The Calgary Environmental Roundtable (CERT) Municipal Election 2025 campaign, led by the Gravity Well Podcast, is a non-partisan coalition focused effort to elevate environmental priorities in Calgary. The campaign connects residents with candidates through a letter writing tool and podcast series, emphasizing the importance of clean water, biodiversity, and climate action for a sustainable future. In an exclusive interview, mayoral candidate Jeromy Farkas discusses his vision for a greener Calgary, highlighting the need for financial responsibility, public safety, and quality of life improvements. Farkas advocates for holistic watershed management, equitable access to parks, and innovative housing solutions. He emphasizes the role of ENMAX in achieving clean electricity goals and the importance of sustainable water use. Farkas also stresses the need for meaningful public engagement and transparency in council decisions. The campaign encourages Calgarians to participate actively in shaping the city's future by voting and engaging with candidates. Thank you, Jeromy for stepping up to be the Mayor of Calgary.
Introductions to the CERT Campaign and Jeromy Farkas
Jenny (00:07):
Welcome to the Calgary Environmental Roundtable Municipal Election campaign led by the Gravity Well Podcast with me Jenny Yeremiy. The Calgary Environmental Roundtable, or CERT for short, is a non-partisan coalition of environmental and climate organizations 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 and 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 prioritize 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 organization, 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.
Alright, good afternoon everyone. Welcome back to the Calgary Environmental Roundtable Municipal election podcast series that I'm hosting so that you can learn more about your ward and mayoral candidates. Today I'm hosting our first official interview for the Calgary Municipal Election 2025, building a Greener Future for Calgary Podcast miniseries. We're having an exclusive interview with Mayor candidate Jeromy Farkas. As the introduction suggests, CERT is a climate, environmental, and common good group of organizations focused on ensuring that water, nature and biodiversity are front of mind and that our members have ongoing opportunities to shape the future of our city. Municipal decisions directly affect the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the communities we live in. The goal of this campaign is to connect you with your candidates elevating environmental and common good priorities and empowering you to make informed choices at the ballot box.
Candidates are coming on here, they're sharing their vision of a green future. Thank you again to Bob Hawksworth, who is a 23-year city counsellor for the City of Calgary. He had two stints between serving our city as MLA as well. Bob offered a shining example to other ward candidates, thank you for that, Bob. We're grateful for the opportunity to highlight mayoral candidates and exclusive one-on-one interviews, and we're excited to hear from Jeromy today. But first, this campaign to identify priorities and inform voters we'll be most successful because of you and your support. Please use the QR code that is included in this screen for us today or go through the link in the chat that I will add later to get your candidate questions out or to encourage your candidates to answer our questions. Your impact is amplifying this with your community and your network so that we can build these ongoing relationship with the municipal candidates and government representatives.
We're continuing to see receive growing, excuse me, responses, and we were sharing this with over 20,000 voters. You can view their responses on my website. I'll put that link in the chat too and it will be updated as we get new responses. I just received Jeromy's responses, they’re on the mayoral forum page and I'll add that to the link to the chat. A special thanks to those of you who have responded so far. I look forward to speaking with candidates over the coming few weeks and you can see the YouTube schedule. I'll include that in the chat as well of all of those scheduled opportunities. Before we begin, I just want to note that candidates hold a range of environmental positions, priorities, and objectives, positions taken by the participants either individually or collectively, don't necessarily represent the Calgary Environmental Roundtable. Again, CERT is a non endorsing recommending candidates or political parties in this campaign. Lastly, if there isn't anything more to say or do, please like and subscribe to The Gravity Well together we can build a resilient, healthy, and sustainable city for Arians. Okay, now we get to the fun. I'm going to add Jeromy to the stage here. Hi Jeromy. Thank you so much for joining us.
Jeromy:
Hey, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited for the conversation.
Jenny:
Yeah, really appreciate this. I'm very fortunate. Full disclosure, one of your campaign helpers is a member of our organization just by happenstance, obviously. It's wonderful to know that you have made this a priority. Thank you very much, Jeromy.
Jeromy:
Yeah, we have an amazing team, really across the broad political spectrum, and it's so cool seeing the talents of all the folks involved with it, seeing their ideas, hopes, dreams for the city reflected in our platform and policy. And especially as a candidate, it really challenges me to do better and be better too.
Jenny:
Yeah, wonderful. Strong team is a really good indication of a strong candidate I would suggest. Okay, I'm going to attempt to do your background, but obviously welcome you to help fill in anything I leave out. Jeromy, welcome to the studio again, thank you for engaging in our campaign. Jeromy is one of your candidates for Mayor of Calgary. He was born and raised here in East Calgary. He holds a degree in political science from the University of Calgary. He was an executive administrator for the Israel Studies Program and a research team lead in the Faculty of Medicine. In 2017, Jeromy was elected as Calgary's youngest city counsellor. During his term he championed public transparency, financial responsibility, and community safety. He also served as Calgary Police Commissioner and director of Calgary Housing Company for four years.
Four years later he ran as mayor and he came in second place. Congratulations. That's quite an accomplishment. He has since served as a nonprofit director, community volunteer, and CEO of Glenville Ranch Park Foundation. That's where I have had the opportunity for me to Jeromy at an event there. And he has held that until earlier this year and of course to step up and run as our mayor. Jeromy credits his inspiration from his grandmother Liz, and he uses her expression, which is Calgary means being part of something bigger as his guiding light. How How'd I do? Okay. I hope.
Jeromy:
Well, I still appreciate that I'm not much for bios, I'm more for action. What are the results? What have you done for people for the world? And I'm so grateful to have had a lot of opportunities and every step of the way Calgary has invested in it and how amazing is that?
Jenny:
Yeah, wonderful. Okay, great. Here we go. We're going to do the same thing that we did with, like I said, Bob Hawkesworth. I hope I said Hawkesworth earlier anyway, I will walk through the seven questions that we've given candidates. I'll give some time for reflection as well. Here we go. The first question is around Calgary's climate strategy. Calgary has a five-year set of goals to reduce energy, poverty and utility costs, creating clean economy jobs and improving public health and building more equitable climate resilient communities. If elected Jeromy, how will you work to achieve these outcomes for Calgarians? Thank you.
Question 1: Achieving Calgary’s Climate Strategy
Jeromy (08:15):
We'll have the opportunity to go into a lot of more granular detail over all of these questions, but kind of taking a step back, I'm so glad that we have this platform to have this conversation. When we're thinking about climate, the environment more generally, I think the first piece is we can't afford not to have this conversation. When we think about what it takes to bring Calgarians along to help build the business case, to help demonstrate why we need to do all these things, I think that that's really the central job of the mayor. In terms of financial responsibility, we talk about how if we don't act on climate, that actually ends up costing taxpayers more in long run through things like floods, fires, heat waves, infrastructure damage. The case for actually having this conversation and caring about this means that the dollars that we invest in resilience now, it really means avoiding billion dollar disasters later.
For example, things like stronger flood protection that saves us from repeat 2013 style damages. Then the other piece as well is just public safety and quality of life. We think about how extreme weather really directly threatens this is a worldwide issue, but here locally directly threatening Calgarians from things like say vulnerable seniors and heat waves, families facing smoky summers from wildfires. It's municipal action here at home that helps us really ensure that everyone has a safe neighbourhood, that we all have reliable drinking water and cleaner air. There's a lot of reasons kind of on the big picture level, why we should care about this stuff, especially how municipalities are in the front lines. We think about things like say, roads, bridges, stormwater systems, transit, all of these things are really at extreme risk to extreme weather. Actually thinking more broadly about this, there's a huge tangible benefit for Calgarians that I think really needs to emphasized as we're walking through some of the questions about what I think the first answer is more so of the why and the how for Calgarians . Regardless of how you've arrived to this conversation, how I've personally got my journey to here is that we can't afford not to in terms of the costs that come from that.
Jenny:
Yeah, it's wonderful. We were chatting before I thanked you for participating and you were saying, how can you not participate? This is our natural services. We need to make sure that we are thinking of them first and foremost. It's really
Jeromy:
Non-negotiable, right? If you are running for mayor in a city of, we are going to be 2 million people in this next council term. Our next mayor will be here to welcome Calgary number 2 million. We're a large major urban centers, very vulnerable to a lot of the elements that we're going to be discussing today. It's really essential responsibility to be having these conversations and thinking about this stuff.
Jenny:
And I'll just add thank you for mentioning the things that are coming our way. As somebody who is an elected official in our city, there is extreme weather events that we need to be, we need to understand or coming and that we need to look at things from that perspective and understand the scale and importance of being resilient in new ways to help address that. Yeah, thank you very much. I also just wanted to, because I did have the opportunity to look at your questions a little bit before we joined Jeromy, I just wanted to mention you were talking about heat limits in, because this is one of the things that comes with making sure that we're thinking about public health and safety. I was to see that you mentioned heat limits for renters. This is a policy that's really important to you. Is that right?
Jeromy:
Yeah, that's right. And really taking a step back, we have a lot of policy pieces that we put out on, and it's just that Jeromy SA slash platform, but it speaks to things like mobility, things like housing safety and affordability and financial responsibility, a lot of different policy pieces. But through all of these, we decided to weave climate action throughout all of those. It wasn't one policy that was going to live on a shelf kind of on its own section. We were really thinking about good stewardship through everything that we're doing. Yeah, it came out through the course of the conversation we're having on housing. That came to be as a result of the commitment in their states to establish a renter's advisory council. They would help ensure that tenant voices shape the municipal housing policy, for example, we're seeing another municipalities that looks like the exploration of a maximum heat bylaw. A lot of the ideas that we have are reflected and really woven through everything else that we put.
Question 2: Protecting the Watershed, Wildlife, and Urban Biodiversity
Jenny (12:59):
Perfect. Thank you. Exactly. And I'll just mention a few more that I saw the solar ready bylaw fit buildings and transit oriented development in that space as well, and I know we'll get into it in some of these other questions too. Okay, next question. How will you ensure that new community development and redevelopment in Calgary protects our watersheds rivers and creeks, valleys wetlands, and the wildlife and urban biodiversity? That depends on these ecosystems, please.
Jeromy:
Yeah, and that's actually how I think you and I last saw each other in person, at least if I was trying to rack my brain, I was at a meeting that we're doing in my role as a environmental NGO leader. We were advocating to the provincial government for a smarter, more holistic watershed management protocol. The idea that water is not just something that's solved with concrete and steel, you actually have to have a much more holistic watershed view here in Calgary. We're a big city that sits on two very small rivers, but that's that our problem with water is sometimes far too much and far too little. Having the conversation just be about, say flood mitigation or drought management, I think misses the point. In the Calgary's Climate Strategy Review, they do note that things like say habitat restoration is off track.
There's a lot more that we can be doing for certain environmental protections, especially in planning and land use decisions. Throughout my platform, we have a number of proposals as somebody who is a CEO at a provincial park. Of course, one of our platform items is parks and public spaces. We talk about implementing public feedback into the Calgary Parks plan and other really straightforward things like collaborating with the federal government's 2 billion trees program to help plant about million new trees that we're going to know that we're going to need for the next 10 years. That also helps segue into a bit of the equity component of discussion on climate action. We've talked about we can't afford not to have this conversation, and it's also in other ways that we can help build a fair and more just city. Throughout all of that, it's really baked in there a lot of commitments.
Others straightforward things like even just banning the sale of public parks. There's a lot of pressure right now on green spaces and environmentally sensitive areas that have been going out the door for development and connected to the conversation is how do we continue to build the needed housing but not do it in a way that is actually reducing the amount of amenities and green spaces that cow grants have access to. A lot of ideas in there, and one of the more exciting parts, at least from my experience working out at Colombo Ranch was the co-creation and co-design with the indigenous communities. When we think about the stewardship of public places, that also involves recognizing the land in the history. It is such an exciting area that has so much intersectionality there that it's hard to begin. But what I love about running for municipal office is that it's ground level, it's tactical. It's where the rubber really hits the road, and you can actually build the relationships to get things done.
Jenny:
Wow, that was tremendous. I'm going to back up and start with, you spoke about thinking more holistically, not just about, I've actually never heard somebody say it that way, not just about droughts and floods, but about the two of them and what that means together. That's really interesting. It's not enough to just think about infrastructure. We need to think about restoring, which is what you talked about. Habitat restoration is near and dear to my heart, so thank you so much for acknowledging that.
Jeromy:
I'll add too, Jenny. It's about funding that natural infrastructure with the same seriousness as roads and pipes, and the whole point there is to be able to protect lives and livelihoods. We think about the pipes and roads is important, which is absolutely essential, but when we also think about funding that restoration, it actually helps save us money in the long run. There's such a strong business case to have that seriousness to the natural infrastructure.
Jenny:
And it goes back to your last comments around the extreme weather because it helps mitigate all of that. I heard an expert say, if you want to fish, plant a tree, and that's that extent of what you need to get the cycle going through. Its complete effort. That's how you get more water and how you get more fish. Anyway, I thought that was interesting to include. You spoke about the importance of equity in this. There's such a massive opportunity with all of this to make equity value of our city. Thank you for bringing that in. I love the banning of public lands to a park, thank you. Yes, it is really important to preserve this and increase it as you're suggesting. And then lastly, the co-creation, co-design. That's wonderful. That is the opportunity we have. Like you said, it's exciting to be a part of something really meaningful like this to get us back to a place of shared objectives overall. Beautiful.
Jeromy:
The political support is more, obviously we look to our mayor and council to be those visionary leaders, and we talk about where we're going generally as a city, but we're the rubber hits the road as those amazing organizations out there, the community associations, nonprofit organizations that really just need the political will and the support to get the work done. We do look to the politicians or the mayor to drive the bus, but my view is really, there's so much tremendous work being done, done out there. It's more partnership, it's more investing what works and supporting those people who are doing more.
Jenny:
Yeah, thank you. I'm just going to highlight that at your event that I did attend at the ranch there, you had done an excellent job of having those representatives there. That pays off in the long run when, and I have to say that was a really effective meeting for that reason because it was meaningful. Thanks. Okay, next question. Will you commit to dedicating budget dollars towards protecting Calgary's biodiversity and improving wildlife safety in urban environments, including through measurements such as enforcing, bird friendly building standards, retrofitting existing structures, and supporting safe wildlife corridors?
Question 3: Dedicating Budget Dollars to Protecting Biodiversity and Wildlife
Jeromy (19:28):
Thank you. Well, absolutely, and I think it's been a mistake that this mayor and council has actually reduced capital funding for parks. We used to have the N max Legacy Parks Fund, which actually helped get across the line major regional parks like the brand new Haskey Legacy park up in Northwest Calgary and others. And it's really important too, that having a beautiful park means a park that looks good today, but also looks 10 years from now. Actually maintaining that infrastructure is really important. And it also manifests in a couple of different ways, like ensuring that we have multifunctional parks, ensuring that there's different types of uses so that those spaces stay busy and that busyiness means that we get a hell of a good return on investment out of it. I think there's a lot more ways that we can be creative around this, especially in the work that's being done out there. I want to give a shout out to Andrew Yule and the Nose Creek Preservation Society. They've done some fantastic work in terms of being pro-development, but also talking about the need for the amenities for the folks who live specifically in North central Calgary. If we're talking about equity, like every single Calgarian, no matter your postal code or which core of the city you come from, you deserve access to great parks, and that's solidly in the commitment and the platform that we've performed.
Jenny:
Yeah, wonderful. In fact, you have a specific campaign asking for that in advance of the election, or you had, is that correct, Jeromy?
Jeromy:
Yeah, and it is all about ensuring everyone has that same access to opportunity and environment and green space and parks. It's one element of the quality of life. Of course, there's a lot of what a municipality does. Picking up garbage, making sure the buses run on time, the swimming pool hours and all the rest. But great public spaces is really essential to municipal government and funding that work and supporting that work, especially how Park space connects with say conversations around, say calories, ecological network, natural areas, riparian zones, wildlife corridors. There's a lot of win-wins that we can pursue where the environmental outcome is achieved by just good governance.
Jenny:
I think I looked at your campaign and I recall you creating a corridor through Calgary. Is that right? Is that the intent of it?
Jeromy:
Yeah, hidden in a lot of Easter eggs and a lot of the policy briefs we've put out is these big, hairy audacious goals. This is me obviously having some experience on the file, but the idea of creating the world's largest urban park, the idea of a contiguous all the way from the Tsuut’ina Nation, Tsuut’ina development in southwest Calgary through to Fish Creek Park up along the Bull River to say Inglewood in the bird sanctuary through Eau Claire to Beaumont and Baker Park into Haskin Park, Glenbow Ranch, and beyond the idea of a single uninterrupted over pathway connection, serving a lot of different functions, tourism, wildlife corridors and all the rest, but we have what it takes to do really amazing stuff right here in Calgary. It's a really super exciting time.
Jenny:
Right. Great. Good. I'm glad I'm paying attention. Thank you very much. You're probably glad somebody's paying attention. Okay.
Jeromy:
Well, everyone asked me when will that pathway connection between Calgary and Cochrane be open and now that we've saved the park from being flooded soon.
Jenny:
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Awesome. Okay, next question. What steps will you take to ensure housing, rent and transit in Calgary are affordable and accessible so that more Calgarians can access services with dignity and live and work in a healthy city? Thanks.
Question 4: Housing, Rent, and Transportation Affordability and Accessibility
Jeromy (23:14):
Yeah, we know here in Calgary that building operation and transportation are those two largest source of community missions, and our housing plan has a bunch of points related and adjacent to that, it's a 25 point plan, and it calls for bringing housing certainty and responding to the housing crisis in a number of ways. Primarily, I think one of the greatest ways that we can incentivize is through prioritising transit oriented development. So think about, say, adding new where it makes the most sense near transit stations, education jobs, and this also helps reduce the pressure on established neighbourhoods while supporting walkability, cutting commute times, and so on. We've talked about protecting public parks and green space from development. Another key piece is also future communities. Say tying the development to various structure plans to infrastructure and servicing commitments so that those communities grow with the necessary support in place and that they are complete communities to begin with so that people don't feel or people aren't required to travel so far from home to be able to access essential services, things like schools or grocery stores and so on. It's obviously a very broad topic in terms of that, but there's also other elements in terms of ensuring that we have adequate offsite levies on say, sewer, water and so on. So planning and development is probably 90% of what a municipal government does. It probably does not get the focus of Calgarians, but I think a lot of people have been paying a lot more attention now with some of the recent debates over zoning and so on.
Jenny:
Yeah. Well, and you caught somebody who cares a lot about offset levies, thank you very much for offsite levies. Excuse me. Yeah, appreciating that certain projects do cost more and that needs to be taken into account before a project is executed, and I love mean switching from ensuring that infrastructure and services are available before a community is moved in is a very big step in the right direction for ensuring that, like you were saying, these natural services are in place as well. And then transit oriented development is such a key thing to help make sure that Calgarians have access and better city moves smoothly. As you said, as population gets bigger even, it's more convenient to make sure that more people have access to public transit for everyone. Yeah, thank you Jeromy. Really appreciate those. Anything more on that or,
Jeromy:
Yeah, if I can, there's a lot of attention on governments. There's a lot of attention on industry, there's a lot of attention on end user, but in our plan as well, we really leaning in with city staff and trying to cultivate the city of Calgary corporate culture for innovation. And for me, having served four years on the Calgary Housing Company, a tremendous amount of respect for the staff who work every day to be able to address that really acute and essential need for Calgary ends. And our policies include things like, well, our youth policy is not officially announced, but one is the commitment to a youth fellowship role within the mayor's office to be able to help bring in some of the most recent learnings and cutting edge research. Another one is being able to expand, say interdepartmental secondments. Think about allowing for say, temporary staff placements between departments so that staff better understand another one, another's pressures, and then the launch of, say, a city housing innovation lab. How do we test new solutions right here in Calgary, whether it's a prefab builds to adaptive reuse, there's a lot of great international best practices like say mass timber, courtyard blocks, modular construction, even balcony solar that I think we could really be on the forefront of really piloting and demonstrating that the use case here in Calgary.
Jenny:
Wonderful. Yeah, I love to hear that the city staff is going to be empowered in a potentially city led by you, Jeromy, because I think that's a key opportunity and that giving people an opportunity to see the other areas of the city at work is also so key to helping that innovation come from within and help things move through the organization more smoothly perhaps. Yeah. Excellent. Great. Okay, next question is around ENMAX. ENMAX is wholly owned by the City of Calgary. What role do you see ENMAX playing in helping the city achieve its 2035 cleaning electricity goals, please?
Question 5: ENMAX and Clean Affordable Energy
Jeromy (28:13):
Yeah, I remember when I was on Calgary city council, there was quite a controversial issue we dealt with in terms of how to deploy ENMAX to the maximum amount of good locally here. What is ENMAX’s role? Is it a purely utility to a extracted dividend for Calgarians? Is it the means by which we go out and make a difference in the world? Is it a social enterprise? All of those debates were happening, and I was the only member of council at the time who voted against the acquisition of AmeriMain, which became known as First Power, it's not well known, but Calgarians by virtue of owning n max now own about a 2 billion enterprise in the United States. And I thought that that was a big mistake because we had the opportunity to be able to direct ENMAX's energy generation more towards renewables, more towards things like community generation, solar projects.
I thought that if we were going to continue to invest in having ENMAX, is that privately owned? Well, it's privately owned, but it's publicly owned in the sense that Calgarians own it. There are other ways to deploy that capital. I have a difference of opinion with some of the other candidates who are running for mayor and that they really see it as that corporate enterprise. Whereas I would really like to see a lot of the governance as well as the deployment of capital be repatriated here at home to be able to help provide some of the incentives to be able to deliver on a lot of these goals.
Jenny:
Wonderful. Yeah, that is definitely something I was not aware of, Jeromy. Thank you for helping me understand that there is now a US investment through ENMAX that is Calgary owned. Yes, I love the thought of repatriating that money locally. I'm curious, just because Bob Hawkesworth offered such a great, or this into my thoughts as well, is do you see there being a benefit of having a ward member on the ENMAX board? What was done in the past he was mentioning, I don't know if that's just something I can plug with you as a thought,
Jeromy:
And I do think it was a mistake to take the city counsellors off of that role. For me as a city counsellor being the appointee, for example, to the Calgary Housing Company, I felt that it was really important for me being there not to be the politician micromanaging, but to actually have line of sight in terms of what some of the frontline issues were. If anything, I was there to be able to hold the staff at CHC accountable, but I was also there to get a sense of what were the challenges, what were the constraints that they were experiencing so that as elected official, I could go on and actually be an effective advocate vis-a-vis the provincial government, for example, for funding and maintenance and so on. I think that that council representation is important, but I'd also like to see much broader community representation. We have a lot of great folks who've put up their hands board and not knocking their skills and competence, but I'd like to see broader community representation.
Question 6: Sustainable Water Use and Watershed Protection
Jenny (31:19):
Right. Wonderful. Thank you. Okay, how will you advance sustainable water use and watershed protection and Calgary's growth and development decisions? Easy question.
Jeromy:
I had an interview this morning and we're talking about what does it mean to be a city of 2 million people? Our next mayor will be here to welcome Calgary number 2 million, and potentially by the end of the next decade it could be 3 million, right? Do we talk about the services, the infrastructure that's required? We think about roads, we think about rec centers, but the major, major constraint we live with right now is water. We are a big, big city on two very small rivers. That water security and ecological resilience question that has to be really first and foremost in Calgary's planning and advocacy efforts. Right now, not a lot of people know this, but it's upwards of a quarter of Calgary's water is lost, our treated water is lost due to leaks. We still have wooden pipes, we still have lead pipes, we still have asbestos pipes, and addressing that infrastructure through proper maintenance and fixing the pipes that makes so much sense on a number of different levels.
We can reduce our per capita usage, we can reduce our in absolute numbers usage. Is it better to try to take 25% more water from the river or is it just better to use the 25% you're already collecting? It's much better to use that, and it's not to make this too political, although I'm a politician, it really just comes down to the priorities. How has Calgary city council and mayor been making those investments? When you have things like a billion dollars of taxpayer money, easily going out the door for a brand new arena for the vast majority of the proceeds to benefit the flames, when you have a billion dollars for that, but you don't have a billion dollars for what is fundamental to local governments and good governance, clean drinking water. It is really about setting the right priorities as mayor and council to ensure that we're stewarding those resources we need as a city, we can continue to grow that 2 million number, that 3 million number. It's probably scary to a lot of folks, but it's only scary if you don't have a plan. If you're proactive and you have a plan around it, you can turn that challenge into an opportunity. And that's really central to my vision of where I'd like to see the city go.
Jenny:
Wonderful. Yeah, I think you were alluding to at the early on in your answer there is the need to think of water first and foremost in our decision making to think of, is the water available? We're in a basin that is fully licenced, if you will. It is something that needs to be understood by, like you said, a representative in our city to know that those limits are there and we need to think about that first and foremost. Thank you for appreciating that and that
Jeromy:
And individual responsibility too. When we think about the portion of the water we produce, that's going to non-residential customers versus residential proximate numbers. But we know per capita, the Calgary ands per capita are water requirements about 25% greater per capita than say Edmontonians. There's a lot of work to do, not just in the absolute number of water that's lost, but individual efficiencies. And this is not water for the sake of water. I was always raised to honour the environment. Don't take more than you need, but there's a financial component to this. We can no longer afford to ignore losing a quarter or a third of our water. There is no fiscal responsibility angle to continuing the way we are. We have to take action on these issues, and that's really central. We cannot afford not to take action.
Jenny:
There are concerns about peak water use numbers in the future beyond 2030 or something like this for the City of Calgary. These are the real life decisions that need to be baked into the plans for the city. Thank you very much for
Jeromy:
Not to belabour this point, Jenny, but that's based on even what we know about today's current state. We haven't even discussed Eastern Slopes. We haven't talked about what the policy, or rather the real world impacts might be of policy that's being currently debated. We're precarious in the current state, let alone some other policy decisions that might be down the pipe that could be even worse in the current state. Again, I'm not one here to be fear mongering, but I do think that Calgarians like we're owed a really serious conversation about how we address this because we can address it if we have the plan, if we're proactive, if we're informed, but we can't afford to continue to ignore it.
Question 7: Civic Engagement in City of Calgary Decision Making
Jenny (36:12):
Right. Yeah. Thank you. It's so critical, and thank you because you brought in, we have to think of what's upstream from us that's happening, and we need to think about what we're passing on downstream as well. We serve two other provinces after us as well, we have a big responsibility in this province. Thank you for understanding that. Okay, we're down to the last of the seven questions. This has gone very well. How will you ensure recommendations from Calgarians are including residents, frontline communities, environmental groups, and city staff are meaningfully considered in council decisions? Thanks.
Jeromy:
Oh man, that is a big question, and I would say from every corner of the city as I'm knocking on doors, there's a lot of folks who don't feel listened to, but it's a bit deeper than that. There's a lot of work and a lot of great organizations out there who were not actually tapping into their expertise. Even it's not solely a matter of not feeling like Calgarians are listened to through consultation, through engagement, but we're also robbing ourselves of the amazing expertise that's out there. It's not just people coming to the table with an opinion. That opinion is to make things better. That opinion is to improve practices, it's to save money. The listening is really key, but we're also robbing ourselves of better outcomes by virtue of not seeing more or as many Calgarians as possible reflected in the decision making process.
My policy platforms dive into just broadly that question of representation and a number of different angles. I think the mayor really has to champion that active representation on city boards, commissions. There's ways that we can expand participatory budgeting pilots. Even old school, when I was a city counsellor, every month I would host a 10 hall meeting where my entire ward could come and meet with me, share 'em with their thoughts, ideas, suggestions. That was really good for me, getting out of that city hall bubble and out into the community and actually listening to people, but also being able to probe a little bit in terms of what the fears or concerns that Cal gars have. Because a lot of it is also misinformation where you have to make sure that you're actually having a decision based on evidence and facts. There's other ways as well that we can better bringing in the voluntary sector.
I was just yesterday at Vibrant Community Calgary's big celebration, and then we're talking about ways that we could better establish that partnership with the nonprofit chamber establishing kind of formal channels for consultation, joint planning. But it's pretty old school. You listen to people, you pick up the phone, you'd be available, and my team doesn't like me saying this, but as the politician, you never want to be the smartest person in the room. You kind of want to have those folks on speed dial, but we're in trouble if you're the smartest person in the room. Because no matter the challenge or opportunity you have in front of you at City Hall, there's got to be somebody out there in the community who's working on this and has the proven ability to address the need or solve the problem. It's really about transparency, it's about meaningful engagements, it's making congregants part of the decision-making process, and that's really how we make those smart investments, not just in the infrastructure, but also the people who are powering our social sector, our neighbourhood organizations, and even in the private sector ways that we can make it easier for entrepreneurs.
There's a number of different ways tactically, but the big picture issue is mayor council haven't really genuinely been including Calgarians in the decisions and whether that's on issues of zoning or other files like that, tension has played out. But the fundamental thing is how do we ensure that every single Cal sees themselves reflected in the stuff that our local government does, because at the end of the day, it belongs to us.
Jenny:
Yeah, thank you so much. I'm just going to reflect some of the things you offered in your answers for the engagement survey, transparency and accessible engagement. I've heard from what your answers here, formal integration of public input, elevating frontline and equity seeking voices, empowering city staff, which you touched on earlier in our conversation here. And those that accountability and feedback loops, which you just offered can be mostly those real life encounters and continued engagement with the people of the city that care enough to be there and talk about these issues. I know that the intent of this effort for us is to make sure that we are in those conversations, that we're putting ourselves in the decision making as much as we can, and appreciate that there is an expectation on the other side that you want to see that as well. Thank you so much, Jeromy, for your time today. This has been a wonderful conversation. The CRC organizations. Thank you for your efforts here and hopefully have an opportunity to speak with you again with the other candidates for mayor. Anything you wanted to add that I missed in this conversation, Jeromy, or
Jeromy:
A topic that I think is so important right now is that this is the first municipal election where we're being asked to endorse or not this view of municipal political parties. And if your audience can just bear with me for a moment, I think that the introduction of these political parties is just so countered to a lot of the stuff that we've discussed in terms of practicality, pragmatic, and one of the reasons I've chosen to run as an independent is so that I can help build that team. Our next mayor is going to have to deal with probably three different municipal political parties, and the vast majority of Albertans and Calgarians told the UCP that we do not want this, but here we are, at least two or three different political parties are going to be represented on this council. None of them with an outright majority.
And the issue for the political parties is it's so numerous, the one obvious one is that it just robs Calgarians from having that effective representation. What I always enjoyed about being a city counsellor was somebody could call me. I would pick up the phone and I could get to work whether it was fixing the sidewalk or the localized issue. The idea of moving the decision-making to an unelected party membership, I think is anathema to the type of city that we want to have. But on a practical level, the loyalty to party politics means that you have, it puts people in a position where they feel they're compelled to either vote for a bad idea or vote against a good idea because it's their party colour at the end of the day, but really fundamental to an effective city council, effective city administration and local action on all of these issues at pragmatism.
The one just final comment I'd make for the audience is make sure you challenge the candidates in terms of not just the lip service. Ask them about their plans, ask them about their vision for the city. And I'll just close off on saying we've talked about a lot of challenges. We've talked a lot about what it could be to be a city of 2 million people or 3 million people. But my central message really is that with a plan, this is the greatest opportunity that we have as a city. We can solve these problems. I know this because we've done harder things than this. It is an encouragement to vote. We have, unfortunately, it could be 25, 40% of people only vote and turn out. That's a sad number. But what it also means is that if only one in four people show up, your vote counts for quadruple, right?
You matter. The work that your round table is doing matters, the members, the organizations, all of you matter, and us as a candidate, us as a campaign, we take you very seriously. The work that you do, the advocacy that you do, your fingerprints is probably going to be on all of the campaigns if they know what's good for them. Again, thank you for the great work that you do. Thank you for believing in the city, and thank you for stepping up on such a big file and a big issue that really needs so much more attention than it has had.
Jenny:
Wow. Thank you so much, Jeromy. That means a lot. Yes, this is not easy work, but it's the most important work as you've outlined today. I really appreciate you acknowledging that. And yes, you can expect that from me. I'm going to definitely be in your ear as much as possible with these organizations. I work expect. Yeah, these are the people that care about the city and want to make sure that it is resilient for a long time going forward. Thank you so much for appreciating that and taking your time with us. Okay, I'm going to close that out for you, and I'm just going to close up with some, again, more housekeeping. Have a great afternoon, Jeromy, and we'll take care for now. Thank you.
Jeromy:
Thank you.
Key Takeaways
Jenny (45:10):
Okay, just a little bit of reminders for you guys. Please use the QR code that is in the corner of this screen. Ask your candidates to participate just like Jeromy just did. This QR code will help you send a letter to encourage your ward and mayoral candidates automatically, and your impact is amplifying our efforts and it will help your community get involved. As Jeromy just highlighted, it's up to us to get involved in our city and see the results that we want to see in the future. The results will be on my website. Again, I'm going to put these links in the chat for everyone. Please see the YouTube podcast schedule starting next week. Hopefully we'll be having one every day for the next few weeks, pay attention. And by October 12th, I hope to have everything finalized and posted from everyone who participated or otherwise. We'll make sure you're aware of that level of participation. Lastly, just a reminder, please follow and share The Gravity Wall Podcast, help people understand that we are doing work for your city and work for your province. That is important to all of us. Okay, have a great rest of your day. Take care.
