＂Ignoring the People： Calgary Mayor Gondek and the Politics of Apathy＂
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
204.48833
Summary
Calgary's mayor and council voted to blanket rezone the city, despite overwhelming opposition from citizens. What can citizens do about it? Is there any hope for a recall of the mayor? Or will Premier Danielle Smith continue to ignore it?
Transcript
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We've had weeks, a record breaker, public hearings.
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Nearly 1,000 people came out to Calgary City Hall in person
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to express their feelings on the blanket rezoning plan.
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Calgary's mayor and city council voted yesterday 9 to 6
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Even though 70% of those who presented in person opposed the rezoning,
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90% of the thousands of submissions that were put in from citizens
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And the council, they never campaigned on rezoning.
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And the snide attitude to some of those council members
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Karah, if you're a Calgary, you know who I'm talking about.
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But they got a few other clowns on there worthy of your derision as well.
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In a sense, what Mayor Gondek and her supporters on city council
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said to Calgarians as well, what are you going to do about it?
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I mean, clearly, the mayor and council don't care
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And they have no fear, you know, of being able to pursue
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their own personal agendas, even if they don't match the wishes
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of the citizens who put them there in the first place.
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That's why I support having citizens initiated recall
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Citizens should have their means to at least hold elected officials
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I mean, there's a case to be made against having such election legislation.
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You know, they say we can remove elected officials every few years
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in a general election, and we should just live with our choice
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for the duration of their term come hell or hide water.
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What isn't debatable, though, is that Alberta's current legislation
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for recall and citizens initiated referendum is utterly worthless.
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It was purposely craft by the Kenney government to be unworkable.
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but he didn't really want to arm citizens with the power to remove elected officials.
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his government ensured that the bars set to invoke a recall
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So there was a recent effort to recall Calgary Mayor Jody Gondek,
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and it demonstrated how useless the legislation is.
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I mean, polls have indicated Gondek is the least popular mayor
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Despite that, though, a recall effort initiated by Calgary and Land
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in Johnston barely managed to get over 10% of the required citizens
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And there was hundreds of volunteers working around the city to do it.
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had somehow reached the ridiculously high 514,000 signatures required,
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which is more than people voted in the entire election, by the way,
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a technicality found by City of Calgary bureaucrats
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rendered the signatures of the petition to be apparently 100% invalid.
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The language of the act is confusing and offers all sorts of hurdles
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So apparently there wasn't a little notice that was attached
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I don't think they'd gotten enough to effectively recall somebody.
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It should be a last resort, but we've got to have that resort
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in our tool belt to hold these politicians accountable.
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Many other democratic jurisdictions have effective recall legislation.
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We don't need to reinvent the wheel to find a bar that's acceptable.
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Alberta's referendum legislation is just as useless as the recall rules, by the way.
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and it's not binding on the government even if a referendum was, you know,
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So this mess now lands on Premier Daniel Smith's lap to either fix it or ignore it.
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Now, Smith appears to be on a mission to make municipal councils accountable,
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The problem is, though, Premier Smith wants them to be accountable to her government
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I mean, do we really need to make it easier for the provincial government
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to fire municipal officials or shoot down municipal bylaws?
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I mean, they can already do those things if they have to.
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Wouldn't it make more sense just to empower citizens to fire these guys
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and initiate plebiscites to deal with bad bylaws?
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I mean, you know, again, with a reasonable bar set.
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But no government wants to empower citizens to fire elected officials
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because they don't want to see that power potentially turned against themselves.
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So they'll pay lip service to policies like recall and referendum,
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but they have no interest in actually giving citizens the real ability to do that.
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Daniel Smith has been different than most of the political leaders we've seen
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She's not afraid to swim upstream or rock the boat.
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And if any Premier might show the courage to fix Alberta's rotten recall
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I mean, the UCP government already has a lot of irons in the fire.
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So citizens need to quit wasting time trying to pressure Calgary's mayor and city council.
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Gondek and her gang clearly don't care what you think.
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Energy needs to be directed at having the provincial government amend
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Alberta's terrible recall and referendum legislation.
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If 1,000 people can come out to City Hall in Calgary to talk about something,
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if 70,000 can sign a petition to recall a mayor,
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surely a few thousand of you can contact your MLAs and say,
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I mean, citizens need to show they're serious and want to have that.
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You know, they've got to get out and fire these guys when the real election comes along.
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But along the way, we can fix this legislation.
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Alberta's going to be holding municipal elections next year.
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And we're notoriously apathetic at voting time.
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Why should election officials care what citizens think between elections
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if citizens don't even bother themselves to vote at election time?
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We do have the democratic tools at our disposal, guys.
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We can affect the change, but we haven't been using them effectively.
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If Calgary and Edmonton City Councils both got wiped out in next year's election,
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you can rest assured the provincial government's going to suddenly feel inspired
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It always was, and it always will be, and it is right now.