Western Standard - Smith says election coming if Calgarians disapprove of blanket rezoning

00:00:00.000 it was a vote last night by council to basically a blanket rezoning of the the entire city where

00:00:07.120 multi multi-unit apartments can be built four plexus and whatnot and it's all tied in with

00:00:14.000 federal housing money of a quarter billion dollars that the liberals have promised so

00:00:20.960 it was the largest public meeting in calgary history went a couple weeks i think 700 people

00:00:26.480 addressed the council uh 75 of them against it and quite emotional scenes down there some

00:00:34.000 some people crying uh but in the end uh i guess democracy didn't win council voted nine to six to

00:00:40.800 move ahead with it and uh you know cue the predictable outrage as per that though i mean

00:00:48.720 was the string that tight with the transfer from the trudeau government or if the council

00:00:54.960 had voted otherwise would they they have just given the money to quebec or would that money

00:00:59.440 still be coming to calgary i don't know let's let's hope it was airtight because if if not then they

00:01:04.720 have just sold their soul for nothing but uh it is and i think you may have made this point in yourself

00:01:11.280 uh in one of your writings that nobody voted for this like when the when the last municipal election

00:01:20.560 came up nobody said and if elected i will do everything i can to rezone single family residential

00:01:30.160 so that people can have fourplexes next door to their back gardens nobody campaigned for that and

00:01:38.080 yet they felt they had the authority the mandate to do this so was it the money well yeah i i would say so

00:01:46.400 uh it makes sense but uh the fact that so many people came out and said no we don't want this 75

00:01:55.840 of the submissions to council were rejecting it the fact that take that with the fact that nobody had

00:02:02.480 campaigned for this and i actually think the city council has just acted outside its authority

00:02:09.120 this is going to be a national trend you may depot may depend yeah and i think uh political suicide

00:02:16.800 is the word i used for it uh in a tweet last night so many calgarians are against it yet the uh the

00:02:23.280 council decided to go to go against it just rather like you know you talked about them not campaigning

00:02:28.320 on it it was like mayor gondack she gets selected day she's the letter the day one and she's in office

00:02:34.240 she declares an 80 billion dollar climate emergency oh wait hang on a second where did that come from 0.94

00:02:40.160 so if uh if calgarians finally get off their butts which they don't like to do for civic elections and

00:02:47.280 you know get out there this could be a sweeping change to council in a couple years well to your

00:02:53.760 point about where does this come from uh she has a very good example at the national level of somebody

00:03:00.880 who gets elected and then starts doing a whole bunch of things that he never talked about before

00:03:06.800 he was elected it seems like if you can just get in the current generation of politicians thinks that

00:03:12.800 once you have office you can do what you want an actual fact what's the point of campaigning on a

00:03:19.440 platform if the platform does not describe roughly the direction in which you want to go and be a

00:03:25.520 reasonably comprehensive list of the things that can be predicted i mean obviously governments have

00:03:32.240 to respond to one to to unforeseen events but there's nothing unforeseen about this they've been

00:03:38.080 working on rezoning for many many years but here it is they feel like they can make this decision well

00:03:44.960 you know the citizens will make a decision in 18 months time let's hope it's just not gone too far

00:03:51.600 but they uh they can't pull this back oh sorry corey i mean of the three of us sitting here uh

00:03:57.040 the only guys whose property values is going to go up is corey because he lives outside of town oh yeah

00:04:02.240 i mean it makes it more attractive to get the heck out of the city and away from the zoning to

00:04:05.840 acreages and areas like where i live so but i'd rather not my fellow calgarians suffered for the

00:04:10.880 sake of my property values yeah this council i mean it seems incapable of learning i mean we saw

00:04:18.160 something different this time around with mayor gondek as we said it's been calgary has an apathetic

00:04:23.120 voter base pretty permissive with their mayors i mean we've been around long enough with bronconnier

00:04:28.480 or klein or doer i mean their first two terms usually it's even then she it's a shoe-in i mean once

00:04:35.040 you're in as long as you don't rock the boat too hard you get a really nice comfortable honeymoon period

00:04:40.320 gondek just just just pooped in the swimming pool the second she got in there and her support numbers have

00:04:44.560 shown like she's a record low support and for those reasons you mentioned you know she went

00:04:50.640 completely against what she had campaigned on to get in to begin with but they don't seem to learn

00:04:55.760 from this yet no the polls show the entire council is historically low uh ratings and you think as a

00:05:02.400 smart politician you want to maybe stay in your job but they keep doing things to to to upset calgarians 0.98

00:05:08.560 the you know the the plastic bag van and and things like that it's like they're deliberately

00:05:15.200 you know it's almost like they're like prime minister trudeau they know they're going to get

00:05:18.720 defeated so they're trying to cause as much damage as they possibly can in the time that they have left

00:05:23.440 in office that's right they're certainly doing a job i mean it was almost inspiring that we don't see

00:05:27.520 congregants get off their butts like that there were thousands of submissions that came in too that

00:05:31.280 weren't in person and of those apparently 90 of them were opposed to this what's the point of public

00:05:36.640 engagement when you can see that they spent two weeks sitting there listening to hundreds of people

00:05:41.360 with thousands of submissions nodding their heads pretending they care and then saying okay well to

00:05:45.040 hell with all you we're just yeah a lot of pictures of counselor uh giancarlo uh sitting there on his

00:05:50.800 phone while you know people are weeping as they're as they're talking you know i you know the fix was in

00:05:56.320 the fix was in from the beginning so let's look on the bright side here we know that city hall

00:06:02.000 moves at a snail's pace if you were wanting to develop a piece of property within the city limits

00:06:06.960 and you bought it today i don't think you'd have your permits in place in 18 months time so there

00:06:13.280 is a possibility of pulling this thing back now how they deal with the money they've received from

00:06:18.160 ottawa or will receive from ottawa that's another matter but come and get it you know you're not

00:06:23.360 going to see apartment towers rising up in pump hill between the mansions quite yet i don't think so

00:06:29.040 there is i mean there is a chance to put another city council in place to direct the city administration

00:06:37.040 which i think generates and drives a lot of these ideas and put them in their place

Western Standard - May 16, 2024

Smith says election coming if Calgarians disapprove of blanket rezoning

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