00:01:07.740Please travel safely and make it back home to tell us all about it.
00:01:11.340Well, folks, it's been quite the election week here in Alberta.
00:01:15.180And if you are a political junkie living and working in this space like yours truly, you've
00:01:19.540probably got more questions than answers coming out of this one, because what we've just
00:01:23.400witnessed in Calgary and Edmonton is a tipping point for how politics at the local levels
00:01:27.760played and how the province regulates it. Let's start with the basics. Turn out or more accurately
00:01:34.000the lack thereof. Just 33% of Calgarians cast a ballot and worse yet in Edmonton, 30% is that
00:01:41.440democracy in action or on life support. To make matters worse, the process itself threw up
00:01:46.240unnecessary obstacles. As reported at the Western Standard, Alberta held course on eliminating
00:01:51.840electronic vote tabulators in favour of paper only system and the results were exactly what you'd
00:01:57.200expect. Long lines, delays in counting, confusion, and in some political polling stations, the
00:02:03.180lineups were stretched so long that voters just left rather than wait. We heard reports that some
00:02:07.900areas were taking two to three hours for voters to cast their ballots, and all signs point to
00:02:13.280people just getting fed up and leaving. If you already think that local government has lost your
00:02:18.220interest, being confronted with a voting experience that looks like it was designed for the 1980s
00:02:22.920doesn't help. But for those who did vote, the results sent a message. In Calgary, Jeremy
00:02:28.280Pathfinder Farkas made history. He became the first person to unseat a sitting Calgary mayor
00:02:32.980since Ralph Klein did so back in 1980. That's 45 years, folks. And the margin, fewer than 600 votes,
00:02:39.880separated him from Sonia Sharp of the community's first party. It's a thin win. And while Sharp has
00:02:45.100officially called for a recount, as most candidates would in her position, it's pretty fair to assume
00:02:50.240that it would be a long shot and fairly safe to say it won't lead to a change in the mayor's chair.
00:02:55.040Trailing behind them were outgoing mayor Jody Gondek plus Jeff Davison and Brian Thiessen.
00:02:59.940Respectable showings but not enough to close the gap. Up the road in Edmonton, no upheaval. The
00:03:05.880mayor was re-elected for a third term. Clean, predictable, no major shake-up. So we have two
00:03:11.380snapshots here in our major cities. Calgary voted for change, Edmonton chose continuity.
00:03:16.300Now, was this election a referendum on local leadership? Certainly. But was it also a giant middle finger to the creeping party system in municipal politics? I would argue yes.
00:03:27.680Let's talk about Bill 20. In short, it's the provincial legislation that opened the door for formal political parties at the municipal level, increased oversight of municipalities, changed donation rules, all in the name of, quote, leveling the playing field.
00:03:40.500It was piloted this election cycle in Calgary and Edmonton.
00:03:44.700A conservative political government wanted to create a path for conservative candidates
00:03:48.220to keep up with more left-leaning candidates, many of whom were very well funded by the unions.
00:03:53.200But the shakeout wasn't exactly a dream come true,
00:03:55.380and with a majority of newly elected officials being independents,
00:03:58.620some may call the entire experiment a total bust.
00:04:01.900Instead of clarity, we saw fragmentation.
00:04:04.300And where the centre-right should have coalesced, we got competing flags,
00:04:07.720vote splitting, brand confusion, and outright mudslinging.
00:04:11.320There is a saying that conservatives simply can't and won't unite,
00:04:37.280I'm not quite sure what that means, but the government says that it's about transparency and it's about clarity, but critics warn it can easily become a gatekeeping mechanism.
00:04:46.180So imagine that. At the local level, we have Bill 20 stirring up the party game in our cities, and at the provincial level, the governing party is now talking about a bill to decide who can stand for election.
00:04:56.620It's two big structural changes, two big questions, and a lot of controversy.
00:05:01.360Does the province stick with this experiment and try to refine it?
00:05:04.720Or does it blow the whole thing up before the next municipal cycle?
00:05:09.500Because if the idea was to build a stronger, more coherent, conservative presence in Alberta cities, that just didn't happen.
00:05:15.820Now, first time isn't always a charm, and it does take time for people to take on change.
00:05:19.580After all, there are municipal parties in cities like Vancouver and Montreal.
00:05:23.640But what we got this time around was instead voter fatigue, fractured campaigns and a perception that local issues are being overshadowed by partisan maneuvering.
00:05:31.640The most important piece is that Calgarians didn't just reject incumbents, many rejected being told which team to vote for.
00:05:37.640They're tired of ideology being measured and snow plowing schedules and pothole contracts and zoning decisions.
00:05:44.640Excuse me. They want delivery. They want competence.
00:05:47.640They want to believe that their vote moves something real and not just fuels another political turf war.
00:05:52.640war. So where does this leave us? We have a brand new mayor in Calgary after decades of continuity,
00:05:59.720a steady incumbent in Edmonton and a frustrated electorate, a provincial legislation that's
00:06:06.060tinkering with both the local and provincial electoral machinery and a conservative movement
00:06:10.160that must ask, have we strengthened ourselves or weakened ourselves? There is a lot to unpack out
00:06:15.860of this election and we're going to do just that. I'm going to be joined by two guests today who
00:06:21.160know Alberta politics inside and out. Amber Ruddy, Vice President at Council Public Affairs and
00:06:27.720Stephen Carter of Decide Campaigns. He is the man behind campaigns for Alison Redford, Nahaid Nenshi
00:06:33.720and Jodi Gondek. We'll hash out what this election really means for the future of Bill 20,
00:06:38.600for the rise or fall of municipal parties and what people should expect for the next municipal cycle.
00:06:45.560And for all of you fine folks watching today, we would like to remind you that the Western
00:06:49.640standard needs your support please like share comment follow western standard news on all our
00:06:55.320platforms if you're not a subscriber yet go to westernstandard.news and click on subscribe it's
00:07:00.760just ten dollars a month or a hundred dollars for the year thank you for your support all right
00:07:06.600john i think we are going to get right into it and we're going to move over to our guests
00:07:10.920i don't know if they're waiting there in the rooms and they're ready to go but
00:07:14.680i think we will get into it here so we've got amber ruddy she's a go-to strategist for
00:07:18.520organizations seeking to navigate Canada's intricate political landscape.
00:07:22.960Amber transforms complex policy challenges into strategic opportunities for her
00:07:27.020clients. She also has previously served with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
00:07:30.820and the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses.
00:07:34.280We will also be joined by Stephen Carter.
00:10:51.160I think it gives us an opportunity to know who it is that we're voting for, what it is that we're voting for.
00:10:56.940All too often, I think people get elected.
00:10:59.840For example, Sonia Sharp ran as a progressive in 2021 and then turned into a very strong conservative.
00:11:06.880And ran as a conservative today in this municipal election.
00:11:11.040this gives people a better opportunity to know what it is that they're you know who it is they're
00:11:15.920voting for and what their principles are what their values are what their ideology is
00:11:21.360so I think that it worked out fairly well the fundraising rules are a disaster they need to
00:11:29.020be rewritten immediately the hand counting disastrous needs to be rewritten immediately
00:11:35.840but you know I mean I'm sure it worked really well in rural community
00:11:40.160municipalities where they were only dealing with small portions of votes but
00:11:45.600we have you know we have upwards of a million voters in Calgary and 700,000 in
00:11:51.520Edmonton and counting is just it was a gong show and disappointing to see the
00:12:01.100new rules but I'm hopeful that the new rules will be taking advantage of
00:12:05.460property you know and I don't I don't doubt that elections Alberta and elections Calgary is just
00:12:11.060flooded with complaints I mean you know transparency of course I most people watching
00:12:15.440this will know that I worked very closely on the Jeff Davison campaign and Jeff ran for mayor and
00:12:19.380came in fourth and we had an outpouring of supporters who were reaching out to the campaign
00:12:25.120and you know they were cold they were standing outside they were waiting two and three hours
00:12:29.140particularly heard a lot of reports in around downtown polling station as well as polling
00:12:33.740stations as well as in the deep south i'm sure it was just luck of the draw wherever people were
00:12:39.100throughout the city but some people said it was a good experience but we we definitely i would say
00:12:44.060in my experience with elections this there was an outpouring of complaints and people just simply
00:12:48.460walking away from polling stations which i know for those of us who are really engaged in municipal
00:12:53.580politics that's really frustrating um we're always trying to get people to buy into municipal
00:12:59.180politics after all it is the level of politics that affects you the most on the day-to-day this
00:13:03.740is what affects you know the snow plowing and your garbage pickup and your property taxes
00:13:09.180mostly that's provincial as well but these are these are all the things that affect you the most
00:13:13.740and yet people have the least amount of engagement uh amber over to you uh you were very involved
00:13:19.420with the federal election uh campaign in the spring uh and you know i know over on on on
00:13:25.740our side we felt very much that voter fatigue was was had a had a part to play in this and it was a
00:13:32.460very slow uptick into people even being engaged or interested i mean i don't know steven you you
00:13:37.500might agree with me like i feel like nobody was really paying attention to who was running for
00:13:41.420mayor and didn't even have any idea who was running for council in calgary and you can probably chime
00:13:46.620in a little bit more about how that was in edmonton they didn't even pay attention until maybe
00:13:51.260the last seven to ten days so amber we'll just how much do you think that voter fatigue played
00:13:56.940into it and then stephen will go over to you on your thoughts on engagement you know i think it
00:14:02.380is important going back to the conversation about um the voting and the lines and the new system
00:14:08.620it is important to do a process that instills confidence because when you have um systems that
00:14:15.020aren't working for folks and are driving uh a reluctance to vote because they feel like it
00:14:19.820might not count and the way it's processed is not fair there's different iterations of how that has
00:14:25.180played out um i know some folks wanted to write it in pen or you know there's different uh
00:14:31.100considerations i think we do need to take seriously people's concerns so that they have confidence in
00:14:35.900the system uh when they do spend an hour or whatever it is that they had to take and go
00:14:40.700in line and do that so first of all just want to say that that there's got to be a pendulum there's
00:14:45.180maybe some things they can do to improve it. But I think it is important to take those concerns of
00:14:51.100voters seriously. When you look at overall, there is a fatigue. And again, if you follow the news,
00:14:58.300you might be hearing rumors that a federal election could be imminent. I think, you know,
00:15:03.820it is a layering on of issues. The municipal level is, of course, closest to the people.
00:15:08.460You're most likely to, you know, drive down the street with potholes,
00:15:13.740need to book swimming lessons for your kids, you know, want to go to a public library and use
00:15:19.100those services. So it is important. And I'm glad we've had this kind of participation in Calgary,
00:15:26.940for example. The incumbency factor is strong, but our incumbent mayor, you know, she's moving on.
00:15:34.220And it is important to have choices in the system so that people can make those decisions.
00:15:41.180So I think that overall, you know, there are probably a bit more reflecting and lessons we
00:15:48.800can learn as the sort of ink dries on the voting results and we see who are in these roles. But
00:15:55.100yeah, I'm very confident that the system will be improved and continue to work for Albertans going
00:16:02.280forward. And then Stephen, you know, voter fatigue from the federal election. And then like, let's
00:16:07.800throwing this teacher strike i mean this is this has been this has been wild right the last couple
00:16:12.560of weeks and and how do you think that that impacted the election i know some of the candidates
00:16:17.100including brian teeson had a lot to say about the teacher strike certainly so over to you stephen
00:16:21.100yeah i mean i think that we had a significant uh uh number of headwinds if you will the federal
00:16:28.400election was certainly a headwind uh it was hard to get people's attention uh during the during the
00:16:33.440campaign, I agree with you, pushing through and trying to get people to actually pay attention
00:16:39.460on this campaign. We certainly noticed an uptick in attention in the last week and a half,
00:16:44.820the last 10 days, but we'd already done half of advanced polling before people had even started
00:16:50.620to pay attention. I mean, yes, it is the most difficult level of government to get people out
00:16:56.780to vote for, but let's take a look at the actual statistics. Voter turnout was down in Edmonton
00:17:02.460on advanced polls down in calgary in advance polls down in edmonton and on voting day down in calgary
00:17:09.500on voting day why well in part it was the teacher strike in part it was the blue jays game in part
00:17:16.060it was uh people not really caring about municipal government but in part it was rumors of long
00:17:21.660lineups people not wanting to give up an hour and a half we have a world standard elections
00:17:27.260organization in elections canada and we can't seem to figure out how to run a municipal election in
00:17:32.620alberta and that just makes me crazy um the rules changing the way that they did um was a significant
00:17:40.860impediment to people being able to actually vote in the election um this time and uh i think that
00:17:48.940that the provincial government needs to take a look at that and say what role did we play
00:17:53.660and how are we going to make it better uh so far what they're indicating is that they're going to
00:17:58.060make it harder to run uh which on some levels i support i think that we do have a lot of candidates
00:18:04.140who who are a little bit uh junkie if you will if you're you know you're running for a stunt
00:18:10.140um i'd like the candidates that run to be legitimate candidates that have uh the resources
00:18:17.580volunteer and otherwise to to actually run a campaign um but that's not our primary problem
00:18:23.580our primary problem is how do we get people out to vote uh i'd like to see more provincial support
00:18:29.420uh in terms of advertising that the municipal election is happening we could have used a lot
00:18:34.860of that uh elections canada does so much advertising to make sure that people know
00:18:38.860that the vote is occurring and we had none of that really in calgary edmonton or the balance of all
00:18:43.580and certainly the province was really busy there was a lot of announcements over the last month
00:18:49.180uh from new license plates to a war with uh with uh the ata and and certainly that did overshadow
00:18:55.920things what about the conservative predicament and and steven i really am somebody's a little
00:19:01.840bit more on the other side of things i'm really interested in your perspective about this
00:19:05.280there was a lot of mudslinging and and and that was between certainly the uh sharpen communities
00:19:10.340first campaign jeff davison campaign there was a lot there's there was some bad blood that was
00:19:14.740created there and i'm sure everybody can um you know sow these seeds of division right as as we
00:19:20.020come to a close with this election but are there changes that could happen structurally do you
00:19:25.700guys think where uh to prevent to say two conservative parties or two more progressive
00:19:31.780parties from coming up that would prevent this you know quote vote split we've heard this term
00:19:36.020vote split over and over and over right some people say you know we love democracy we love
00:19:39.780the choice and others say well no this is vote splitting and you're stopping this person from
00:19:43.380getting in and we all just need to get behind a candidate so there's so many different ways
00:19:48.420to unpack what that really means and i know one of the one of one of the thoughts is that you
00:19:54.260make it harder you make it so a party has to go out and get x amount of signatures make that a
00:19:58.820really hard high threshold so you're not going to have a bunch of different parties and groups
00:20:02.660running around and doing that so i mean what are your thoughts on that amber i'll let you start
00:20:07.220with that one yeah and just to layer on another issue the canada post strike not having your
00:20:12.740voter cards and information that's a very obvious thing to be advertised and added another step in
00:20:18.180the voting booth where you had to go and you don't have a card to present right you had to go through
00:20:22.260an extra step so that slowed things down as well so almost a perfect storm of issues i just wanted
00:20:26.900to touch upon briefly this issue about um having legitimate candidates in elections and i think
00:20:32.500The impetus of this, of course, if you've been following federal with the last by-election
00:20:37.940in Battle River Crowfoot with the longest ballot, there are some provisions I think you can do to
00:20:43.220tighten it up. I think over 100 of those candidates, for example, had the same CFO,
00:20:50.340like the person that's signing off on the document was the same person for 100 of those candidates.
00:20:54.980We could add a bit more heft to make it so that this is a serious exercise and that it's not
00:21:01.220becoming a way to make a statement so i'm a firm believer of that um but yeah overall i think um
00:21:10.180it is just an interesting time and i i like that there's choice i don't think um you know it would
00:21:17.780be great i in my opinion to have a bit of a higher threshold and if you could bring along with it
00:21:23.140um maybe if you are a serious party that you would get access to a voters list because that's
00:21:28.820That's something that happens provincially and federally.
00:21:30.800So that could perhaps weed out having too many parties that are all trying to act in an interest of the signature level of what you needed to create that party was higher.
00:21:42.900So maybe there could be a approach of if the voters list was, you know, a certain higher threshold, being able to offer that to the serious parties, I think would be an improvement.
00:21:53.000Okay, Stephen, over to you. I mean, some thoughts on this quote vote split and what's your advice
00:21:58.680maybe to conservatives or, and we can take it far more generally than that. What do we do
00:22:03.300and not have just all these quote competing parties? Well, I think that competition is
00:22:08.900essential in politics and I don't like the term vote split. You earn the votes. We all started
00:22:13.260at zero. Davison started at zero. We started at zero, right? That's just the nature of the game.
00:22:17.960I think you earn your votes. But if you really are concerned about votes, let's take that premise
00:22:23.880and just take it through. My recommendation would be to put a preferential ballot in place.
00:22:28.920Why not put a preferential ballot in place for municipal politics? It would be fascinating to
00:22:33.800see who would actually get over the 50% threshold. Would it be progressives? Would it be conservatives?
00:22:40.120Would it be centrists? I don't know. I actually wouldn't be able to tell you with 100% accuracy
00:22:45.320where the Brian Thiessen vote would have gone after the first ballot. I don't think it would
00:22:50.360have gone en masse to Jeremy Farkas, Josie Gondek. I think that it would have gone,
00:22:57.000it would have split into four or five, you know, four different directions for sure.
00:23:01.640The same would be held with Jeff Davison. I don't think that Jeff Davison is the same type
00:23:06.840of roaring conservative that Tonya Shark was trying to present herself as. I would have loved
00:23:11.000to have seen a preferential ballot. I also would have loved to have seen a voters list. Amber is
00:23:17.560completely right. Not having a voting list was just that and the postal strike. Amber, I'm glad
00:23:23.320you brought both of those up. They were devastating to these campaigns. I had 500,000 pieces of mail
00:23:30.120and they were supposed to land the day that the postal strike started. We had to essentially send
00:23:36.600trucks to go and get them back so we can try and hand deliver 500,000 pieces of mail, which is
00:23:42.040impossible. Amber's come up with two great ideas, but I think bottom line, all of this needs to be
00:23:49.880looked at in the future so that we wind up with the right type of civic government. If the
00:23:54.760provincial government thinks that most of the voters are conservative, then bring in preferential
00:23:59.960ballot. Go for it. It is an opportunity to change our voter system in a way that doesn't impact
00:24:08.360the provincial election. It doesn't impact the federal election. Give it a go. See if it works.
00:24:13.880See if we like it as Albertans. If you're going to be messing around with the election anyways,
00:24:18.500mess around with the election in such a fashion that it actually makes it look.
00:24:22.200Yeah, you know, and this was a pilot project, right? And the province had put it forward. Hey,
00:24:25.280this is a pilot project. We're going to try it in Calgary. We're going to try it in Edmonton. So,
00:24:28.060I mean we have to you know have a little bit of grace for that right it's everything is a pilot
00:24:32.380project you look at it you're like okay what went wrong and clearly a lot of things went wrong but
00:24:36.260some things went right I think a lot of people could look at this election objectively certainly
00:24:41.500in Calgary I mean in Edmonton you definitely got a lot more of the same it's more continuity up there
00:24:46.120but I think certainly in Calgary there seems to be I think I feel like things were dialed a little
00:24:51.280bit more to the middle I mean I'm I'm very optimistic that you know a good group can be
00:24:56.520put together and people will bring a little bit more balance back to City Hall and you know
00:25:01.900because it's not healthy for democracy when we have things like a recall Gondek petition and we
00:25:06.520have such an unhappy electorate right we we just it's not healthy for us as you know as a city to
00:25:13.920have people just pitted against one another and like this this extreme division in politics I
00:25:19.080mean I've always been one for multi-partisanship and bringing things a little bit more to to the
00:25:24.080centre and and maybe this maybe this path will help us get there so um Stephen you you uh you
00:25:30.740you folks over at the Calgary party ran um I'd say you'd ran a very polite campaign and I think
00:25:37.180there was a lot of people that were expecting a little bit more you know you've you definitely
00:25:41.520you're one of the most creative people in uh in politics and you definitely sometimes can drop a
00:25:46.900few bombs but you I mean your folks ran ran a very polite campaign so any thoughts on kind of
00:25:53.440your candidates and how it all kind of laid out for you and Brian Thiessen himself. And what's
00:25:58.300next for Brian Thiessen? Because I think there's a lot of us that thought, huh, I think that Brian
00:26:03.340Thiessen is getting ready to do something maybe at a provincial level. And I know you can't probably
00:26:07.220say too much to that, but just wanted your thoughts. Well, I think that the challenge for
00:26:13.100us was who to attack. You know, we knew that we were definitely coming for fifth place. So
00:26:19.040who do we attack? We attacked Sonia quite a bit in the debates. I called her Sonia Smith-Sharp.
00:26:26.720That was the level that we wanted to go to. We didn't want to go to anything too personal or
00:26:34.080pushing too hard. And we just felt like our best bet was to run a positive campaign,
00:26:41.680especially with the Davison and Sharp campaigns taking such nasty smacks at one another. It just
00:26:47.920felt like it wasn't necessary for us and attacking Jeremy Farkas we tried a couple of times but it
00:26:54.880just didn't have the legs so we wound up actually going after Danielle Smith which did have legs
00:27:00.960we did very well with that that part of the campaign obviously not well enough to win
00:27:05.760so the Western Standard viewer may be turning over and getting a little bit more angry about
00:27:12.240that but for our voters it worked quite well and one of the I think challenges that Tim
00:27:17.600Cartmill had in Edmonton was not running a more negative campaign against the conservative,
00:27:25.840the UCP and the government there. Tim was pegged as the UCP candidate and I think that was an
00:27:33.520unfair positioning but nothing to un-push that narrative. So this is the challenge with campaigns
00:27:41.520is when do you go negative uh people who were running against uh nenshi remember that he was
00:27:48.000one of the most negative campaigners we'd ever seen in canadian municipal politics um but brian
00:27:53.680wasn't that guy brian just did not want to attack unless it was uh uh 100 required and it just
00:28:02.000wasn't in this campaign it just didn't work it didn't require uh us to open up the bag of dirty
00:28:08.720tricks and i'm glad we did it was uh it was a good campaign yeah absolutely and before we go
00:28:14.720over to you amber i just john do we have some uh do we have anybody questions on the on the live
00:28:20.000stream feed happy to read out a couple of these questions so uh okay jocelyn says post office
00:28:28.240strike had nothing to do with apathy just pull out your driver's license fair jocelyn i mean
00:28:34.000obviously you're a dedicated voter but i guess some people aren't um let's see what do we have
00:28:38.960here we got paul paul says electronics can be manipulated marks on paper so simple simple
00:28:46.560marks manipulation makes manipulation more difficult use a pen not a pencil yeah we did hear
00:28:52.080a lot of people that were complaining about uh about that um i think there's a little bit of
00:28:56.960there's a little bit of lack of understanding around that like because when you make the pencil
00:29:00.000market can't be erased and and amber maybe you can just kind of answer that question for somebody
00:29:04.600who's concerned about not using a pen and uh and using a pencil instead i mean i think what the
00:29:09.800election authorities often say is that the pens like if they order in bulk dry out so they have
00:29:14.480pencils on hand because then you can reuse them and they have uh they're standing by but you know
00:29:19.700like i have confidence in our voting system that the ballot boxes are sealed that the appropriate
00:29:25.040scrutineers are available for each um candidate to observe and so i have confidence in the system but
00:29:31.040i i know some folks have reluctance um i i just wanted to go back and comment a little bit about
00:29:37.200um i agree with stephen that nobody's voters belong to somebody else so if you look at the
00:29:42.960edmonton example you can't just simply take the conservative leaning candidates add them together
00:29:48.400and assume that the top vote getter would have got those votes naturally. I think we're at a
00:29:56.320bit of a crosshairs in terms of what is the conservative position because blanket rezoning
00:30:02.320happened to be a top municipal topic and you don't really see consistency. There's not like
00:30:08.400a conservative position on that. And frankly, you see different people coming at it,
00:30:14.640progressives and conservatives coming at it from similar angles. So I think it's not so
00:30:21.760cut and dry in terms of what is a conservative position on X municipal issue. So the creativity
00:30:28.480that those candidates have to come up with to brand themselves and showcase what type of
00:30:34.480positions they would take is, you know, a new kind of way to look at it. And there's no monolithic,
00:30:42.960i'm a conservative i'm voting for this person right you you have to be able to offer ideas
00:30:47.840that resonate and if you can't do that then sorry your your vote doesn't necessarily belong to
00:30:53.040somebody else so i think that's something that we have to get past and if you want to um enhance
00:30:58.800perhaps there's ways we can enhance those parties that you think might be the best option going
00:31:03.680forward for a specific voter to park their vote yeah and i like some of what we're talking about
00:31:09.200today right i like i like a higher threshold maybe not so so high i mean there's a lot of thought
00:31:13.920around that i like a higher threshold i really like the voter list stephen it's um you know
00:31:18.160that's that's really important and i think all of us really suffered from that certainly so those
00:31:22.400are things that i i really like but yeah i mean i i i personally don't don't like the term vote
00:31:27.360split because you know if this is democracy and this is democracy in action then may the best
00:31:31.360candidate win right so i don't like that and it was definitely a driving force in the narrative
00:31:36.960um and and certainly i think that that that won the community's first party and their candidate
00:31:41.920sonia sharp uh now speaking of that no that was a very close mayor's race and i think some of us
00:31:47.760were very surprised i know certainly on our camp we were very surprised uh but that it happened
00:31:52.720and it's a margin of almost 600 votes that separated a new mayor elect jeremy farkas from
00:31:58.160sonia sharp of the community's first uh team and and you know i think any good campaign manager
00:32:03.680would would absolutely say yeah you know call for a recount i think i it would be it's fair to say
00:32:09.200it would be very surprising if um if the results were anything different than having uh mayor elect
00:32:14.640become the mayor jeremy farkas but uh jeremy farkas you know that's uh i'm i have a history
00:32:20.320with jeremy i i worked for him in the ward 11 office when he was a counselor before i worked
00:32:24.160for him for almost two and a half years and you know i felt that there was a change in his position
00:32:28.160I think most of us did. But, you know, he ran a very smart campaign and he catered to everybody.
00:32:35.180So he catered to the left, he catered to the right. It was confusing for some.
00:32:39.480And I'm interested to see how that will play out, how that will play out in his office, if it will be a very centrist office or if it'll be if it'll revert back to more conservative people behind him or if it'll stay on the left side.
00:32:51.240So, Stephen, I really want to hear your thoughts on the new mayor-elect Jeremy Farkas, who certainly with, I think it was a 26%, correct me if I'm wrong, that's not a strong mandate.
00:33:00.840So that's, I think, Jeremy being, you know, the very dedicated campaigner.
00:33:05.880And I know he's taking this very seriously.
00:33:07.900I think, you know, he's got a, his mandate is, hey, guys, I'm here for you, Calgary, I'm here for all Calgarians.
00:33:13.840So, Stephen, we'll let you start with that and then we'll carry over to Amber on that.
00:33:17.280Yeah, I mean, it's a real challenge to suggest he even has a mandate, right?
00:33:21.240like he's been elected by less than 100 000 people of a 1.6 million person uh city uh he has
00:33:29.640um a lot of work to do um his vote total dropped significantly from 2021. 2021 he was a much more
00:33:37.080popular politician than he was in 2025 but he won and you know this is where the the challenge is
00:33:44.680how does he create a cohesive council when frankly he's got you know some really
00:33:52.840rabid progressives i mean uh i know that conservatives sometimes dislike conservatives
00:33:57.560but i'll tell you there's no there's no feud like the inter-progressive war i'll tell you that
00:34:01.800um blood blood tests all around just to make sure that you're the right level of progressive
00:34:07.320um but this you know he's got some people who are just rabbit uh rabbit also on the right
00:34:13.320you know landon johnson not really a conciliatory type of fellow i mean he ran the uh recall gand
00:34:19.640gondek campaign he's going to be a big voice in in municipal government um how does he work with
00:34:27.400jeremy i think he would have worked really well with jeremy 1.0 jeremy 2.0 i'm not sure he works
00:34:34.040well with at all so i'm just dying to see how jeremy takes this extremely small mandate both
00:34:41.080in terms of a level of victory and overall number of votes and turns it into something
00:34:47.640that Calgarians rally behind. The way that we rallied behind Dave Brown-Kanye, the way that
00:34:52.840we rallied behind Nenshi, Ralph Klein. This is fascinating. This is the first time that an
00:34:59.880incumbent mayor has lost in Calgary since Ralph Klein beat Rod Sykes in 1980. So this is a
00:35:07.160a significant election from that point of view as well I think we're all interested Amber you
00:35:13.420know we'll go over to you here we're all interested you know we all remember and that's
00:35:16.900who I used to work for was he was Jeremy 1.0 and that was you know he was the bravo rouser and he
00:35:21.640stood on the soapbox and he was you know the man of the people right and from in his term from
00:35:27.1802017 to 2021 I guess and we're seeing a different version of Jeremy is this a more mature Jeremy
00:35:33.880is this a more collaborative Jeremy? Because I would argue that whoever is leading the city,
00:35:38.940you have to be collaborative. It's one of the number one skill sets. For me, that's why I got
00:35:43.640behind Jeff Davison. I saw that he had that ability to bridge the left and the right.
00:35:47.740Will Jeremy be able to do that? Amber, what do you think?
00:35:51.940I mean, it's a first past the post system, and he won. And I think that we have to get behind him.
00:35:58.360as our mayor you know we're facing a lot of different um things that are going on in the
00:36:03.880in the context and we need a strong voice for calgary and i think we need to give him the room
00:36:08.680to create that collaborative culture he's been signaling i've seen in his social media posts
00:36:13.800he's already been meeting with some of the folks that are coming forward and have been elected as
00:36:20.040we sort of hear all the results coming in and things are finalized um and i you know i have
00:36:26.840confidence that he's going to put his best foot forward. I think he might surround himself with
00:36:31.960some folks in his advisory capacity to the right of him and some to the left of him.
00:36:36.600And that's probably where you need a mayor to be. This isn't partisan politics anymore. You know,
00:36:41.960there's some major projects that we need to get forward. We need to have some discussions with
00:36:46.760the federal government on some very important projects. And frankly, let's just give him the
00:36:53.560space to see what he's able to do he's one vote on a council and the more that he can try to
00:36:58.840collaborate with his colleagues and set a better tone uh we've had some toxic councils we've had
00:37:04.920some toxic councils that maybe they got more votes uh for a certain thing but look how sideways
00:37:11.160things have gone um and the fact that gondak didn't come in second i think speaks volume
00:37:17.560to a change uh type of election and um i'm hopeful i'm just going to be optimistic that he uh
00:37:24.840he puts his best foot forward and um let's give him the space to do that and and see how he lands
00:37:30.600you know and i think we have to do that right we have to be positive and we have to build bridges
00:37:34.520not walls so i i too wish jeremy parkas all the best and i hope he surrounds himself with some
00:37:40.120really excellent people and uh governs with uh with collaboration as he moves forward as the next
00:37:46.760mayor so i guess we'll kind of wind down the show with going into just a little bit about what's
00:37:51.320happening in some of these uh in some of the councillor positions so landon johnson's very
00:37:55.600interesting he won he won he had very strong numbers um so you know all the best to him with
00:38:01.540that but certainly there are a lot of there's a lot of buzz that he is jeremy 1.0 and that he's
00:38:06.960going to be quote the new jeremy so i too am interested to see how that'll play out um that
00:38:13.280it will be really interesting. I do feel there's a lot of people that kind of hover around the
00:38:17.220centre, kind of both ways. I'm trying to think if there's any other really, really big personalities
00:38:22.420in there. I know we've got a couple of recounts coming. So I think it's just the mayor recount
00:38:28.760coming, which I don't know that we'll see any really different results. But Ward 12. Now that,
00:38:34.600Stephen, correct me if I'm wrong, I think that differentiation is 29. So that would be the
00:38:39.660Alberta Calgary party or the ABC party that would be their their one seat in in this election which
00:38:47.020would be Mike Jameson and Ward 12 and then that's the Calgary party candidate Sarah Ferguson who
00:38:53.260who's up against him there so tell me a little bit about that and what you think about some of these
00:38:57.820some of where these councillors landed.
00:38:59.500counted by machine election i think it would be uh much less optimism on our side um but because
00:39:11.100it is hand counted and the process uh does have a little bit more room for error so i'm we're
00:39:17.260we're cautiously optimistic obviously when you do a recount it can go either way right you don't know
00:39:23.420if there's mistakes number one and number two you don't know the direction that the mistakes are
00:39:27.580made. When there was a recount in 2021 with DJ Kelly versus Sean Chu, Sean Chu wound up getting
00:39:33.980a larger number. So we'll see how things go in 2025 for Ward 12. I think that the number's too
00:39:41.340big for the mayor's chair, 500 plus strikes me as too big of an error rate. But 29 in Ward 12,
00:39:52.780Like I say, it could go either way, but we are cautiously optimistic that we'll find Sarah Ferguson in council instead of Mike Jamison.
00:40:02.780Yeah, very interesting. I think, John, we'll go to some of the comments here.
00:40:06.640What do we got here? We've got Wayne Lustill.
00:40:09.900We need to get rid of municipal politics. Nobody shows up to vote.