Calgary Municipal Politics

[Roaring Flames]

The thing with blanket rezoning is that even if it's repealed, it's inevitable that it gets brought up again in the future. It's already been implemented with success in other cities here in Canada

 

[CBBarnett]

I'd rather have a mayor that anticipates rapid growth, than one that buries their head in the sand and tells people things will be fine, we don't need to see any change in your community.

There's always a good chance that we will get politicians at municipal and provincial levels that will say all three things, as inconsistent as they may all be together:
rapid growth will happen (1), nothing will ever change for your and your community (2), and it will all be fine (3).

We will be a city of 3 million .... and you don't have to change how you get around, driving will always be easy and congestion-free.
We will be a province of 10 million ... and we don't need to increase investments in education, health and infrastructure.
Your taxes will never need to go up ... and the quality of your services and infrastructure will always be maintained, and things like growth and inflation will never impact the baseline.

 

[CalgaryTiger]

It seems no level of government was ready for this population growth cycle. Alberta was calling and Canada wanted you to be an international student and temporary foreign worker but Calgary spent the bare minimum on existing and new infrastructure. The bill was always going to come due, because now that we need to build, the project list is so long and our population has been so conditioned to the Alberta Tax Advantage that it is hard to see a way out of this. The choices are infrastructure debt, fiscal debt, and/or higher taxes.

The politicians need to be honest with themselves then they need to be honest with us and we can make our choice.