Western Standard - Megan McCaffrey with Common Sense Calgary petitions to Reopen Calgary

00:00:00.000 Oh

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 Hey. Well, welcome everybody to a live Western Standard special. I'm talking today with

00:01:08.880 Megan McCaffrey of Common Sense Calgary. They're a group that's been speaking up for citizens in

00:01:15.200 the city of Calgary for some time now, and they've launched a new initiative in light of

00:01:20.560 some of the fine actions on the part of Nahed Nenshi and his staff. So thanks for coming on,

00:01:25.760 Megan. Thanks so much for having me, Corey. So, yeah, I guess I'll let you start on. So

00:01:32.980 the issue has been essentially that you want to see an end to the lockdown and you've started

00:01:37.780 a petition to that effect with Common Sense Calgary? Yeah. So essentially it came to light

00:01:43.460 very recently that Mayor Naheed Nenshi had given permission to senior staffers to travel abroad

00:01:50.140 during the pandemic against provincial, federal recommendations.

00:01:55.280 And so what we see is this is, you know, it's quite hypocritical.

00:01:59.720 Obviously, over the Christmas season, Alberta and Calgary in particular

00:02:03.580 were put under an incredibly strict lockdown.

00:02:06.560 And yet you have these senior political officials across party lines,

00:02:10.640 across partisan lines, who are all very informed about the COVID situation,

00:02:14.680 traveling to other jurisdictions, taking their taxpayer-funded salaries

00:02:18.400 and spending them in areas like Maui, where it's significantly more open,

00:02:23.560 restaurants, businesses, they're allowed to operate.

00:02:27.360 So, yeah, it's that type of hypocrisy.

00:02:29.760 We think it's time for us to take a much more balanced approach to what's happening here.

00:02:36.040 All of the things we heard, I mean, the premier spoke today,

00:02:38.740 the Dina Hinshaw spoke today, and they're saying, you know, travel is relatively safe.

00:02:44.920 So, you know, if that's the case, then it's time to start reconsidering some of the penalties that Alberta businesses and Calgary businesses in particular have been put under.

00:02:53.340 Well, absolutely. I mean, they had Nenshi's own Twitter profile. Maybe he's changed it. I haven't looked at it recently.

00:02:57.980 But it said the old stay home, save lives thing. I would have assumed that staying home meant staying within the country.

00:03:05.880 You know, we aren't even allowed to go visit grandma or have more than two people over for Christmas.

00:03:11.240 And again, they see these people just flaunting it.

00:03:14.240 They're the ones who bring the laws down against us, yet they won't abide by themselves.

00:03:19.040 So they've essentially lost their moral authority to be able to crack down on us on a number of levels.

00:03:24.880 I mean, obviously, they don't think it's that serious about staying home because they won't do it themselves.

00:03:29.240 So, again, how's the petition been going so far then?

00:03:32.640 What kind of response have you been getting?

00:03:34.440 Yeah, it's been really good.

00:03:35.780 So, I mean, look, at Common Sense Calgary, we don't particularly care where private law abiding citizens are spending their vacation, their time, their dollars.

00:03:44.100 What we care about is this hypocrisy that's happening.

00:03:46.640 And I think a lot of Calgarians agree with us because the petition, which you can go and sign right now, if you're out watching at CommonSenseCalgary.com, the petition is called Reopen Calgary.

00:03:57.620 We received our initial target of 2,500 signatures in well under 24 hours of launching the petition.

00:04:05.180 We've since moved the target. We've increased it to 5,000. The last I looked at it, it was just under 4,000 signatures. So yeah, definitely go and sign it if you agree with us.

00:04:18.780 Yeah, and it's moving quite quickly.

00:04:21.180 I mean, for something that's come out in the last couple of days.

00:04:24.220 Do you guys, though, feel as an organization, like something that was different,

00:04:28.200 the parallels between Jason Kenney's circumstance with his chief of staff

00:04:32.420 and the head of Netshi's chief of staff were pretty striking.

00:04:35.660 I mean, these are both people who have their right-hand person next to them,

00:04:40.080 you know, who they are in close touch with.

00:04:42.300 Neither of them could deny that they, you know,

00:04:44.700 didn't know that the person was out of the country.

00:04:47.780 In Kenny's case, though, he finally had to actually force and fire his chief of staff.

00:04:51.860 And Nahid Nenshi has said he's not going to do anything about it.

00:04:55.400 Do you feel that Mayor Nenshi should do something about this to make an example?

00:04:59.560 Yeah, I mean, look, there's obviously some parallels between the two.

00:05:03.000 But I think the Nenshi situation is significantly worse in terms of moral authority.

00:05:07.880 Nahid Nenshi was an individual that was calling repeatedly on the province to impose stricter lockdowns,

00:05:15.260 longer lockdowns to make it more severe and the thing that a lot of people need to remember is

00:05:20.060 while the province is the one that set up the app the fundamental apparatus it was the city that

00:05:27.580 was enforcing it and the city did make a lot of decisions about the severity of enforcing it

00:05:32.000 and so you know we had an individual threatened with tasers for skating outside in public um there

00:05:38.800 a restaurant in Calgary that was fined for feeding laid off staff inside of the restaurant.

00:05:46.160 These are all things that ultimately came down to how the municipality decided to enforce these

00:05:51.680 rules. This is an individual that was telling Albertans, telling Calgarians to call 3-1-1

00:05:58.000 if they witnessed their neighbors breaking the COVID-19 rules that barred gathering.

00:06:02.400 He went to pick up your Christmas baking and you paid the consequences with people being encouraged

00:06:07.600 by Nahi Menchie to call 3-1-1. I think it's significantly worse than Kenney's situation,

00:06:14.480 and obviously Menchie isn't taking it as seriously as Jason Kenney has in the end decided to take it.

00:06:21.040 Now that's a big mistake. Albertans, Calgarians have been very clear about what their expectations

00:06:27.600 are of political leaders in this situation. This level of hypocrisy is unacceptable.

00:06:35.140 he needs to do something about it.

00:06:36.680 There needs to be some sort of sanction.

00:06:39.300 I can only imagine, though, that Mayor Nietzsche must have been stressed and tense

00:06:43.420 as he watched Jason Kenney get outright pilloried by the media and on the right, on the left.

00:06:51.800 I mean, everybody was furious about the hypocrisy, and rightly so.

00:06:55.120 And knowing that his chief of staff is laying on a beach in Hawaii,

00:06:58.160 probably watching the same thing on his iPhone, and knowing eventually it has to break.

00:07:02.200 uh unfortunately in a wise political decision looks like nenshi sat on it for 10 days 12 days

00:07:09.540 to let kenny take the heat and then uh came out and suddenly it's not a problem in the eyes of

00:07:14.100 many so i'm glad common sense calgary is keeping this alive and pointing out that this just isn't

00:07:18.900 acceptable you know no matter who's been doing it yeah absolutely i i think everyone was kind of

00:07:26.720 shocked um and there's a lot of concern that a double standard is going to occur here uh and

00:07:32.400 and that's not really reasonable it shouldn't matter what party you're coming from this was

00:07:36.880 a decision made by highly informed individuals across all sorts of party lines and it ultimately

00:07:43.280 was one that was extremely insulting to calgarians that were following the guidelines to the letter

00:07:49.280 of the guideline and there was an advisory in place recommending that we don't embark on

00:07:54.640 non-essential travel. So, aside from the petition itself and which is important and I really

00:08:02.160 encourage everybody, Common Sense Calgary has posted the link up there at commonsensecalgary.com

00:08:07.600 slash reopencalgary. And when we post this online, we'll have that link in there as well.

00:08:12.000 You guys are active with a great deal more things and we're coming into a municipal election this

00:08:16.320 year. I imagine we've got some other initiatives and things you're going to be working on in

00:08:20.800 the months to come here yeah of course um you know this is we are constantly monitoring what's

00:08:27.200 happening at municipal uh at city hall um and this is a huge obvious ethics issue but we're

00:08:34.000 monitoring for all sorts of ethics issues we are a defender of the taxpayer we consider ourselves

00:08:39.840 to be a watchdog of what's happening at city hall um if you're interested we are also on facebook

00:08:45.040 um, at Common Sense Calgary and we're on Twitter at Common Sense YYC. Um, we live

00:08:50.480 tweet council meetings regularly and we'll be incredibly active in the upcoming municipal

00:08:55.040 election. Um, regardless of the decision that Nenshi makes in this situation, there should

00:09:00.160 be consequences for him in October. Um, and we will, you know, we'll be there to make sure that

00:09:05.360 people remember the sort of leadership that Calgary has been granted by this mayor.

00:09:10.800 Yes. Well, thank you guys very much for keeping an eye on me. I really do appreciate when you

00:09:15.780 live tweet the council meetings because not all of us have time to sit through a lot of that

00:09:19.340 drudgery. I mean, you kind of need that, that point form thing. So I appreciate that sacrifice

00:09:24.600 and sitting through it so we can see the important parts that come out. But they slide a lot through

00:09:30.500 under the radar in those meetings. And again, our conventional press doesn't always cover that for

00:09:36.560 us. So again, I encourage everybody to get over to Common Sense Calgary and sign that petition.

00:09:41.280 Let's let them know that their governance has been unacceptable and support Common Sense Calgary.

00:09:46.560 They're really going to help us a lot in this next coming year as we move into an election.

00:09:50.480 So thank you very much for coming on, Megan. I'm certain we'll talk again.

00:09:55.040 Yeah, thanks so much for having me.

00:09:56.320 Keep up that good work.

00:09:58.000 Thanks.

Western Standard - January 08, 2021

Megan McCaffrey with Common Sense Calgary petitions to Reopen Calgary

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript