calgary. And, um, you know,

00:05:22.120 we, we, we had some other bonkers suggestions throughout the term as well, cancelling Canada

00:05:26.360 day fireworks and single use plastics bands and things like that. And some have already been

00:05:30.920 overturned, but I certainly would like to see them resend that climate emergency as soon as possible.

00:05:36.120 Coming back to what you were saying about people having a direct and vested interest in the outcome

00:05:40.440 of the election. And you, you said, well, obviously the city workers do understood,

00:05:47.160 but truly every person who owns property in this city, or for that matter, even who rents property

00:05:53.080 in the city, because in the end, the rent reflects the, uh, taxes, uh, every one of us has got a vested

00:05:58.840 interest. Why do you think that property owners do not come out in greater numbers to say, put a stop

00:06:06.040 to the overspending, put a stop to the stupid programs, you know, um, let's, let's have a more 0.98

00:06:14.280 sensibly run, not a conservative right wing fascist, uh, uh, council, but let's just make decisions that 0.99

00:06:22.200 are sensible. Right. Well, you know, I think the number one takeaway from this election is that the

00:06:27.560 city of Calgary and the previous council has failed the electorate. Uh, we have, uh, the highest voter apathy,

00:06:34.440 probably in the country here, having only a turnout in the mid thirties. And, and that is after such a

00:06:40.120 disastrous term on council. So it's not that people don't think that their city council matters. It's

00:06:44.760 more so that they didn't see anything or hear anything, um, that would reflect a positive change

00:06:49.480 in that direction. We had a lot of campaigns saying the same things. Uh, we didn't really have anyone

00:06:54.600 coming forward with a drastic overhaul, um, plan, a clear step-by-step plan of how we're going to change

00:07:00.600 things. And I found that the, that lack of a, you know, sort of courageous leadership showing a clear,

00:07:06.600 distinct, uh, change in position from your opponents is why we didn't have people showing

00:07:10.760 up in large numbers. Now, Patrick, what would it, uh, if you were courageous, if you were a courageous,

00:07:17.160 newly elected councilor on the city of Calgary, what would be the courageous approach to reforming?

00:07:26.600 I have a feeling it's not just the, the city councilors, there's something else you've got to

00:07:32.920 change. Well, I mean, having worked the last four years at city hall, uh, I was lucky enough to work

00:07:38.760 for my home warden ward 13 for counselor, Dan McLean. And what I, how does he do by the way?

00:07:44.600 Dan did exceptional, very residents of ward 13. We're very happy with the performance over the last

00:07:50.600 four years. And, uh, great staff work. It has to be that. Right. Exactly. Exactly. All right. Sorry.

00:07:57.160 Now carry on. No. And I, I really thought counselor McLean was one of the top performers on council

00:08:01.480 the last four years. He's one of the people who was willing to listen to his constituents,

00:08:05.320 uh, vote on their behalf and work hard to ensure that when, when residents were in contact with us,

00:08:10.920 that we, uh, made the changes needed within the community that we could, uh, to, to, uh, listen to,

00:08:16.280 to residents and, and deal with their concerns effectively. So I think, you know, ward 13

00:08:20.680 residents spoke loud and clear that that was the case. Good. Coming back to the point though,

00:08:24.680 that we were my fault, we got off track. Uh, I do this all the time. Uh, look, um, you're a courageous

00:08:32.920 alderman, you're courageous counselor. You've just been elected and you're going to make a difference

00:08:37.480 in city hall. What's assuming that you could even get some people to work with you. What's the

00:08:44.440 first big obstacle that you're going to run up against? Well, I mean, the number one thing we

00:08:50.520 need to change at the city of Calgary is the leadership, right? And the leadership comes from,

00:08:55.160 you are the leadership. Well, you're the courageous newly elected counselor. Sadly, in recent years,

00:09:00.840 the leadership has not come from council and the leadership has come from, uh, the chief administrative

00:09:05.320 officer of the city. That's the leader. That's, that's the person who probably has more power than

00:09:09.880 anybody around city hall, even more than the mayor or city council. And that's the thing I think that

00:09:14.680 needs to change. Council needs to wrestle back control, control of the budget, control of departments

00:09:20.120 and become more responsive to residents. What's happened at city hall here is we have essentially

00:09:25.560 a firewall in the 311 system where residents can't even get in touch with their elected officials,

00:09:30.280 can't get in touch with the departments that they need to talk to when it comes to their roads and

00:09:34.120 parks and services. And that's what needs to change. I don't understand why we have to

00:09:39.160 interface at the computer system or a phone banking system of people who don't even actually half the

00:09:44.520 time, probably aren't even in the city of Calgary. Uh, whereas we should, when we used to be able to

00:09:48.760 get in touch with our local representatives, you know, a lot of these offices are not even responding

00:09:53.400 to their constituents over the four years. I'd hear that from other wards, uh, residents who are

00:09:57.800 frustrated, they'd send emails into their city council or they're not getting a response. Uh, they submit

00:10:02.280 311 requests that just summarily get closed without action or attention. Uh, that's unacceptable.

00:10:08.840 These are things that need to change in the city of Calgary. And I find it's the culture.

00:10:12.760 There's a culture of, uh, you know, uh, essentially the not serving the residents that's, that's

00:10:17.960 developed in the city of Calgary. And I think the leadership on council, uh, need to wrestle that

00:10:23.080 back and say, no, we're here to serve the public. Well, now you worked for, you worked for Dan McLean.

00:10:29.880 You had an office. Right. That office had a phone number. Right. So if somebody in Ward 13

00:10:36.360 had a pothole, they could phone that number and you would answer. Right. And you would say,

00:10:42.600 hey, can you better take this one? Right. And he would take it. So how, how is it, what,

00:10:47.080 what do you mean when you say that you can't get hold of your elected representative? Well,

00:10:51.800 I can, I can tell you in Ward 13, you could, right. Our office, you know, we operated in that

00:10:56.280 fashion where we wanted to be responsive to residents. Um, I can't speak for other offices,

00:11:00.600 but I do know that, that we would hear from residents from other wards saying, I can't get

00:11:04.200 a hold of my city councilor. They won't respond to me. Uh, more troubling is actually when people are

00:11:09.560 trying to get in touch with administration for assistance with work in the ward. Now,

00:11:13.960 unfortunately from the ward office, we can't patch a pothole, right? We can't mow the grass. Uh, we can

00:11:18.280 certainly try and get in touch with administration on the residents behalf. And that's something we did

00:11:22.680 throughout our term and struggled greatly to get things done. Um, there's, there's something off

00:11:27.640 with the services at the city of Calgary. And we'd hear from numerous residents who'd submit 311s,

00:11:32.600 uh, and never hear back. There'd be no response. There'd be no work done. And the resident would be

00:11:37.560 left wondering what, where did my request go? What happened to it? Well, let me tell you a quick story.

00:11:42.120 And you tell me whether this is typical or I was, you know, lucky or, or what, where I live,

00:11:49.080 going for a walk one day with the dog, I see somebody is backed into a road sign,

00:11:53.320 regular city property road sign. There it is laying on the ground. I sort of watched and watched for

00:11:59.000 about six weeks and nobody came to do anything about it. So I eventually did what I've just suggested.

00:12:04.680 I got hold of my local councillor and, uh, he said, Oh yeah, really? No kidding. Send me a picture.

00:12:11.320 Oh yeah. Road signs down, isn't it? Um, another week went by and pickup truck

00:12:18.840 came by pickup truck. Keep that in mind. Somebody gets out, takes a look, clearly a city manager or

00:12:28.040 an employee in the, in, in the line of command is confirming that there is indeed a road sign down.

00:12:33.960 Right. Didn't throw it in the pickup and take it away.

00:12:37.480 It sat there for a couple more days. Right. And then finally a crew arrived and just happened to

00:12:43.960 catch them in the act, so to speak. Um, two guys and they threw this thing in the pickup and away it

00:12:49.640 went. And weeks later it was replaced. Right. Is that a typical city hall story or is the typical

00:12:58.520 city hall story that I never even got hold of my councillor? Right. Well, I, I would say it depends

00:13:05.240 on the ward you live in. I'd say some councillors are better than others. I won't name names here today.

00:13:09.560 I can tell you that the, the people who didn't respond are probably not in office anymore after

00:13:13.320 this most recent election. There is a time where we can get that accountability and it is on election

00:13:17.800 day. And, uh, and that's, what's discouraging about seeing the 35% turnout or, you know, the

00:13:22.600 mid thirties turnout is, you know, that was your opportunity to hold your, your councillors accountable.

00:13:26.760 Now, of course, many of these people didn't even run again this time around. Right. We had several of the

00:13:31.000 hateful eight, uh, not even show up to the, to the polls because they knew they wouldn't get elected.

00:13:35.320 Did any of them survive this, uh, this election? Um, well, I can see, uh, you know, one of them did

00:13:40.360 and that being Raj Dhaliwal in ward five, but from my understanding, he was a good constituency,

00:13:45.320 um, city councillor and that's why he won his ward. Right. So he may not have been on the same side of

00:13:50.280 the ideological perspective as me, but at the same time he did serve as constituents and was reelected

00:13:55.800 accordingly. Um, but if you look over to ward 11, uh, again, I won't name names, but you can see the

00:14:00.680 results of a councillor who was not responsive to their arrest. Right. So, um, we need to talk

00:14:05.880 about the, the mayoral race. Um, Jodi Gondek, there's going to be a, there's going to be a recount.

00:14:11.960 We don't know for sure at this stage, whether it's indeed going to be Mr. Farkas or Sonia Sharp,

00:14:16.920 but we do know that it's not going to be Jodi Gondek. Right. Um, in, in a,

00:14:23.640 in an election when not much seems to have changed, the revolution didn't come, the, the, you know,

00:14:34.040 the torches and the pitchforks, she changed, she was rejected. Right.

00:14:44.680 How would you interpret that? Well, I mean, I would have been completely stunned had she been reelected,

00:14:53.400 seeing some of the things that occurred throughout this council term, uh, both from a behind the

00:14:57.720 scenes perspective, but even on a public, uh, perspective. I mean, I've never seen such poor

00:15:04.200 leadership of our city. I mean, on day one to, for her to be trying to railroad a sitting city 1.00

00:15:09.400 councillor who was duly elected, uh, to have, to be passing bylaws like the single use plastics bylaw,

00:15:15.320 the climate emergency, uh, the climate action plan, $87 billion, uh, the blanket rezoning,

00:15:21.480 despite fierce opposition. Um, you know, there's more, there's more to, you know, the, the public

00:15:26.680 protest bylaw banning public protests in, in, in public places, things like that, things that the,

00:15:32.200 the, you know, the CCF have said, uh, are violation of our constitutional freedoms.

00:15:36.600 The CCF, that would be, um, Canadian constitutional foundation?

00:15:40.840 Yeah.

00:15:41.080 Yes.

00:15:41.400 Right.

00:15:41.560 Okay.

00:15:41.880 Uh, to, to see some of these actions, uh, uh, you know, and, and stepping out of your jurisdiction,

00:15:47.480 battling, uh, the province, uh, on any number of issues and just being adversarial,

00:15:52.600 sneaky and underhanded. I mean, I just saw really, really poor leadership over the last four years.

00:15:57.160 And, uh, you know, Mayor Gondek worked extremely hard, had different positions than I, but there were

00:16:01.960 some things that were just, just, um, from my perspective, straight up unethical and not the

00:16:07.400 right way to represent our city. So I feel like it's a new era for the, the city of Calgary, regardless

00:16:12.520 of, of who wins between Jeremy Farkas and Sonia Sharpe, it's going to be addition by subtraction in

00:16:17.720 that regard.

00:16:19.480 Nice way to put it. Addition by subtraction. Um, the green line.

00:16:25.800 How do you think this new council is going to look at that?

00:16:32.200 Well, for, the green line, uh, for, for people who aren't following this closely,

00:16:35.880 I think I'm right to say it's, it's a line that runs north, south, right?

00:16:39.000 It terminates more or less where the old Eau Claire market, uh, was, uh, and brings people in from

00:16:47.480 what, up center street.

00:16:50.200 Well, correct. You know, there is some debate and decisions to be made as to how they're going to

00:16:55.080 enter the downtown still at this stage. And I'm not an expert on the green line itself. It wasn't

00:16:59.720 an issue under my purview and my time in Dan's office, but you know, it's, it's a huge expenditure

00:17:04.920 and, you know, it seems the ridership projections are changing over time. Um, certainly, you know,

00:17:10.280 we need to see a connected city in, and a better connected city for residents who live in those areas.

00:17:15.560 And, but it's going to be a significant, uh, financial burden for the city to carry. And, uh,

00:17:22.040 it'll be interesting to see what this, what this council decides to do. And of course the province

00:17:26.200 is involved as well, uh, determining how we're going to access the downtown and what the future

00:17:30.600 is that connects up to the center north of the city as well, because that was the part of the

00:17:34.680 initial plans for the green line. Well, does this, does the city council actually have the option of

00:17:39.480 saying this is not a good use of taxpayer money, whether it's municipal or provincial, forget the

00:17:45.160 whole thing? Well, I certainly believe they would still have that possibility. Um, it would not be an easy

00:17:51.240 one. I think they'd probably have to be, uh, considering the votes that have already occurred

00:17:54.840 on it, you'd probably need a super majority in order to, to make that happen. And there would

00:17:58.680 be financial implications, right? There's, uh, there's arrangements that have been made,

00:18:03.480 uh, contracts signed, right? It's, it's not a simple thing to just cancel this thing and say,

00:18:08.120 you know, cut your losses because you're going to have, uh, some costs on that, on that project.

00:18:12.360 So I don't think it's a simple decision and, and, you know, we are pretty sort of pot committed on this

00:18:17.560 project, if you will. And, uh, I, I, I don't envy a council that has to, to deal with the financial

00:18:23.080 ramifications of that. Okay. Now let's come back to the, or the open zoning that, uh, how, how many

00:18:30.520 people, um, made their views known to city council when the offer was opened? Tell us what you think.

00:18:39.240 Well, there were, there were thousands and thousands of people who made written submissions,

00:18:42.680 right? I know we're in the range of, uh, you know, the high hundreds, close to a thousand people

00:18:47.320 who showed up in person. It was a record, right? A record showing for a public hearing in the city

00:18:52.200 of Calgary. Um, and a vast majority in, in opposition, I think it was close to 90% of

00:18:57.400 written submissions were against blanket rezoning. Um, somewhere in the range of, uh, high sixties

00:19:02.360 or low seventies of the in-person, uh, submissions were opposed to blanket rezoning. Um, and, you know,

00:19:08.840 for a lot of people justify, well, you know, there's only a certain type of person who showed up

00:19:12.920 to those hearings. It wasn't representative of the population at large. Well, I mean,

00:19:17.560 my argument to that would be, well, these are people who cared enough to show up, right? So

00:19:21.560 the people who did support blanket rezoning obviously didn't have as much passion or

00:19:25.960 bigger behind their, their position to show up. And the reality is you can only count those who do

00:19:30.760 show up to, to have their voices heard. Um, and it was disappointing to see council pass,

00:19:36.280 pass that, uh, that bylaw. And you can see now it is going to have to be rescinded and it's going to

00:19:40.360 be messy, right? Uh, it's not a simple matter. How are you going to deal with all these pending

00:19:44.600 applications? All the properties have already been rezoned. And what about those places that

00:19:48.840 actually already have a monstrosity sitting next door that's dramatically impacted their parking,

00:19:53.800 their garbage, their property values? You know, there's, it's a real mess that's been created.

00:19:58.120 And this is, this is all due to not listening to the public. And, uh, it's a shame that it happened

00:20:02.440 the way it did. So, uh, I mean, could there be a moratorium on, uh, rezoning and disputed areas?

00:20:10.520 Is that all we think this one through? Well, I mean, that, that would be one option while we figure

00:20:16.760 out the, the, the dynamics of, of how, how to repeal blanket rezoning. Uh, it could be an option

00:20:22.120 as to just to put a freeze on, on new applications, right? It might be something that city council

00:20:26.840 should consider to do in the immediate term, but you know, based off last session of council,

00:20:31.960 I mean, we declared climate emergency within a couple of weeks of the election.

00:20:35.400 So I can see they could act pretty quickly on this if they have the desire to do so.

00:20:38.920 Well, that's, um, no, we'll see what they do with it. Uh, uh, that seemed to me the, the thing that

00:20:46.600 was going to get everybody out and it didn't. So maybe they have a little more leeway to, to deal

00:20:51.560 with that than, than I would have imagined. But, uh, certainly there are people who have already bought

00:20:57.640 the property that they mean to rezone and, uh, you know, they're financially committed. They even have

00:21:02.120 their rezoning, uh, uh, their, their building plans approved, right? You can only stop it up to a

00:21:08.360 certain point. Exactly. Okay. The rezoning line eight, any other major issues for this council?

00:21:18.840 Sorry, the green line, I call it line eight, the green line and the rezoning. What's the other big, uh,

00:21:24.120 issue this council has to look at? Well, I think the number one issue that hadn't been talked enough

00:21:29.560 nearly in the campaign and that's property taxes. Uh, over the last council term,

00:21:34.360 we saw a 30% increase in spending over a four year period, which is just a remarkable increase

00:21:39.800 in spending. We've taken on huge expenditures in the arena deal, uh, the green line, various other

00:21:45.720 infrastructure projects. You know, we had the Olympic Plaza transformation. Um, the city finances

00:21:50.840 are getting out of control, right? And we're seeing a decline in services, uh, that this, you know,

00:21:55.320 which doesn't, doesn't reflect that increase in property taxes. And how is this council going to

00:21:59.800 deal with the increased spending and the, and the decrease and declining quality of services the city

00:22:05.320 provides? Or should they deal with it? Oh, I mean, they have to, I mean, the reality is people can't

00:22:10.120 afford to continue to pay these taxes. Um, businesses, you know, you look at our downtown,

00:22:14.200 it's got a 30% vacancy rate. Um, you know, people can't afford to pay these taxes. Businesses don't

00:22:19.640 want to operate here. They're, they're choosing to operate on the outskirts of the city in other

00:22:23.320 jurisdictions because our property taxes are so out of control. This is a serious issue that this council needs

00:22:28.120 to address. And, uh, if they don't, it'll be at the peril of the rest of us. Patrick, thank you for

00:22:35.000 coming in and laying this out for us. It is not nearly as easy as just electing a new council,

00:22:41.240 is it? Certainly isn't, but, uh, I do have a lot of faith this council will do a better job than the

00:22:46.200 last. And, uh, I wish them all the best and doing what's best for Calgary. Well, on that optimistic

00:22:51.480 note, thank you again. Thank you, Nigel. Appreciate you. And for the Western Standard, I'm Nigel Hannaford.

00:22:57.800 Good night.

00:22:58.920 Good night,

Western Standard - October 26, 2025

HANNAFORD： Do Calgary's new councillors have it in them to repeal open zoning？

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