Should conservatives vote for Sonya Sharp？
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
197.51237
Summary
Sonia Shart is running for mayor of Calgary as a non-socialist. She's a former councillor who served as Ward 1 Councillor and served four years on City Council. She says she's running on a platform that's different from the other three major non-Socialist candidates in the race.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
G'day and welcome. I'm Derek Fildebrandt, publisher of the Western Standard.
00:00:15.660
Today we're continuing our series of interviewing the major non-socialist Calgary mayoral candidates.
00:00:25.260
We've already spoken with Jeff Davison and Jeremy Farkas, and I'm pleased today to welcome
00:00:32.740
outgoing councillor for Ward 1 and Calgary mayoral candidate, Sonia Shart.
00:00:45.240
I think you've spoken to our City Hall reporter, Mike Thomas, before.
00:00:49.080
Yeah. But I just want to get on the action myself because, you know, I've been so confused
00:00:55.320
about, you know, how non-socialist or conservative Calgarians should vote.
00:01:03.860
It's a messy, it's a messy, it's a messy election.
00:01:09.540
One was supposed to be theoretically less messy because we had parties.
00:01:12.580
Parties should actually make it maybe a bit neater when you have a nomination process and
00:01:21.920
I do think in the end, the party system will likely provide some more predictability for
00:01:26.080
things and you don't have candidates who are broadly similar running against each other.
00:01:31.220
I always thought it was going to take a couple elections for it to kind of come out in the
00:01:33.540
wash until there's a clear kind of conservative party, clear, more leftist party, etc.
00:01:38.740
You know, for yourself, you know, maybe you make the case about conservatives who are so
00:01:42.540
split. There's so many undecided who are disproportionately conservatives too, who don't know how to vote.
00:01:46.540
And why should confused conservatives in Calgary vote for you over, say, Jeff Davison or Jeremy
00:01:52.960
I think what's important is just looking at my track record, especially the fact that I just
00:01:57.800
coming off of a four-year council where things that didn't matter to Calgarians or they weren't
00:02:03.800
important to Calgarians or Calgarians spoke against, crossed the finish line. I was always on the other
00:02:08.660
side of that vote. And I've listened to Calgarians. I would say I am extremely fiscally responsible when it
00:02:15.220
comes to city pool budgeting and I care and I listen. And so there are things that happened.
00:02:22.040
I think, well, Jeremy and Jeff were on council with Joe T. And I know, you know, he had mentioned
00:02:29.140
that, you know, maybe Jeff and I have similar policies, but Jeff actually voted in line with
00:02:33.100
everything Jody did when they were on council together. And Jeremy was the outlier and Jeremy
00:02:39.180
had a tough time bringing consensus. So on this council, I'm kind of the outlier with some of my
00:02:44.420
colleagues, but I've also brought consensus when it mattered. I might have lost on the things that
00:02:50.540
talked about fiscal responsibility, blanket rezoning, trying to stop that, you know, climate issues that
00:02:56.260
I tried to get an audit on. And so those are things that you would have seen me do in action.
00:03:02.000
The other thing when I look at my to-do list, because I know everyone has these aspirational
00:03:06.900
platforms. Yes, I'm running with a team and we built a team of people together to tackle city
00:03:12.700
hall issues day one, and we have a political muscle. But my to-do list is clear. Those things
00:03:16.960
that we need to do is, you know, blank, repeal blanket rezoning, make our city safer. We have
00:03:23.520
been endorsed by the Calgary Police Association to add 500 new police officers, to make our transit safe,
00:03:27.800
to add that police station downtown. But what's really making me stand out compared to all the
00:03:34.380
others, is talking about bringing senior administration to heel. Until you kind of get a
00:03:40.900
hold of the fact that senior administration reports to council, and council reports to the people.
00:03:46.960
That has to happen. And that's been lost in all of this. And I'm bringing that back. And all these
00:03:53.540
ideas about budgeting, infrastructure, growth, nothing can happen until council takes kind of over that
00:04:00.480
leadership at city hall again, because we represent you, the people. And that's important. So that's
00:04:05.780
where I would say that my argument is about me, that's very different than everybody else, that I
00:04:10.420
see city hall is a bit broken. And when I hear Calgarians want change, I know what they're talking
00:04:16.060
about. They're not talking about just repealing blanket rezoning or making our streets safer.
00:04:21.000
They're talking about the governance or talking about the culture at city hall. And that's where I come in
00:04:26.460
and say, I can fix that. So, um, well, a preface and then a question. Um, so I've moved out of the
00:04:36.580
city for a variety of reasons, crime, taxes, and just wanted a little more space. But, um, you know,
00:04:43.520
I mentioned that the first time I met you, um, I didn't vote for you, because we didn't have party
00:04:50.420
slaves. I didn't really, I didn't see no one. I had no one at least met me at my door. Maybe someone
00:04:56.160
knocked on my door, but I wasn't there. Didn't know anyone. So my, my default is if I don't know
00:05:00.380
who to vote for, I look at who the unions have endorsed and I vote for someone else. Uh, and I saw
00:05:05.240
the unions had endorsed you. So I didn't vote for you. I'd voted for the next name on the list,
00:05:09.340
essentially just that's, that's my shot in the dark. Um, you know, and I'm used to voting for
00:05:15.300
people and then being disappointed by them. Uh, you were a new experience for me where I didn't
00:05:20.620
vote for you. And then you surprised me by how well you performed. Uh, I, you know, I remember
00:05:26.060
just reading, like watching things for coming from council and you're on your, from the beginning,
00:05:31.860
um, you know, when they had the climate emergency declared, uh, you know, I thought at the time I
00:05:36.740
looked at the amount of money they at least theoretically committed to it. Calgary could have
00:05:40.340
bought an aircraft barrier and put it on the Glenmore, which I think would have been a better use
00:05:44.440
of money. But, uh, you know, you were on the right side of that from the beginning. I was like,
00:05:48.060
oh, well, that's surprising. And then, then you're pretty consistently on the right side of
00:05:52.360
things. We had blanket rezoning. Um, so I'm not used to that. Normally disappointed by people I did
00:05:57.100
vote for, not surprised, pleasantly surprised by people I didn't vote for. That was a nice change.
00:06:01.860
Um, one of the criticisms though, uh, you know, some people I know who are, uh, not voting for you
00:06:09.400
is that you're, you know, you had worked, uh, in the bureaucracy of city hall and the administration
00:06:15.740
for some time. And then on the one side hand, yes, that means, you know, you know, the ropes,
00:06:20.820
uh, Leslie Knope. And, uh, I mean, not in a good way. I love not her politics, but I love Leslie Knope,
00:06:28.560
uh, the character. Um, uh, so, you know, you know, the ropes, you know how to handle city hall,
00:06:33.420
but on the other hand would be a fear that, you know, having spent a significant part of your
00:06:38.140
career in, in city hall's administration, that you would be a creature of it, that you might be
00:06:43.040
captured by it. How would you respond to that? I would never have left if I was captured by
00:06:49.180
city hall or didn't want to fight city hall. So I've got the 16 years business experience and I
00:06:54.620
know I had the 20 years inside now, the four years as a politician, none of my opponents see that.
00:06:59.600
But if you go back and look at some of the things I've tried to, I would say bring to the surface
00:07:07.580
are some of the issues happening in senior leadership. When we talk about expenses, when
00:07:12.660
we talk about travels, when we talk about adding layers of bureaucracy where, you know, what can
00:07:17.600
you do with $2.5 million? How many police officers can you get for that? So I left for a reason. I left
00:07:23.440
knowing that you can't fight city hall from inside because you have a target on your back and you're
00:07:28.440
going to get fired. So I made the decision to leave and run for council, I was elected. But
00:07:33.580
if you can see that the knowledge I have is worth its weight in gold, to be honest, I can
00:07:40.260
navigate that whole system better even than current incumbents on council. And I see things
00:07:47.520
and sometimes I bite my tongue because you know, maybe it's not the time and place to be public
00:07:51.100
about things like that. But I have, I would say proved to people that maybe didn't vote for
00:07:55.740
me the first time because of my, my experience at city hall. But knowing the ropes, like when
00:08:03.140
you're in the city, right, you report and you have layers and I reported to the city manager
00:08:07.760
and he's the CAO now. And you know, now on the other side, I challenge his, you know, some
00:08:14.520
of his policies or what he's doing. And some of my, I would say colleagues on council don't
00:08:21.180
know how to do it or maybe don't want to do it. I have no problem because at the end
00:08:25.080
of the day, I'm a public servant. If I was in city hall or now that I'm outside city hall,
00:08:28.980
I'm still a public servant and I serve Calgarians. It's your taxpayer money and you deserve to
00:08:34.100
know exactly where it's being spent and how it's being spent. And so challenging status
00:08:38.760
quo has always been my thing. I just know that you can't do it from inside. You have to do
00:08:43.500
it from outside. So speaking of city hall, I'm not positive, but I think it may have
00:08:49.320
been second street had come out with something about the pensions of city councillors, that
00:08:55.380
there was kind of second and third pensions, the way it's, it's all very complicated. And
00:09:00.200
I don't want to get into the actuarials of it. I spent a big part of my career when I
00:09:03.500
was at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation actually studying the actuarials of MP pensions. We found
00:09:07.520
it was all this other crazy stuff. No one had known, but it's all complicated. I won't
00:09:11.560
get into it. But when Farkas was on council, he didn't take the pension. I think there's
00:09:23.600
really only one reason to do that is that's to give a politician the moral authority to
00:09:27.660
perform these things. A lot of these, our public sector pensions are almost entirely defined
00:09:34.680
benefit, not defined contribution. Those are actuarially and financially problematic.
00:09:40.060
Right. Um, the idea is then to give you the, uh, uh, the moral authority to change it. When
00:09:47.160
we succeeded in reforming, not abolishing, but performing the federal MP pension, the hope
00:09:51.540
was then that, okay, the Harper government now has the moral authority to change public
00:09:55.940
sector pensions for federal bureaucrats, but then they didn't do it. So it was actually
00:09:59.280
kind of, they did the symbolic thing to give themselves moral authority, then actually didn't
00:10:02.780
do what they were supposed to do with the authority. Um, uh, so what would you do with
00:10:10.020
city council pensions? And beyond that, is there any kind of significant reform you would
00:10:16.240
take to pensions for, uh, city of Calgary workers' pensions, which I know you're, you
00:10:23.380
No, they must say they're very different. Right. So like, so I, I wasn't, uh, I did,
00:10:28.160
so I'll be honest, I did attack Jeremy for what he said about not taking a golden pension.
00:10:38.540
Because there's a difference between not taking one and taking one.
00:10:41.660
Yeah. I was surprised by that because it, it did come with a financial cost for him.
00:10:45.080
You said, I think it almost made him more take home money. Uh,
00:10:47.980
Yeah. Yes. Because yeah, but they're not getting the other half. So no, in the end,
00:10:52.060
he left a lot of money on the table. I, I told him like, uh, when I was in politics,
00:10:57.360
I made some of these symbolic sacrifice things and you get no credit for it. And he didn't
00:11:02.520
get credit for it. And then he didn't get elected mayor. And so nothing happened with
00:11:06.400
it. But I, I mean, I, I do have to challenge you on that part. Like it did, uh, you know,
00:11:12.420
beyond the exact fiscal year over the longterm, he left a lot of money on the table with that
00:11:17.300
action. Well, I would say this is that when you don't take the pension, you get that,
00:11:21.640
you don't get a deduct from your paycheck. And we asked HR out in public because you
00:11:26.100
have a choice as an elected official. And so technically it depends on how
00:11:31.060
financially savvy you are. You could take that extra money in and invest it.
00:11:35.600
Yeah, but no one in the right mind would you, I want to, if I would give my money for a defined
00:11:41.240
benefit pension plan matched by my employer, the taxpayer, and I'm guaranteed it for life.
00:11:46.360
And it's not up to the market. Well, and I, no one in the right mind wouldn't.
00:11:49.320
And I say, I would say I'd still challenge that because our elected official pension is
00:11:53.240
based on the number of terms you serve. And so if you only do one term and you get that
00:11:58.180
and you pay into it, it comes out to 350 to $400 a month when you're 65. There's nothing
00:12:03.280
golden about that. And so when you don't take the pension and you get that extra money per
00:12:09.120
paycheck per month, if you're fiscally savvy, you're going to invest that and you can make more
00:12:13.860
money. And so I don't know how much is left on the table. I mean, I don't know people's
00:12:18.720
financial situations. Should we be looking at pensions in general? Yeah, there should be an
00:12:23.360
understanding if there's two or three different pensions. Maybe some, I would say, I called them
00:12:30.360
more like the senior, senior bureaucrats are getting. New city staff aren't getting the types
00:12:35.140
of pensions that people were getting back in the day. But what I was really focused on is the
00:12:39.060
elected official pension. And so I will, I've challenged Jeremy on that only because what
00:12:43.980
we've been given is just a little bit different than hearing, you know, what's golden about
00:12:48.720
$500 a month. Nothing. Nothing's golden. It's that it's guaranteed for life, no matter how
00:12:55.380
the investments do, which is different than a defined contract. I know a lot of people think
00:12:58.860
the difference between defined benefit. Yeah. And that's fair enough. It's all kind of,
00:13:01.880
I would just say is that if you're going to stand up and say, I didn't take this and I,
00:13:07.720
so then what? So what are you going to do about it? And like you said, like you want the credit,
00:13:12.380
right? So if you want not to take something because you don't believe in it, so put it this way,
00:13:16.780
we tried to not take our pay raises, right? And we have challenged the, I would say the process of
00:13:23.720
getting pay raises and we're turned down because always a third party. So we put a pledge out saying
00:13:27.900
that, you know, council should not be able to determine their raise and we need to figure out
00:13:34.240
if, you know, the average person isn't seeing the raise that council's seeing, then we should be able
00:13:40.360
to stop our raises, but we weren't able to. But the whole, the whole point, I think of politicians
00:13:47.100
taking a pay cut or not taking a pay increase, not taking a pension, et cetera, the purpose is to
00:13:53.780
give themselves moral authority to make tough decisions with the bureaucrats and other workers
00:13:58.360
that are under them. So, you know, if, if you are going to not take a pay increase or you're going
00:14:04.860
to put it off to an arbiter, some kind of third party, is that then saying, is that what you would
00:14:09.900
then do with city workers rather than just the regular tit for tat negotiation with the unions
00:14:14.540
and the unions normally get more? Because that's the biggest driver of costs in virtually any
00:14:20.360
municipality is the payroll. Oh yeah, for sure. And, uh, or, or, and most governments period
00:14:26.060
federally have a bunch of transfers on top, but it's mostly payroll. And we've, you know, we
00:14:31.040
politicians, when they talk about, well, we're going to get costs under control. They always talk
00:14:34.640
very vaguely middle managers and money or piece of cues. No, it's payroll. If you don't get the
00:14:41.500
payroll of city hall under control, none of that other stuff. Well, it goes back to my third point
00:14:46.160
of my to-do list. The only person that reports to council right now is the city, um, administrative
00:14:50.700
officer. They're the only person that city council does a performance evaluation on any,
00:14:55.940
and the auditor, which you, you leave that one on the side. But, and so when you talk about,
00:15:00.360
you know, getting a new business, you usually open up those books, you see the governance structure,
00:15:04.120
you look to see where efficiencies are. This new council will need to do the same thing,
00:15:07.980
but your only single employee, when you walk into that door, other than your staff in your office
00:15:13.560
is the city manager. So you need to have those conversations. So when I came to budget and I
00:15:19.000
talk about bringing, um, you know, amendments to lower the, the operating costs that brings up the
00:15:24.720
tax rate or not, I'm trying to focus on things that aren't going to affect your day-to-day living
00:15:29.680
in Calgary. So you're looking for those, you know, excess waste, excess, excess spending. And so that is
00:15:36.000
really important because that's where you can bring things down. Um, well, let's change gears a little
00:15:41.780
bit here. Um, crime and drugs. I didn't consider it to be particularly top of mind, even four years
00:15:51.500
ago, uh, certainly not eight years ago, 12 years ago, but now it's everywhere. Uh, you know, when I
00:15:58.380
had Jeff here, I bought, you know, the alley right behind our office where I parked my vehicle every
00:16:03.420
day, there's the drug zombies. It's everywhere. It's, uh, you know, our, our public transit have
00:16:10.880
just become crime pipelines at this point. I know you've committed to hire 500 new officers
00:16:15.340
putting a station downtown. I mean, it's bizarre that we don't have a station downtown. Um,
00:16:21.080
but I don't, I'm not sure the answer is just more officers. Um, like I was just down in Washington,
00:16:27.500
D.C. and, uh, a city not known for being particularly safe. Now I was in the generally
00:16:34.120
nicer part of it. I was not out in the more known dangerous areas. Uh, but there they brought
00:16:39.380
in the frigging national guard and maybe it was overkill, maybe not, but I've, I was safe. I've
00:16:47.000
not felt that safe in a big city, uh, since I, I can't remember. I, I didn't see a single,
00:16:52.480
uh, addict on the sidewalks. Uh, the closest I saw was one old fashioned drunk, an old fashioned
00:16:59.280
drunk, just a guy drinking a bottle of hooch, uh, and mumbling to himself and singing a song.
00:17:05.500
That was the, I forgot we even had those, the good old days when we just have a good old
00:17:09.240
fashioned drunk on a sidewalk. We don't eat, we don't have that anymore. Wholesome, wholesome
00:17:13.840
way to do it. Um, you know, it's, so it's not just officers on the streets. It's, it's the
00:17:20.100
drug problem. Are you, you know, the province is moving towards mandatory treatment. I actually
00:17:24.940
don't know if it's going to work, but I'm just really willing to try anything. I think
00:17:28.000
that's new at this point. Well, I think that's what's scary is we do need to try things.
00:17:32.380
So even Councillor McLean and I talked about adding turnstiles to some of the train stations. I know
00:17:37.180
that we get, we have had a lot of criticism about that in our past council saying it's going
00:17:40.340
to cost so much money. How can we put a money, like how can we put a cost right now to public
00:17:44.100
safety where we need to make sure our trains are safe for everybody and making sure that we
00:17:49.100
don't see the things we're seeing. The one thing about the open drug use that's happening in our
00:17:53.060
city, it's, we, we need to try something totally different. And I have called for the province
00:17:57.960
to shut down the Schumer site and say, like, figure out what you need from the city. We,
00:18:02.720
we control land. So if you need more locations, let's give you the more land, but we got to try
00:18:06.700
something. We can't continue down this path. What do you sound a mandatory treatment and
00:18:10.140
cooperating with the province on that? Sorry? The province moving towards mandatory treatment
00:18:14.380
obviously require the participation of the Calgary police service. Where do you stand? I would say
00:18:18.480
that we've got to try, see what works and what doesn't work. We've never done it yet. Right?
00:18:22.280
Like that's the thing. But it is mandatory, uh, mandatory treatment, a part of those things
00:18:27.060
that you are willing to try. I would say I'm, I would say knowing that I have to keep the streets
00:18:33.340
safe for you. If whatever they need to do to treat people, because what happens in the building
00:18:39.020
is their responsibility. And so if mandatory treatment in a compassion way is their way to go,
00:18:45.020
then that's way to try it. There's other cities around the world that have done this and it's
00:18:49.520
worked, but we can't sit back anymore and just watch this in front of us happen. But there needs
00:18:54.480
to be a, there needs to be compassion around this. And it's not just the province that has to step up.
00:18:58.700
Yeah. I don't think they're talking about like picking them up and next like dog catchers and
00:19:03.400
But I think this is, so the words that people use, and I think what happens is, um, that's,
00:19:09.840
it's like a thing, right? So when you hear word mandatory, you, it's a trigger word. And so it
00:19:15.020
needs to be compassionate intervention. And there needs to be not just the province and the city
00:19:18.680
working together, but our partners that are making sure that, you know, the, the, the population that
00:19:23.820
needs the support gets the support. And so that's, what's important here. And I have lived experience
00:19:30.880
in that world. Uh, nothing I'm going to share today, but it's there. You need to approach these
00:19:36.140
situations with a lot of sensitivity and that's critical. And not just the people that are needing
00:19:41.700
the population that needs the support, but the people that are providing the support and helping
00:19:46.060
them get on their way. That's going to be critical. It's going to be a lot of training and, uh, yeah,
00:19:50.960
I, I support whatever it needs to be for all Calgarians, including those that need the support
00:19:57.540
Yeah. I think we're well past the point where there's broad support for treating drug addicts
00:20:05.560
as criminals themselves. No, they're, they're victims. They're, they're patients who need
00:20:11.920
And I think we, I think that's that around that.
00:20:14.100
Yeah. But I, I think where things are shifting is away from now enabling that sickness to curing
00:20:21.280
the sickness, at least doing our, doing something to try.
00:20:24.320
Well, and people, we all deserve dignity, right?
00:20:26.700
And that's, what's important is how do we do this with everyone having the dignity to
00:20:31.540
move forward with whatever treatment they need? And that's critical. Uh, and so it's new
00:20:36.500
to our city, right? Like these aren't, we're talking about something that, I mean, like you
00:20:40.520
just said, you didn't think eight years ago or 10 years, I was born and raised here too.
00:20:43.320
I did not think that we would be having these conversations, but we are, and it's reality.
00:20:47.000
And we have to figure out how we can move forward in a way that we have the compassion
00:20:55.160
All right. We mentioned it earlier, but it's one of the big issues, blanket rezoning.
00:21:01.340
I did. Um, didn't vote against blanket rezoning. I tried to stop it in 2023 and I took a lot
00:21:08.600
Yeah. Yeah. No, uh, it was good. Good on you. Uh, now some of your opponents, uh, have
00:21:14.180
said that you're squishy on ending blanket rezoning, that it's not just, you're not
00:21:20.040
going to, just going to end it, but that you are going to do some other, which, okay.
00:21:28.360
You repeal blanket rezoning to go back where it needed to be prior to whatever that date
00:21:37.520
Of course there needs to be a process for people to, if they, if you want to keep RCG,
00:21:42.220
then you're going to have to go through a process just like everyone else did last
00:21:47.660
You're probably gonna have to pay for your permit, right?
00:21:49.580
Like those are, and then you reform the planning department to make things happen
00:21:52.980
quicker. And it's always been repeal, reinstate, reform.
00:21:57.880
Those have been the three things I've been talking about this whole time.
00:22:02.140
And so I have never been wishy-washy on repealing blanket rezoning.
00:22:06.040
I know that there was a couple of people saying that I, they said that they were the
00:22:14.800
I tried to bring something forward in 2023 to say, this is a really bad idea.
00:22:20.440
And when it was a policy idea, and I think this, what you can do is cut red tape.
00:22:25.240
You could shave four months off the planning process.
00:22:27.420
I spent most of my career in the planning department.
00:22:32.600
So anyways, long story short, we've got, we went through those public hearings and yeah,
00:22:36.940
stood up and said, I absolutely am not supporting this.
00:22:39.700
And it'll be the first business of the regular meeting of council of this new council once
00:22:50.860
Jeff Davison has committed to a just flat four-year tax freeze, not a cut, but a freeze.
00:23:10.740
So 5.4% has been the guaranteed tax increase for residential homeowners for 2026.
00:23:20.720
There are things in the preview of the budget that do not belong in there that can bring
00:23:26.320
Are you talking about cutting the scheduled tax increases or cutting the actual tax amount?
00:23:31.100
So this scheduled increase, this, this schedule increase is happening in November.
00:23:35.080
So if you didn't do anything, it would be 5.4% for a residential homeowner.
00:23:43.260
Whatever you can bring it down that you can still operate.
00:23:46.000
So when I say tax freeze, I mean like it's zero, zero, zero.
00:23:49.280
So that's interesting because that's not what I'm getting out of the tax freeze.
00:23:57.620
I might need to go back to him what he means by tax freeze because when I say tax freeze,
00:24:10.620
Maybe I need to clarify with him what he means by that.
00:24:14.640
When you, you know, we can bring back a finance committee that's done in public.
00:24:18.460
So the tax, so first of all, the 5.4 is too high.
00:24:23.920
We need to bring a new budget cycle or new budget for the next four years.
00:24:30.920
The last four years, Calgarians probably on the average would have seen on their average
00:24:36.960
That is extreme compared to what we've seen over the years.
00:24:42.800
Well, and it's, it's, that's why we have like no affordability issues and things like that.
00:24:46.220
So what we've pledged is to have a committee that's open to public and that we are asking
00:24:51.960
our senior administration to come to council or committee with their books, open them up.
00:25:01.120
A lot of our conversations around finance and spending, uh, some happen in closed doors
00:25:05.880
or they're a vague presentation you will see from, you know, um, senior administration that needs to stop.
00:25:14.320
what needs obviously your your needs and wants of a calgarian and the wasteful spending has to go
00:25:20.480
we need to get back to basic budgeting which you know helps with the potholes water uh snow
00:25:26.960
clearing those are important things if you go right down to zero you will run into some issues
00:25:32.720
in the future you can end up in an infrastructure gap and things like that but you need to make sure
00:25:37.120
that you obviously are generating a revenue but not overspending and that's what we've seen in
00:25:42.960
the last couple years um okay two questions just slightly over time okay oh your staff here is not
00:25:50.640
gonna kill me for it okay well i don't know we'll see she looks tough um so uh i was in your ward uh
00:25:58.880
i still drive through it when i come into the office here okay but um when the water feeder blew
00:26:05.600
now we're all on reduced water in my area but i at least had water um that wasn't in montgomery bone
00:26:13.120
ass but yeah uh the big problem to me was the friggin traffic from construction for an entire
00:26:19.280
friggin summer because we were not doing extremely simple basic nuts and bolts job of a municipal
00:26:26.880
government you know it's keep the streets safe yeah plowed and the parks clean and the water flowing
00:26:34.240
that's that's that's the basics that's your job and this happened you know not that long after the
00:26:39.040
city voted to spend uh the gdp of a small country on a climate emergency um so you know i think really
00:26:46.480
then there was i said the next mayor is going to be someone who just wants to make government boring
00:26:52.000
again like that could they could put it on a red hat make boring government boring again uh or blue hat
00:26:56.960
because i like blue it could be yeah this is alberta so big as blue but you know what i mean it's like
00:27:01.520
it's a good campaign slogan just like someone who's just going to mind the p's and q's of simple
00:27:07.680
municipal government not make it fancy anymore just the basic shit we expect to get done um so
00:27:15.920
you know but that stuff takes money the water uh if you want the water feeders properly maintained
00:27:20.880
you either have to not spend money on frivolous things or you've got to raise taxes you want to bring
00:27:25.920
at least tax increases down um where's the money going to come from for because those things aren't
00:27:32.480
cheap water feeders are not cheap items but that's the stuff that really matters where's the money for
00:27:38.400
getting back to basics on something like that going to come from if it's not going to be from tax
00:27:42.240
increases so i would say over the last four years myself councillor chabot and councillor mclean brought
00:27:47.760
over 170 million dollars in operating costs down uh all voted against all the four years which is fine
00:27:53.520
but you can find savings in the corporation you can find the nice to haves um and not impact one
00:28:01.760
thing that you would notice driving to work every day and so the water feeder main issue was a game
00:28:08.720
changer for me seeing what i saw every day when i went to bonus and mothers with strollers with water
00:28:13.520
bottles no babies in those strollers getting water and so this is your job your job is to be a public
00:28:19.840
servant and you know what this job is supposed to be boring it is not there's nothing glorious
00:28:25.520
about this job um a lot of people don't like you and you have to be okay with that and your job is
00:28:30.480
to get out and make sure you have running water clean streets no potholes snow clearing and these are
00:28:35.200
things that are basic budgeting and that's why i go back to like getting back to basics and making yeah
00:28:40.640
making city hall boring again whatever slogan you want to call i i like to roll up my sleeves and get to
00:28:45.440
work i am one of those people and so it can be done and there are a lot of things we can flatten
00:28:51.440
right out in the corporation that nobody would know and it would not impact your everyday i would call
00:28:55.920
it drive into calgary or you being here at work it would not impact but if you don't if you turn on
00:29:01.440
your water tap one morning not knowing there's a water main break and there's no water coming out
00:29:06.560
first thing you're going to think is did i pay my bill yeah second thing or you turn your water out and
00:29:12.000
it's gross brown water coming out how do you even know what's happening right and so these are things
00:29:18.400
that like we can never be there ever again that is you can never be a city at in our age because our
00:29:23.520
city's not old where a some a catastrophic failure like this impacts the whole city things happen we
00:29:30.800
get it um but i am looking forward to reading this report that's coming at the end of this year
00:29:35.840
on the water main to talk a little bit about how we even got to the point where a catastrophic failure
00:29:41.200
it's great that that'll come out long after all the votes are counted isn't it yeah it's too bad
00:29:46.320
because i was really hoping to see that before election day okay uh so crime and drugs was a
00:29:52.320
question that you might have got you at least come up in a mystical election before my next one is one
00:29:58.080
that i would have never conceived of would come up but is now because it's just become such a big issue
00:30:02.880
okay and it's mass migration it's not municipal jurisdiction at all but the effects of it are certainly
00:30:09.040
felt yes on our infrastructure on our housing it's not politically correct to say but it does affect
00:30:15.840
crime statistics a lot of things um it's under the control of the feds the province is at least musing
00:30:22.880
about taking control of it we'll see what happens um so i know you can't control the immigration rate
00:30:28.160
that's no that's that's ottawa no but um you know we do have uh the province has the ability to take
00:30:36.800
some control over it uh and and just it's one of the big things is driving the housing crisis
00:30:42.960
in calgary uh it's just filtered down into so much um understanding that yeah i know you can't control
00:30:50.160
it you're not the minister of immigration you're running for for mayor um but if you're talking to the
00:30:55.600
the federal minister of immigration you know what what is your message to them when you're
00:31:00.240
you know they're saying okay well how many uh immigrants would you like us to uh you know
00:31:05.440
migrants of various kinds you know we'd like to settle you know x amount in calgary what's your
00:31:11.040
message to them around that issue understanding i know you don't have the power to but if they're
00:31:15.280
listening to you i would say well first of all my my family came here from a different country too so
00:31:19.360
i'm a child of immigrants and so i understand people move to canada for a better life and i think
00:31:23.520
that's great we love our city you love the city like i love calgary and and culture is what just
00:31:30.320
changes the landscape of so many things and i think what's important is when i when i hear about
00:31:35.440
people coming to calgary and they have nowhere to live or we don't have you know enough schools
00:31:40.800
or hospitals to support the amount of people that moved here or are moving here the one thing we do have
00:31:47.840
as a city is land so i would look at the premier and the government of alberta and say if you need
00:31:54.560
support to build new schools to build more hospitals to build affordable housing we have land and we can
00:32:01.440
be cutting red tape to make sure those permits get processed fast and we actually do have a role to
00:32:06.720
play to support i mean it's hard to say um you know you don't ever want to be like no we don't want
00:32:12.240
anybody that that's not that's not okay you you have to you need to build a city that's going to
00:32:18.160
grow and not just that it helps with our you know obviously economic fight uh the economic growth in
00:32:23.760
the city it helps with the vibrancy but we have the land so when i look at the fact that we need to
00:32:30.080
like support what's been going on because we can't stop anything but we need to make sure the land is
00:32:36.480
available for people to build we have land we can give up and sell right like and people don't know
00:32:44.560
this right we we have land like in my where you used to live in in ward one and we have a lot of
00:32:49.520
land up there the city owns that land let's bring it to market sell as developers the most affordable
00:32:53.920
communities in calgary actually in the suburbs of our city let's get that land up to market let's get
00:32:58.800
houses built on it so to some extent i agree um you know migration i don't know we're gonna
00:33:05.120
get into a bigger topic i guess but keep it keep it simple jerek simple remember you just told me
00:33:09.920
keep applying um knowing our role and responsibility but i mean migration for the vast majority of
00:33:16.480
canadian history has generally been an economic plus uh has generally maybe made things more vibrant
00:33:21.680
but it's not that way right now uh you know the the way they've opened it up temporary foreign
00:33:28.240
workers and essentially phony student visas that has not helped the economy it's completely driven the
00:33:34.560
bottom out of it for uh low-income people to be competitive to work themselves uh it's created
00:33:40.320
some i'd say anti-vibrancy issues in some cases because we're not just bringing the best anymore
00:33:46.880
it's not way it was a decade ago we're in a very different system now and yeah you can we can build
00:33:53.280
some more that's that's definitely a part of the answer but then the taxpayer who's already here has
00:33:58.480
to bear the cost of building that new school for people who have not paid into the tax base we have
00:34:03.120
to pay the cost of building that new fire hall for people who have not uh been in the tax base yet
00:34:08.480
we can only absorb so much at a time so is the answer just new building well i would say if you're
00:34:14.880
looking at the municipality that's the only thing we can control is the land and the regulatory system
00:34:20.000
that's that's where we land that's our responsibility right there and you know i would say as you know a
00:34:27.200
future mayor to the city you need to support anything that's coming your way and if it's here
00:34:34.400
in front of you what's the solution to move forward on it you can't go backwards and so if the the
00:34:40.640
province says we need to build more schools great where do you want to put these more schools do we
00:34:44.880
have land if the province says we need to build more um seniors homes right because senior like we
00:34:50.400
have a we have a seniors population and you know they put money into our tax base but you know
00:34:55.440
i'll say one thing is our seniors probably need a little bit more relief when it comes to
00:35:00.320
affordability than a lot of things they built these cities for us and so you know we need to know what
00:35:06.400
our role and responsibility is and so it's funny because um to end on that question to talk about
00:35:11.200
you know staying in our lane i know exactly as a mayor what my lane looks like and where i'm going
00:35:17.360
to play a supporting role or i'm going to play a partnership to the province and say this is what i
00:35:23.360
need for calgary and calgarians will always come first and i think you know as soon as we can move
00:35:29.200
people into some of these buildings they pay into the taxes it's kind of that we generate that revenue
00:35:34.080
and you know you run for a city to create a place where it's affordable where it's safe and you know at
00:35:40.400
the end of the day derek what's been lost at city hall is trust and so you know i'm running on those three
00:35:48.080
things of making sure calgarians can trust city hall again so the decisions we make impact your
00:35:53.360
everyday life and that we're playing a supporting or advocating role to those other orders of
00:35:58.320
government for issues that we know we can't control i'm just one tiny one okay quickly because you're
00:36:04.880
going to get in so much trouble yeah uh yeah she she's looking scary um uh it's kind of an unpopular
00:36:13.200
thing to create more politicians but i i think and you you you are you are currently an outgoing
00:36:19.280
i am currently and these words are huge yes they are they have significantly more people than a
00:36:25.360
provincial constituency they're yeah approaching the size of a federal constituency but you have a
00:36:30.480
you have a fraction of the budget and in in many ways like i say this for me on the light you're
00:36:35.760
actually have a way more involved job and then like most mlas sit on the back bench they read some
00:36:40.640
talking points they're handed to them by some staff who don't even work for them and they're in
00:36:44.160
their leader's office and they voters are told and they go home and they answer some phone calls
00:36:49.120
not much some do a lot more um but for the most part a city councilor's job is a hell of a lot more
00:36:54.720
involved you're dealing with all these issues on the ground you're dealing with potholes and this
00:36:59.280
issue when the park and a million things these wards i think are too big now more city councilors makes
00:37:05.040
for maybe a more unwieldy council probably don't want it to be the size of a small parliament like toronto
00:37:10.480
but um although they're smaller i guess they used to be but uh what do you what do you think about
00:37:19.200
at least considering the idea of maybe shrinking down the size of the wards a bit to make them a
00:37:23.840
bit more manageable and therefore more representative of the people in them because it's it's yeah i i know
00:37:30.560
you probably don't want this no one likes the idea theoretically more politicians but i think the
00:37:34.720
wards got to get smaller they're too damn big well i think okay so i come out of this from a different
00:37:38.800
angle so i think there was about 120 000 people living ward one i also took over half of ward six
00:37:44.720
and i managed and i'll be honest um what i liked about the the compensation committee did is they
00:37:52.080
also disagreed with more councils or counselors because i thought it would be like too much they
00:37:56.720
gave us ability to hire more staff and when you have the right staff in your area work gets done so i kind
00:38:04.320
so i kind of had a award and a half my last year of council and you just manage and again getting
00:38:11.520
into this job you need to know your role and responsibility you are the closest to the people
00:38:16.640
you have to like that it's a public service job and i would say you know at this point right now i think
00:38:23.920
the 14 plus the mayor is good should it be reevaluated again absolutely and it will be because
00:38:29.600
they're going to look at that but smaller wards doesn't mean more efficient not necessarily so and
00:38:36.000
smaller wards doesn't mean lower taxes you need to elect the right people to represent your community and
00:38:42.240
represent you so that it doesn't matter how many people are in that horseshoe calgarians are getting
00:38:47.520
what they deserve all right okay uh i'm over time so i apologize thank you derek counselor and
00:38:55.520
candidate uh sonia sharp thank you very much thank you for being with us today great uh thank you all
00:39:00.640
of you for joining us today remember to go to westernstandard.news click on subscribe we're only
00:39:05.200
ten dollars a month or a hundred dollars a year for unlimited access to all western standard content
00:39:09.360
and get past the pesky paywall uh normally we do an election night uh coverage of things but
00:39:14.800
i guess the balloting is going to be a bit slower this time i want to be here till 3 a.m so we're
00:39:18.640
going to be here uh first thing tuesday morning next week with the election results it'll be probably
00:39:24.880
a little anticlimactic uh we won't be able to do our pretend uh both blitzer with a big screen with
00:39:30.880
the votes coming in it's not going to be like that but we'll we'll break down the results and discuss them
00:39:35.360
and uh well maybe my guest will be uh having a good night thank you thank you very much for joining us and