Posted by There’s an old saying that “all politics are local” and that certainly applies to the case of municipal elections. On 16 October, Calgarians will go to the polls in a mayoral election that will undoubtedly return his fat purpleness, Naheed Nenshi for a third term given his popularity with the bike-riding, latte-sipping, avocado toast eating, social media tweeting, younger generation (Calgary has one of the youngest demographics in the country) and also given that there doesn’t appear to be any serious contenders running against him (federal MP for Calgary North, Michelle Rempel didn’t toss her hat into the ring). Mind you, local politics like this can change rather quickly; Nenshi himself was elected mayor despite being an outsider and relative unknown eight years ago.
Personally, I will vote for whomever has the best chance of beating Nenshi because I really dislike him. That shouldn’t come as a surprise to readers because I devoted a whole article about it earlier this year. Nenshi’s biggest strength is being a consummate suck up politician and his command (or his team’s command) of the new social media to advance his agenda. His greatest weakness is he’s an arrogant turd who has a penchant for pissing off very serious and powerful people; the very people he needs to help grow the economy which, given the current oil-driven downturn, could be his Achilles heel in the coming election. In my previous article, I referenced the leaked video from Boston in which he called the CEO of Uber “a dick” and that, “They are honestly the worst people in the world. I have never dealt with people like this before.” A few months later, Uber returned to Calgary after the city amended its bylaws again to allow ride sharing companies to operate. In other words, we have a business that says they would like to operate in Calgary but basically can’t under the current laws to which mayor Nenshi says, “you’re a bunch of dicks” but then changes his mind a few months later to accommodate them because he’s an idiot and doesn’t understand business.
I also referenced his tweeting flame war with MP Michelle Rempel where he whines, “She spent hours tweeting and re-tweeting the most vicious personal attacks and insults against me… I’ve never seen a politician in Canada do anything like that before — you know, calling me an a-hole, calling me pathetic — for hours … It’s odd behaviour, so clearly she’s not interested in actually talking about the issue with me.” You’ll remember that a few weeks later the mayor again did a volte-face and the city gave tax relief to small businesses that were faced with a trebling of their tax bill in one year. Again, despite his condescending “math is hard” comment to Rempel, Nenshi was completely wrong and backed down really quickly.
Last month, Nenshi finally paid off his legal fees (primarily from donations from idiots who really like him) for his defense against a defamation lawsuit filed against him by local billionaire property developer Cal Wenzel because the mayor basically alluded that he was like a sinister organised crime boss in trying to oppose his re-election.
Nenshi: Let’s not be ridiculous here! This is one thing I do not understand, which is why everyone is being so polite. We had a scene right outside of — out of the movie Godfather. We had a guy admitting that he broke the law in 2010 in favour of one candidate, Ward 7’s Kevin Taylor, running again. We realize the law cannot actually be enforced — it has no enforcement ability. We had a guy telling people in the room how to break the law in this election and going through every single race, saying “this is the councillor who will oppose Nenshi, make sure you vote for the guy who’ll oppose Nenshi, make sure you give them money” — and I invented this? Let’s not be ridiculous!
Gray: Sorry, did you just call Cal Wenzel the Godfather?
Nenshi: Maybe.
As part of the settlement, Nenshi:
- Retracts and apologizes for statements he made about Wenzel on April 24, 2013 and on CBC Calgary’s morning radio show, the Calgary Eyeopener, on Oct. 9, 2013.
- Agrees that as a result of subsequent information, he “understands, appreciates and states” that Wenzel’s actions in the 2010 election did not violate election laws.
- Agrees that he did not intend to suggest Wenzel is the head of a criminal organization.
It is somewhat embarrassing that an elected official (mayor at that) actually doesn’t understand the election laws that he ran under himself. Shouldn’t Nenshi’s knowledge of such matters pre-date his spurious accusation that a citizen broke the law – not come as a result of “subsequent information” after he is sued? Again, Nenshi showing his ignorance and arrogance at the same time.
And now we have the long-running saga of the argument about the building of a new stadium to replace the ageing Saddledome. To be clear, such a venue would not only be for the benefit for the NHL Calgary Flames (although they would be a great beneficiary). I have only been to about three Flames games live over the past 37 years since they moved here from Atlanta. I saw more hockey games at the old Forum in Montreal when I was a student there for two years because they had cheap standing room student tickets. But, I have been forced to drive three hours north to Edmonton (including once last month for Lady Gaga) about half a dozen occasions over the past five years because virtually everyone bypasses Calgary due to lack of an appropriate facility. Edmonton’s Northland Coliseum was already better than anything we have in Calgary and they are closing that down later this month as everything is moving to their new Roger’s Place arena downtown. The Saddledome is so pathetic as a venue that Edmontonians did a viral tweet complete with photoshopped video about donating their old Northland Coliseum to us.
But our mayor feels that an arena is nice, but optional, in his grand cultural and entertainment district revitalisation of Victoria Park. In other words, Nenshi wants HIS Calgary to be a hoity-toity emulator of Toronto which is already pathetic in its vain attempt to be a sophisticated arts and entertainment hub like New York. Low-brow entertainment like hockey and rock concerts are not really part of his cultural DNA – canapes, artists who’s art is incomprehensible to seething masses of deplorables and Hollywood A-list stars are more his style.
Ken King, president of Calgary Sports and Entertainment Corporation (which runs the NHL Calgary Flames and CFL Calgary Stampeders amongst other smaller teams) came out the next day and said, “the group is no longer in talks with the city after an owners meeting today that included NHL commissioner Gary Bettman… This arena can’t compete, for example, with Edmonton any longer, because they don’t have the resources or the building. I think there were 34 dates of concerts that the new Edmonton arena got that didn’t come down here… negotiations with the city have been unsuccessful, with the last meeting at the end of July… They’ve been spectacularly unproductive meetings. It’s unfortunate because I really thought we would have something that works.” Rather than shooting off at the hip and tweeting some moronic and sarcastic comeback (maybe he’s learning) Nenshi decided to wait a day before making an announcement. Today, Nenshi declared, “I can tell you the city has a very fair offer on the table. One I think many Calgarians, most Calgarians will see as eminently reasonable. There is another offer on the table that most Calgarians will see as eminently unreasonable.”
Where have we seen this before? Neshi bleats like a sick goat about how “reasonable” he is and that it’s the other side that is “unreasonable”. There’s an old axiom, if you seem to have problems with everybody, maybe the real problem isn’t with the rest of the world. Nenshi has a particularly bad habit and ability to piss off businessmen and powerful people and then seems to cave in not so long afterwards suggesting he doesn’t have a clue about business and economics or negotiations.
That’s why it is laughable when Nenshi waxed eloquently last week about getting Amazon to choose Calgary as it’s second North American headquarters. “I’ve been working hard, and Calgary Economic Development has been working hard, on attracting some of the best-known names and brands to Calgary,” he said. “When you look at the criteria, I can’t imagine a place that meets it better than Calgary. I will be making that case strongly.” Apart from the fact that anybody with even a small iota of business sense can figure out that Calgary is not really a contender for this deal; even if we were, having Nenshi on our negotiating team would certainly scuttle any deal. This is the man who, while good at posing for selfies and tweeting (kind of like our Prime Minister, Trudeau Jr.) is woefully inept at building business relationship as evidenced by all the cases above. You would be hard pressed to find a mayor who is so skilled at annoying billionaire businessmen than Nenshi. Given that he can’t even negotiate a few hundred million dollars for a new sports arena, what are the odds of him giving the billions in sweeteners that Amazon would require to even consider moving here?
From an economic and business development point of view, Nenshi is a complete disaster and completely out of his league. Given that there is 30% vacancy downtown as we enter our fourth year of economic malaise from collapsing oil prices, unemployment and the poor economy are at the forefront of a lot of voters minds. Let’s hope there are enough disenfranchised and disillusioned voters out there, the silent majority, that will come out and toss his purpleness out on his ample butt. Sadly, I bet there are enough people drinking the purple kool-aid and stupid enough to vote against their own best interests because “I like the guy”. Let’s hope that I am wrong because if I am, it will be one of the happiest mea culpa’s I’ve had to admit to.
UPDATE 1 (14 September 2017): Every semi-literate simian with access to an internet connection wants to wade into the stadium debate. There are some major logic fallacies that should be pointed out in many of these arguments as they basically repeat what other idiots have said without adding anything new.
“No taxpayer subsidies for millionaires and billionaires”. This argument is usually made in conjunction with “I have no interest in hockey” or “I can’t afford to take my kids to watch a hockey game” so why should I pay for it. Well, this same stupid argument can be made for virtually anything a government spends money on including the dumb bike lanes that city hall seems hell bent on expanding despite a very low number of people using them to billions spent on mass transit improvements. I don’t bike or take the bus or LRT so why should I pay for them. That’s not how life works folks, you don’t get to pick and choose everything that your tax dollars go to just because you happen to not use a particular service. You will notice that when I took umbrage to the city continuing to expand bike lanes last year, I never used the worn out and irrelevant argument that I don’t ride my bike to work so why should I pay for it. As for spending millions of taxpayers dollars, they do it all the time. City Hall approved $150m in spending on Victoria Park earlier this year regardless of the stadium being built or not. I mean, this is a city that built a water park (which I have never used and likely will never use) that was closed by Alberta Health Services a week after it’s much delayed opening.
Then you have economists trying to point out there is no economic benefit of having a stadium. Mind you, these are the same people that tell you that GDP will expand if an earthquake levels your city forcing you to spend billions on reconstruction (yes, for all of you that are economically illiterate, that is exactly what happens). To an economist, I should throw bricks through all my house windows and crash my car if I want to improve my financial lot because it will stimulate my spending on replacement and repairs. Having said that, I don’t disagree with the assertion that there is no net economic benefit to government subsidising stadiums. You will note that out of all the arguments I made above trashing Nenshi, not once did I make the claim that a new stadium would create jobs or boost the economy. Because boosting the economy never has been, cannot be, and never will be the job of government. If governments were good at running the economy, we would have all turned communist a long time ago. Unfortunately, the opposite is true which is governments tend to be very crappy at running the economy which is why communism collapsed in Eastern Europe and was basically abandoned by China in favour of capitalism (sorry, “socialism with Chinese characteristics”).
I don’t disagree with the assertion that government shouldn’t be spending public tax payers money on subsidies; unfortunately, the fact remains that they do, all the time, and on things that I couldn’t care less about. Whether that subsidy goes to training centers for people interested in speed skating at the oval or millions of dollars spent on the Harvie Passage for kayakers on the Bow River (both of which have virtually zero business or career possibilities) or to something huge like a stadium for a professional hockey organisation owned by billionaires employing millionaires – is completely irrelevant. Despite what people say about the stadium only benefiting a few, in reality it will be used and benefit a lot of people; a lot more than those kayaking on the Bow River or speed skating at the Olympic Oval, I assure you. I want a new stadium with minimal government subsidies because, unlike the bike lanes, skin cutting waterparks, and ugly taxpayer funded art by the side of the road, I may actually get some use out of it… even though I definitely won’t be the biggest beneficiary.