Smith says election coming if Calgarians disapprove of blanket rezoning
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
181.61894
Summary
Calgary Council voted to blanket rezoning the entire city to allow multi-unit apartment development in order to meet the $25 billion in federal housing money that the Trudeau government has promised, but the citizens voted against it and 75% of the submissions were against it.
Transcript
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it was a vote last night by council to basically a blanket rezoning of the the entire city where
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multi multi-unit apartments can be built four plexus and whatnot and it's all tied in with
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federal housing money of a quarter billion dollars that the liberals have promised so
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it was the largest public meeting in calgary history went a couple weeks i think 700 people
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addressed the council uh 75 of them against it and quite emotional scenes down there some
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some people crying uh but in the end uh i guess democracy didn't win council voted nine to six to
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move ahead with it and uh you know cue the predictable outrage as per that though i mean
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was the string that tight with the transfer from the trudeau government or if the council
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had voted otherwise would they they have just given the money to quebec or would that money
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still be coming to calgary i don't know let's let's hope it was airtight because if if not then they
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have just sold their soul for nothing but uh it is and i think you may have made this point in yourself
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uh in one of your writings that nobody voted for this like when the when the last municipal election
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came up nobody said and if elected i will do everything i can to rezone single family residential
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so that people can have fourplexes next door to their back gardens nobody campaigned for that and
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yet they felt they had the authority the mandate to do this so was it the money well yeah i i would say so
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uh it makes sense but uh the fact that so many people came out and said no we don't want this 75
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of the submissions to council were rejecting it the fact that take that with the fact that nobody had
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campaigned for this and i actually think the city council has just acted outside its authority
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this is going to be a national trend you may depot may depend yeah and i think uh political suicide
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is the word i used for it uh in a tweet last night so many calgarians are against it yet the uh the
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council decided to go to go against it just rather like you know you talked about them not campaigning
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on it it was like mayor gondack she gets selected day she's the letter the day one and she's in office
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she declares an 80 billion dollar climate emergency oh wait hang on a second where did that come from
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so if uh if calgarians finally get off their butts which they don't like to do for civic elections and
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you know get out there this could be a sweeping change to council in a couple years well to your
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point about where does this come from uh she has a very good example at the national level of somebody
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who gets elected and then starts doing a whole bunch of things that he never talked about before
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he was elected it seems like if you can just get in the current generation of politicians thinks that
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once you have office you can do what you want an actual fact what's the point of campaigning on a
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platform if the platform does not describe roughly the direction in which you want to go and be a
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reasonably comprehensive list of the things that can be predicted i mean obviously governments have
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to respond to one to to unforeseen events but there's nothing unforeseen about this they've been
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working on rezoning for many many years but here it is they feel like they can make this decision well
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you know the citizens will make a decision in 18 months time let's hope it's just not gone too far
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but they uh they can't pull this back oh sorry corey i mean of the three of us sitting here uh
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the only guys whose property values is going to go up is corey because he lives outside of town oh yeah
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i mean it makes it more attractive to get the heck out of the city and away from the zoning to
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acreages and areas like where i live so but i'd rather not my fellow calgarians suffered for the
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sake of my property values yeah this council i mean it seems incapable of learning i mean we saw
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something different this time around with mayor gondek as we said it's been calgary has an apathetic
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voter base pretty permissive with their mayors i mean we've been around long enough with bronconnier
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or klein or doer i mean their first two terms usually it's even then she it's a shoe-in i mean once
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you're in as long as you don't rock the boat too hard you get a really nice comfortable honeymoon period
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gondek just just just pooped in the swimming pool the second she got in there and her support numbers have
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shown like she's a record low support and for those reasons you mentioned you know she went
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completely against what she had campaigned on to get in to begin with but they don't seem to learn
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from this yet no the polls show the entire council is historically low uh ratings and you think as a
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smart politician you want to maybe stay in your job but they keep doing things to to to upset calgarians
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the you know the the plastic bag van and and things like that it's like they're deliberately
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you know it's almost like they're like prime minister trudeau they know they're going to get
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defeated so they're trying to cause as much damage as they possibly can in the time that they have left
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in office that's right they're certainly doing a job i mean it was almost inspiring that we don't see
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congregants get off their butts like that there were thousands of submissions that came in too that
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weren't in person and of those apparently 90 of them were opposed to this what's the point of public
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engagement when you can see that they spent two weeks sitting there listening to hundreds of people
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with thousands of submissions nodding their heads pretending they care and then saying okay well to
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hell with all you we're just yeah a lot of pictures of counselor uh giancarlo uh sitting there on his
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phone while you know people are weeping as they're as they're talking you know i you know the fix was in
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the fix was in from the beginning so let's look on the bright side here we know that city hall
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moves at a snail's pace if you were wanting to develop a piece of property within the city limits
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and you bought it today i don't think you'd have your permits in place in 18 months time so there
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is a possibility of pulling this thing back now how they deal with the money they've received from
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ottawa or will receive from ottawa that's another matter but come and get it you know you're not
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going to see apartment towers rising up in pump hill between the mansions quite yet i don't think so
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there is i mean there is a chance to put another city council in place to direct the city administration
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which i think generates and drives a lot of these ideas and put them in their place