The Calgary Environmental Roundtable (CERT) Municipal Election campaign is a non-partisan coalition initiative by environmental and climate organizations in Calgary, led by the Gravity Well Podcast and hosted by Jenny Yeremiy. We aim to prioritize water, nature, and climate issues in the City of Calgary's future planning by engaging residents and candidates through questionnaires, mayoral ward panels, and voter engagement tools.
The campaign emphasizes the importance of clean water, biodiversity, and bold climate action to ensure a sustainable future for Calgary. The campaign launch featured speakers Preet Kang from the Alberta Environmental Network and former councillor Bob Hawksworth, who answers the survey questions by sharing his strategies for addressing the climate emergency, protecting biodiversity, and ensuring affordable housing and transit in Calgary. Key points included the need for strong policies, increased funding for non-market housing, the adoption of green building standards, and the role of ENMAX in achieving the city's 2035 clean electricity goals. Bob also highlighted the importance of civic engagement and collaboration among environmental organizations to influence municipal decisions and promote a sustainable future for Calgary. A wonderful start to the campaign, thank you, Bob!
Introductions to CERT, our Campaign, Bob Hawkesworth, and Preet Kang
Welcome to the Calgary Environmental Roundtable Municipal Election campaign led by the Gravity Wall Podcast with me, Jenny Ami. The Calgary Environmental Roundtable. Recert for short is a non-partisan coalition of environmental and climate organisations working together to ensure that water, nature, and climate are front of mind, and that our members have an ongoing opportunity to shape the future of our city through our candidate questionnaire. Mayoral Ward podcast panels and voter engagement tool Cert is connecting residents with candidates elevating environmental priorities and empowering Calgarians to make informed choices of the ballot box. Municipal decisions directly affect the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the communities we live in. As Calgary continues to grow, we must prioritise clean water biodiversity and bold climate action to ensure a safe and thriving city for generations to come. Our list of supporters is growing. Reach out to add your organisation, send your candidates and network the circ questionnaire.
Encourage their participation and ongoing relationship building with their representatives. Remember to follow, like, subscribe, and share the Gravity Well podcast. Together we can build a resilient, healthy, and sustainable city for all. Calgarians welcome. I am excited to have Pre Kang with me here today. Pret and I have been working hard over the last few months. Welcome to the Calgary Environmentals or or municipal election campaign. This is the launch party. Thank you for being here. To our members and the audience as well as the media, we are reserving 10 minutes at the end for questions, please bring them in or send them as much as you want throughout the chat and I'll do my best to cover as much as I can in those 10 minutes. Preet works for Alberta Environmental Network. The Alberta Environmental Network started this, the Alberta Beyond Coal Campaign, which is alive and well and growing and needs more support.
Please go to albertabeyondcoal.ca, get your sign or get your sign out. Put it back out. For the municipal election especially, we want to make sure that people are thinking about water and or headwaters during the election also. Who is CERT? We are a group of seven organizations so far, but we are looking for more members. Please reach out if you'd like to join this effort for the municipal election. It's the Alberta Environmental Network, as I mentioned, Calgary Urban Species Response Team, the Calgary Climate Hub, Bird Friendly Calgary, the Climate Reality Project Canada, Calgary River Valley, For Our Kids, and of course The Gravity Well, myself. Reach out to us if you'd like to add your organization. Municipal decisions affect the air we breathe, the water we drink in the communities we live in. Today, Preet and I are joined by former counsellor Bob Hawksworth.
Bob served as counsellor in Ward three from 1980 to 1986 in Calgary, and then he became an MLA for the new, excuse me, Democrats from 1986 to 1993, and then he returned to Calgary Ward four as counsellor from 1993 to 2010. I have the opportunity to meet with Bob on a semi-weekly basis with a group called 4C. I actually remembered to say. The Concern Calgarians on Climate Change. We work regularly to move climate issues forward and are really happy to be. Thank you so much for joining us, Bob. It's such a pleasure. I've been ignorant to all the things you've accomplished in your life. I'm just so grateful to have the opportunity as you being a mentor to me in the work that we're doing. Yeah, it's just so neat to hear all these things behind everybody that does this great work.
Okay, we want people, this is just a call out to our members. We want people to send the CERT questionnaire to your candidates. I'll put the link in the chat, but there is a new mode tool. Very quickly you can send an email to your candidates asking them to participate. It'll automatically choose from your ward which ward candidates need to be prompted as well as your mayoral candidates, all of them. And we're looking to have conversations with each of them. If you go to our webpage, which will also include in the chat, we have a link, or sorry, a calendar you can follow along which days we're talking to which wards. We're going to have an opportunity to sit one-on-one with some of the mayoral candidates, hopefully most of them. It's going to be a busy month. Stay tuned. All of it will be on that website for you to see the videos like what Bob is going to model for us today. We're going to spend the next 40 minutes or so going through the questions. I'll let you guys properly introduce yourselves first. Yeah, Preet can you help us? Please introduce yourself properly. Thank you.
Preet:
Of course. Thank you so much Jenny, and for your leadership in this initiative. Hello everyone. My name is Preet Kang and I have the privilege of leading the Calgary Environmental Roundtable. I come to this work as the energy transition campaigner and program coordinator with Alberta Environmental Network. I'm passionate about building healthier, more sustainable communities where renewable energy, climate action, and community leadership go hand in hand. Cert was created to bring environmental organizations and community members together, and we are so proud to launch this campaign today. Our goal is for Calgarians to have tools to ask the right questions, demand accountability, and choose leaders who will build a greener future for our city in Calgary at this municipal election. Thank you so much. Bob, would you like to introduce yourself?
Bob:
Oh, well, thank you very much for inviting me Preet and Jenny, I just appreciate working with you in the 4C group and the environmental network, and all the groups that are working, performing an important vital role in terms of civic society, leaders in government really depend highly on civic society to help lead them and reinforce and raise issues. Good on you for making both of you environment part of your mandate and work for me. I don't know where it comes from, but this has always been a big priority for me and somehow called me to do work on environment as part of my political life. And I had some successes and continuing to as a citizen, to reinforce and help those of you in civic society keep these issues alive and prominent.
Jenny:
Amazing. Bob. Yes, I cannot. It's amazing how much work you and the fellow 4C group does in your retirement. People have no idea how much help is needed in this space, and I am so grateful to your regular commitment to it. Thank you, Bob. Okay, Preet, set the stage for us. Lead us off in the first question for Bob. Thank you.
Question 1: Achieving Calgary’s Climate Strategy
Preet (00:07:23):
Happy to. Yes, it's time to walk through the questions at the Calgary environmental round table collaboratively developed as part of our municipal candidate questionnaire. I will go through the questions and Jenny and I will exchange off. I hope to identify the key themes, the question itself, and any background that would be relevant to it. Here we go. Our first question, it looks at Calgary's part in addressing the climate emergency. Calgary's climate strategy outlines five-year goals to reduce energy, poverty and utility costs, create clean economy jobs, improve public health, and build more equitable climate resilient communities. Bob, if you were elected, how will you work to achieve these outcomes for Calgarians? Or you can answer, how did you do that during your time?
Bob:
Well, a significant, very significant question to start with, and I don't want to take the whole hour answering it, but there's lots spinning through my head that first of all, it seems kind of simple to say, acknowledge that there's an issue, like the world is getting hotter. Is that true? Yes. The evidence shows it. Simply stating something as fundamental as evidence, scientific evidence seems a simplistic place to start. But everything that I'm seeing around me is based on that fundamental start. There's a lot of denialism. People are afraid to come to terms with what this might mean. It's painful, it's difficult. It might be the hardest thing that any human can do is come to grips with things like loss and grief, which is what in many ways the risks of climate represent for people. I try to be empathetic with those who are expressing their fear through denial, but I also understand that denying climate is stopping us from making any real progress and therefore it has to be called out how you do that empathetically. And yet, I don't know, this is a work in progress.
The first thing is to acknowledge there's a problem. I think I'd like to acknowledge the leadership of our current council and the mayor that she and that council adopted a climate emergency declaration. The first thing they did when they entered office, was it performative politics? Some would say that's just posturing and politics. Yes, it was. And it was exactly the right message to send out. We need a climate lens to guide all of our decision-making if we're going to have any chance of cooling the planet down and contributing, doing our part to reduce climate risks. These are the kinds of things we need to do. Some things are in place, climate emergency, a Calgary climate strategy, a high level direction. I would say as an individual member of council, anything I accomplished in my term of office required the support of at least seven, if not more colleagues, because one person's vote doesn't pass anything at City Hall.
You need to have at least eight votes in a 15 member council. There's working with your colleagues in a way that's mutually respectful and understanding their motivations and needs in their community, finding common ground. These are all steps behind the scenes, building relationships of trust and working hard in this environment that people are working in right now with social media platforms that are doing everything in their power to undermine public institutions, polarize, drive people apart. It's an environment that I didn't have to deal with in my term. I served before social media became a thing. I have to acknowledge that somehow we've got to overcome the polarization and find ways to make common ground. I dunno if that answers.
Jenny:
Yeah, I'll give you a little bit of what I heard and before I lead into the next question. First of all, acknowledging that we are in a climate emergency and that it isn't a very important responsibility as a counsellor and ward representative to speak truth about this, especially in the extreme denialism that is happening, like you said, the active effort that is happening on social media to undermine those important conversations. And then I heard that there needs to be a strategy, a very high level direction in all the work that council does. You're looking towards incorporating climate into all of your thinking. And then lastly, to find those mutual benefits that common ground with your other ward members and your mayor to make those decisions because ultimately you need a majority to get any of these major decisions done. I'll just add that Bob is also an active member of the Calgary Alliance for Common Good. And there is a mayoral forum in-person mayoral forum on, is it October 4th, Bob? Do I have that right?
Bob:
Saturday, October 4th. Yes. Seven o'clock at Knox United Church. And I would hope that anyone who cares about the environment would be sure to attend that forum because the Alliance and the Calgary Climate Hub working together have set that as a priority.
Jenny:
Amazing.
Bob:
A priority issue for advocacy and work,
Question 2: Protecting the Watershed, Wildlife, and Urban Biodiversity
Jenny (00:13:57):
Right? Yes. Awesome. Okay, I'm going to make sure that I share those links as I said, and I'll include that one in the chat. Okay, next question for you, Bob is related to biodiversity, the biodiversity crisis and respecting non-human environments. The question is, how will you ensure that new community development and redevelopment in Calgary protects our watershed, our rivers and creeks, our valleys, our wetlands, and the wildlife and urban biodiversity which depends on these ecosystems? Please.
Bob:
Yeah. Well, it's fine to adopt policy, and that's the first step. This should be embedded in the Calgary plan. The Calgary plan, which guides our long-term development as a community, should also integrate our Calgary transportation plan so that our built environment is reinforced with the right transportation investments. We need to improve the density in Calgary and reduce sprawl that would come out of long-term plans. But when an individual issue pops up on the council agenda and it's not in conformance with the long-term vision and you vote for it anyway, then you sort of undermine these policies. We really, what is it that it would take to ensure that these development day by day, week by week, month by month decisions actually embody the long-term direction and that the city we end up with looks like the city we envisioned and is more climate safe?
Well, first of all, I would say we need to kind of go where people, people's priorities are and the thing that Calgarians love most about our city, our parks. Our park system natural areas are important. This is a great asset for Calgarians. And I would frame our watersheds water and creek valleys, wetlands, wildlife, all of those are connected in with building parks for our city. And I don't know why council allowed the n Max Legacy fund to disappear, but I certainly would bring that back as a source of financing for the city to achieve its open space vision that would achieve these wildlife diversity goals. I'm going to just, if I could divert for a wee minute, just one thing that people may not know is that water on the Bow River flowing through Calgary with 1.3 million people getting its water out of the bow and the elbow, the water flowing downstream now is cleaner than it was when Calgary was a city of 60,000 people in the 1950s. Now think about that. How did that happen? I remember I'd like to acknowledge a wonderful, wonderful municipal leader in the form of former mayor of Brooks Jean Franklin. Jean was just a treasure and a pain in the butt for council because she's very, very nicely pointed out that there's several thousands of us downstream from Calgary. We don't want to be drinking your shit.
In the 1980, she embarked on a campaign. She came to Calgary, she was in the media and she said, Hey Calgary, we need you to clean up your water. And from that point, I think we can trace some changes Calgary made to tertiary water treatment. And that foundation has been the building block for our work as a city for the last 40 years or longer. And now the federal regulations sort of require it, but it's an iterative process. We do it in Calgary, kind of lead the federal regulations kind of follow and lead so that now we would be out of step with federal regulations if we let our water treatment standards drop. But here we had a group of people who benefited. They were identifiable. We knew that they lived downstream, they had a champion who built relationships and how could we resist? And in the end, we're all winners.
We can be proud of what we do in Calgary even if we had to be pushed 45 years ago to do it. Right. Let's think we, is that a playbook we could figure out how to follow in terms of the air? Because the air we're breathing now is dirtier than the air that we breathed in the 1950s, I'm sure of it because we didn't have the fires, the wildfires in the summer that we have now, and we didn't have the air pollution from internal combustion engine vehicles running all over the city that we do now. We have to figure out how do we make climate change a public health issue that will tangibly improve the physical health of Calgarians and who's a champion for that? It's not just driving down emissions, we're actually focusing on the ancillary side benefits. That's how I think a city council might think about next four years in terms of wetlands, biodiversity and watershed.
Preet:
Thank you, Bob. What I heard was that the city council should look to adopt or strengthen the policies that they have, adopt one that more align with the vision and make regular decisions with the need to align with the long-term visions within those policies. What I'm also hearing from you is that the infrastructure investment, that is one large piece that is creating a barrier and could be an opportunity if financing and funding is brought back to achieve those open air spaces. And within that, the connection to the biodiversity and respecting non-human environments. Thank you. Let's move to question three.
Bob:
We humans live in the same environment as wildlife. If wildlife in Calgary is under threat, we're part of that connectedness of every living creature. Ultimately our wellbeing is threatened as well.
Jenny:
Hundred percent.
Preet:
Most definitely. Linking the ideas of planetary and human health to animal health and the interconnections between it.
Bob:
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.
Question 3: Dedicating Budget Dollars to Protecting Biodiversity and Wildlife
Preet (00:22:12):
Talking about animals and wildlife, let's move to our next question, which is question three. It is about Calgary's part in addressing the biodiversity crisis and supporting urban wildlife. Will you commit to dedicating budget dollars toward protecting Calgary's biodiversity and improving wildlife safety in our urban environment, including through measures such as enforcing, bird friendly building standards, retrofitting existing structures, and supporting safe wildlife corridors? And within this question, we want to understand how candidates will support biodiversity and the success of urban wildlife through tangible municipal investments. And I did hear you mention a few in the previous response.
Bob:
Yeah. Well, once upon a time, I got city council to approve a green building policy. Any city of Calgary building or building that the city was contributing money to constructing would meet minimal energy efficiency standards under the Canada Green Building Council policies, or they have an independent measurement for how buildings should be constructed to minimize energy waste. I don't know, I think that policy was weakened. Sometimes when you don't have any champions on council, things get, these aren't easy things necessarily to implement because they're different than what people are used to. You have to change the way you do things, and sometimes that's uncomfortable. Isn't it just easier to ignore the policy or eliminate it there? Once we had a council funded fund from our N max dividend each year that's, we saved ENMAX from being privatized. It provides a tremendous annual dividend to the city.
Why don't we continue to use that money so it doesn't just go into the city general coffers because we can't be guaranteed of that dividend every year and we shouldn't budget for it every year. We should use it to address high priorities. And parks are our number one thing that Calgarians love the most about living here. Let's reinvest that money and Max dividend into buying, buying open space, buying park space, and developing it so that it manages wastewater. And we could bring some underground creeks that have gone into culverts and vaults and daylight them and use that water to clean daylight and use it to clean water before it gets into the nose Creek and into the Bow River. Use natural mechanisms, not expensive mechanical ones to clean our water and meet our water emissions standards.
Question 4: Housing, Rent, and Transportation Affordability and Accessibility
Jenny (00:25:48):
Incredible. I heard the money that, well first of all work together to define standards that can be used to shape the way that money is spent in the city. I've heard used dividends from the assets that the city owns, like n max, to take climate action, buy up open spaces, create more parks, create more wetlands, create more natural ways of addressing climate while increasing biodiversity and addressing the wildlife crisis. Incredible. Thank you so much, Bob. Okay, next question. This question is around housing, rent, transit, affordability, and accessibility. The question is what steps would, should a counsellor take to ensure that housing, rent and transit in Calgary are affordable and accessible so that more Calgarians can access these services with dignity and live and work in a healthy city? Thank you.
Bob:
Well, I think first this past council has been preoccupied with the housing issue, and there've been several times that housing strategy was forced on the agenda because groups like the Calgary Alliance for the Common Good said here, there's a crisis in our community. Fix it or do what you can to fix it. Then I'd say our mayor and council have somehow, I think they've raised $200 million and in non-market housing, which in my view is a big win. And they're doing certain things that I feel are seriously getting us on the right track coming back. First of all, in order to influence the rental market, you probably need about 30% of all rental units in the city of Calgary to be non-market. And if you have reached that minimum threshold, it has a modifying effect on the private market rents. And there's a recent news article looking at all the major cities of the world, Vienna is the most affordable.
And when they dug in and found out why Vienna has maintained its portfolio of non-market housing that started being built in the 1910s or 1920s, and they've got a very large portion of their housing stock as non-market, and this is the real world examples of this. That's number one, increase funding and build more non-market units. Number two, the ones you do build under your green building policy would be well-built and well insulated. They would be high energy performing well-built and maintained, and that reduces costs, eliminates waste, and makes those units affordable over the long term. Number three, put solar on the roofs of every property you own. Solar rooftop, solar onsite, solar generation has now dropped in price so far, it's the most affordable means of new electricity generation. If a home, for example, put a $20,000 solar array on its roof, the people in that house in that unit would see their electricity bills drop $50 a month. That's the impact that solar could have on making life more affordable. Now when we talk about climate action, a city counsellor can also be talking about affordability. You want to address affordable affordability, put solar on your roof. And by the way, solar panels are more resistant to hail than shingles are. There's a side benefit there as well for making buildings more resilient.
As for transit, lots of people running around saying, well, I'm going to freeze property taxes. Well, we should have some counsellors running around saying, I'm going to freeze transit fares. In fact, wouldn't it be better if we could roll some transit fares back? I think we should find ways to make transit free. Our roads are free. You can drive your car without paying a toll. Why does the competition, why is the competition forced to have a fee or a price in order to use it? Well, because that's the way we've always done it. But if we're trying to impact air quality in the city and climate emissions, we need more people to flood Calgary transit for the transportation requirements.
And of course, I'm of two minds about this green line. It's we're putting a ton of capital money. Are there possible ways that we could just have better buses and more of them and transit lanes instead of rail? Other cities have been experimenting with cost effective ways to improve transit frequency. And as much as I love the green line and the LRT system, there's a tremendous amount of capital being directed towards that outcome. When if we put that money in another direction, could we get even better transit outcomes than what we are getting with a new green line? Just a question, I haven't been following it as closely in that much detail as others because of course you reinforce your sea train network with a green line and it makes the entire system function more effectively to have those links. But I also think we need to be smart. We don't have a lot of time and we don't have a lot of resources. Affordability is a big issue not only for households but for government as well.
Preet:
Thank you so much, Bob. That was a very detailed response. Something that I came to understand is there should be an increase in funding and strengthened regulations to do a few things, and one of those is to build non-market rentals. The next is to ensure that buildings are well-built, insulated and maintained to encourage solar adoption, I would guess, for residential and commercial builds throughout the city. And lastly, to allow for a more cost effective and accessible transit through the transit system. Okay.
Bob:
You said that in 15 seconds and it 15 minutes. There you go. That's problem of being a politician.
Jenny:
The best kind of guests give us the details. We're able to [repeat]. Thank you, Bob. Go ahead, Preet.
Question 5: ENMAX and Clean Affordable Energy
Preet (00:34:13):
Of course. Our next question is about ENMAX and clean and affordable electricity. N max is wholly owned by the city of Calgary. What role do you see for n max in helping the city achieve its 2035 clean electricity goals? Calgary's clean electricity goal is to transition to 100% renewable energy for corporate operations by 2035. And knowing that ENMAX a city owned utility, we know that this can be powerful tool in achieving these targets. What is your vision or what do you think about this?
Bob:
Absolutely. This is a huge asset that the city has owning ENMAX. And for them to just wash their hands and say, “Well, ENMAX, you go do what you feel you need to do” is just leaving a wonderful opportunity to lie dormant. When I was a city counsellor, we signed the first green energy deal in 2008, 2009, the city signed a long-term contract with ENMAX to provide all of its electrical load from wind energy. And on the basis of that contract, ENMAX, it was like a 25 year power purchase agreement arrangement. And on the basis of that, ENMAX made a major investment in wind farm, which helped grow the wind industry and the supply chain, and it helped the city achieve significant emission reductions. And ENMAX was the go-between that made that happen because I was on city council and I was also on the board of ENMAX when that, and that's where a champion can have an impact.
ENMAX, once upon a time, it was an enabler of solar rooftop and got out of it. I don't know why, but they need to be an enabler as well into making this transition across the city. Why couldn't we have a hundred thousand homes in Calgary with rooftop solar on it? Because that would be a hundred thousand households who would lower their living costs. That would benefit the owners of ENMAX, and we'd have to figure out how ENMAX can do that profitably, but that's why I know it's possible without going into a lot of detail. The big issue of course, is the shepherd and the other power plants that ENMAX currently owns, which are not coal anymore, natural gas fired, and they're emitting CO2 as part of byproduct of combusting natural gas to run turbines.
There's a lot of investigation into the costs of capturing the CO2, concentrating it and bearing it underground. That's a lot of money, and at the moment, it doesn't look cost effective. But if you're thinking of spending that kind of money, why don't you incent greenhouses to locate in the acres of land surrounding these power plants, capture the co2 which the plants need to grow, capture the heat, which greenhouses need in the wintertime to help plants grow. We could be addressing our food insecurity, food security issues, greenhouse gas emissions using the waste heat and the waste emissions from M max power centers generating plants. You're not going to do that if you just say to the CEO of ENMAX, “Go do your own thing, and we'll see you once a year at the AGM.” No, I think that's where the city says, you're our power producer. Let's figure out how we meet a variety of our citizens' needs, not just electricity and is a wonderful opportunity. We shouldn't squander it.
Jenny:
Wonderful, Bob. Okay, I heard that ENMAX is a huge asset to the city, and this is a massive opportunity that is not being realized currently, that it's important to have champions for the city, for the people of Calgary on the board of ENMAX to make sure that we are aligning goals with long-term strategies that will reduce Calgary's emissions. Yeah, it is surprising and disappointed that n max is out of solar and wind, but they can certainly play a role. I love this concept. In fact, it came up in one of our podcasts, actually episode four with Colin Smith about this idea of capturing CO2 for greenhouses and capturing that heat that way. Yes, there's actually been studies this week not to go off on a tangent too much from nature that has talked about the global ability for carbon capture and storage technology to be meaningful is becoming extremely clear that it isn't. This is a meaningful opportunity that could actually have a really big role for ENMAX going forward in reducing those offset emissions from the CO2 from natural gas production. Yeah, thank you so much.
Bob:
Well, and that was a concept for the downtown District Energy Centre, was that you would use a co-generation downtown and pump hot water to heat the buildings around it, and by using fuel both for electricity and for heat, you're reducing your waste. You're using energy far more efficiently, and therefore your net emissions reduced dramatically. But in max ended up getting bored with this downtown energy Center and sold it off. To my way of thinking, we really have suffered by the lack of imagination in the senior leadership at ENMAX, and in part I think that's because members of council no longer sit on the ENMAX board and no longer are bringing these larger community concerns to the table there.
Question 6: Sustainable Water Use and Watershed Protection
Jenny (00:41:26):
Yeah, absolutely. And I did want to add one thing I missed that you said, which is we need this incentivization for companies like ENMAX and those things are happening. Like for example, in China, the coal companies are paid to not produce coal power when there is excess capacity of sun and everything else. Those designs are definitely available in other jurisdictions. Something really close to my heart and something that Bob Morrison and I have been working on here is water. We want to talk a little bit about water security and regional development. How will you advance sustainable or how or how should a candidate, or sorry, a representative advance sustainable water use and watershed protection in Calgary's growing and growth and development decisions? Thank you.
Bob:
Well, one thing I hope our council would be strong advocates against mining in the Eastern slopes because our water comes from the Rockies and from the eastern slopes, and anything that potentially risks contaminating our water upstream, just like Mayor Jean Franklin from Brooks was so eloquently an advocate in the 1980s and made us change our policies to do the right thing. We need to be advocates for our citizens and our right to clean water to protect our headwaters up above us. That would be kind of step number one. When you start to think about this, just think about the core services the city provides. One is to deliver clean water and then clean up our sewage before we pass it on to anyone else and haul away our garbage. Now just think of those services and manage our storm water. This is these changes, those garbage and sewer probably did more to improve the life expectancy of people than any other medical intervention ever.
We learned in the 19th century about the waterborne diseases and finally figured out how to do all this stuff, and we've kept improving ever since. But that has done more to protect and improve our health, public health and life expectancy than almost any other thing that medical intervention you can think of. And these are city responsibilities. Now, these are core services. Anybody who's running for public office should have some commitment to public health, protecting the public from an environmental perspective, not just protecting the public from crime, which is sort of issue dog, the hog whistle issue in a sense, as a way of short and indicating a set of priorities. But yes, we need to protect our community from crime and we also need to protect our community from transmittable diseases and the need to be able to protect property from floods and wildfires. Protection. Yes, absolutely. And that we should protect our community in all these ways, not just pick one and say, that's the only one I'm concerned about. We need counsellors who are willing to commit to poly protection of our community, which includes safe water.
Preet:
Thank you, Bob. It is clear that the jurisdiction for city and the province is a little bit different in terms of coal mining, and it is true the counsellor do need to be strong advocates for the risks from contaminating water upstream. I also heard that since it is the city's responsibility to provide that clean water, sewage, garbage hauling and managing stormwater, that when these services are done correctly per se, they can have a positive benefit, can and have had a positive benefit on the public's health. Okay. I'm curious if we want to go through the last question or save the space last 15 minutes for the media. Your call, Jenny?
Jenny:
Yeah, I'll put out another call if you have some questions that you want to put in the chat right now, please do. I have a couple comments that I can add afterwards, but I say we keep going. Yes, please.
Question 7: Civic Engagement in City of Calgary Decision Making
Preet (00:46:50):
Thank you. Yes, of course. Okay, the last question, which is about meaningful engagement with communities in Calgary. How should counsellors ensure recommendations from Calgarians, including residents, frontline communities, environmental groups and city staff are meaningfully considered in council decisions. So ensuring stakeholders will be meaningfully engaged and supportive, supported also by effective communications pathways. What do you think, Bob?
Bob:
Well, this is on us as citizens, not as city hall necessarily. City hall counsellors respond to pressure wherever that comes from. If we as citizens aren't working on these things, we shouldn't be surprised if they get ignored. This is why foresee the Calgary citizens concerned on climate and the Calgary Alliance for the Common Good are such important organizations in our community right now as a way of ensuring that the 1.4 million people who live here have some means to get their concerns in front of council on a continual basis. This is on us just hopefully we have counsellors who are open to listening and open-minded and wanting to hear from their constituents and not just a small group. I'm worried about the party system that the provincial government is introduced, that counsellors are now more beholden to their party and unelected people unknown to the rest of us, and they are to any direct relationship that they would've had as individual counsellors to their constituents.
That's a change that I don't like. Can I come back to the question about protection? I just one more, I feel missed the mark here. It didn't come up in our questions, but I think we really need to rethink fire and the role of our fire department. Now, small communities like Litton, for example, if disappeared because of wildfire, the hot place where they were located disappeared underneath them from a spark on a passing train. Apparently Jasper, a third of the town was burnt because of wildfire, probably lightning Fort McMurray. We almost lost the entire city, slave Lake, a lot of these communities around forests. You think, okay, that's not Calgary. Then you see what happened in Los Angeles that was an urban wildfire. It was so dry, who knows where that spark came from? And it completely overwhelmed the fire department. They had no resources in any way, shape or form to address this issue.
When we are thinking about protection and affordability, our insurance rates, if you can get them insurance, are greater than a property taxes. In many cases, it's more expensive for people than property taxes. If you want to freeze property taxes, what are you going to do about insurance rates? Anyway, that's another, all I'm trying to say is that when it comes to protecting our community from the risks of climate, we have to be thinking about fire as well as flood. And I would hope any and every member put Kennedy who's running for public office, public office is thoughtful and has a position that they're prepared to present.
Jenny:
I could not agree more as a spouse to a city firefighter. My husband was on a fire in Calgary just last year. Was it last year? It was a three alarm fire. It was a structure, a condo complex that was under construction that caught on fire. But he was a forest firefighter before being a city firefighter. As soon as he showed up on the call, he called other, he made it a three alarm fire because he could see the ashes going towards another community.
He knew it was a “forest fire” type fire and was able to help put resources to that secondary potential fire and suppress it. Yeah, you're right, Bob, it's we are now in potentially wildfire territory for a city that does not have forests surrounding us in our limited parks. That being said, there are some communities like Elbow Valley that are at tremendous risk to that, and also it ties very nicely in with the water conversation because it's been a concern. We've had honest conversations, my husband and I, about what if you don't have water to put out a fire? That's what happened in LA. The water pressure completely disappeared and they had no capacity to, not to mention the fire…30,000 trucks would've been required when I heard the summary of what the size of that fire was and how quickly it happened. Yes, you're right. This is something that is going to really make sure that councillors are going to be in a very potentially significant emergency positions making decisions around these major events, I think is what you're saying.
Bob:
Well, and I'm also saying that the world is getting hotter, not cooler, and something that was a risk in Los Angeles in 2025, may coming to Calgary in 2030 or 2035, or who knows when. This may be the fate waiting all cities. I'm just saying if you're denying climate as an issue to start with, none of these questions or concerns are even resonating or being thought about. And that's a great risk to our community. It's leaving us highly vulnerable and is doing this all a disservice. Coming back to your very first question you or do you not accept scientific evidence that temperatures are rising globally? And if they are, then will you take these risks of climate, not certainties of climate change risks seriously and begin thinking about how to address them?
Jenny:
Thank you, Bob. It's so true. You can't address a problem that you're not seeing, willing to acknowledge.
Right? And I did want to add some of your comments around engagement. I will say what I heard from you, which is it's up to us. We do have to, this is why we're running this campaign. This is a way for us to get biodiversity and water and climate and environment in the conversation, wildlife in the conversation. We need to be talking about these things. And this isn't a climate and environmentalist role. This isn't everybody's role. It's really important that we help people understand that it's up to them, up to us coming together and pushing back against bad policies for things to change. The one thing I will add, Bob, and I know this is after you've left, but these changes to the process that have happened in the city. Are you familiar with them? And is there a way to engage differently today versus there was a few years ago, I will say, and I just want to reiterate, you said the Calgary lines for the common good, you can look up any action they are making and join them at City Council. Same thing with the Calgary Climate Hub does an excellent job of helping people get engaged, but just speak to the process a little bit. Is there any improvements there?
Bob:
Well, no. I think politics at its fundamental hasn't changed at all. And it's people making their voices heard. We're still living the democracy and we shouldn't be afraid to speak up. And I think we have to be together. We have to ensure that we're doing this in concert and supporting each other because when you're alone, then it's easy to be intimidated or bullied away from a position. This is why there is an alliance as an organization of organizations. There are 32 of them as part of the alliance, the Calgary Climate Hub and the environmental round table, Preet, you're bringing environmental organizations together to coordinate, so none of you are isolated. And in order to amplify your voices as well as to bring your variety of skills and knowledge together into a coherent and stronger position. That doesn't change, it can't change. Some of you on this call will know how to use the social media effectively, but I think fundamentally a social media is designed to accentuate our anger and get clicks and monetize anger. It's becoming quite toxic, and I'm not sure how those of you who use it can do it, use it for the common good. I don't think it can replace relationships and showing up in person though.
Key Takeaways and Actions
Jenny (00:57:18):
Agreed. Yeah, and I was saying just last week doing another campaign, it's nice to be around people that care about the environment and care about people and doing good by society. It feels good, and it's a reinforcing feeling for sure. Preet did you have any questions before I just hit some of the highlights from the conversation? Okay. I just want to thank Jim McPhail for tuning in. Jim is going to be helping me with some of the episodes. Preet is going to hopefully join me for some others. We're looking to other members from the CERT Alliance. Here's another one. Kathleen, thank you so much, especially to Kathleen and Adrian for helping us get this effort going. Adrian had experience in this, and Kathleen is from the Urban Species Response Team. She says, thank you for all the work you've done, Bob, we really appreciate everything that you offered us today, and we had Claire on the call as well.
Claire Kraatz is from For Our Kids Alberta. All of the links to all of the people that are helping us in this campaign are available on the website, as I mentioned. I will put this in the link for this podcast, but there is our website home. We're going to have a page for each of the awards so you can see the videos from each of the contributions from candidates throughout this campaign. What did I miss? Mryl Edie also joined us. She said, thank you very much for all of us. Thank you, Mryl, for all you do. This is another example of somebody who dedicates her life to supporting both climate and social justice action, and yeah. Thank you so much, Claire. We really appreciate your input and everything that we've done here and in other efforts. I agree, Bob, we've appreciated your mentorship behind the Calgary, sorry, the Calgary Environmental Roundtable.
What we did when we started this effort back in May, I think it was, was we looked at a podcast that Bob had done and we all gave our questions out of it that still remain. Your work is living on, sir, and we greatly appreciate you. Any other insights you have for us after this, we'd love to hear from you as well. Okay, excellent. Look at us under the hour. We nailed it. Thank you very much everyone. We'll take care. Let's see everybody. The next event we're looking to schedule coming up is likely September 19th. We have some commitments from mayoral candidate Jeremy Farkas. Thank you, Jeremy Farkas, I apologize, I'm bad with names.
Preet:
No worries.
Jenny:
Yeah, we've got some more candidates already lined up. Please, as I set, here's the tool one more time. Actually, quickly before we go, this is the letter writing tool. Again, I'll put it in the chat so everybody can get their letters off to encourage your candidates to participate. Okay, beautiful. Have a great rest of your day everyone. Thank you so much.
Preet:
Thank you.
