Municipal Voters: Partisan Intervention is Coming Your Way

Did you mistakenly think that the Manning Centre's attempt to bend the 2013 Calgary municipal election to more "conservative" was an aberration?  You would be quite wrong.

The author of the Metro News article is considerably more charitable than I am about the matter - but then again, he was in Ottawa, not Calgary and didn't necessarily see the full breadth of the effort on the part of the angry right wing to twist the election.

When right-wingers from across the country huddled in Ottawa last weekend for the Manning Networking Conference, they understandably had their eye on the next federal election, but they also examined city politics and their perceived weakness there. 

One talk on the conference agenda was entitled, “How conservatives can succeed in the last bastion of the left – City Hall.” 

The title — and the talk — began from the assumption that the bicycle-riding, fancy-coffee-sipping socialist hoards by and large have a lock on city councils. ...

That's far from true, but what does happen at the civic level is that council decisions have a more direct impact on people's day to day lives than does a decision about interest rates in Ottawa, or Harper's rather naive and bellicose approach to foreign affairs.

Consequently, people tend to vote for councillors that actually do a good job of representing their local interests.  Whether that's ensuring that garbage gets picked up, or the snow is removed from the roads - political stripe doesn't usually matter to most people.

On the other side of the coin, apparently the far right thinks that they are imperilled somehow.

One might argue that as tax and spending cuts became orthodox at the other two levels of government, municipalities have had to step into the resulting gaps. And Ottawa had a right-leaning mayor not so long ago who vowed to hold the zero-means-zero line on tax increases — until reality caught up with him. 

Pantazopoulos allowed that conservative ideology as it’s articulated at the federal level may not filter down perfectly to Main Street: “What does smaller government really mean at the municipal level? Does it mean fewer roads get paved? Does it mean less snow gets cleared?” 

In city politics, he said, it’s more helpful to talk about supporting “market-oriented” candidates. That’s what the Manning Centre tried to do in Calgary’s elections last year with their Common Sense Calgary campaign.

"Market Oriented candidates"?  If you're as surprised by that mealy sounding term as I was when I first saw it, I can't blame you.  Once again, the far right is trying to sugar coat a turd.   In this case, the turd being a candidate who is on the political right wing, but madly running about trying to mask how far right wing they are, or what interest groups think they can control them.

The "Common Sense Calgary" thing was, fortunately, more or less a failure.  But it didn't fail because they weren't trying to get their message out - they spent hugely on advertising.  It failed because someone saw Cal Wenzel talking about trying to buy control over city council in the upcoming election via the Manning Centre and leaked it to the media.  People were expecting a bunch of Astroturfing to take place, and when it arrived, it mostly fell flat.

‘The idea was to really try and talk about some of the issues from a conservative perspective. And if you think that would be very harmless and that people would have no objection to that, you’re wrong,” said session moderator Monte Solberg, a former Conservative MP. “Mayor (Naheed) Nenshi was really quite outraged about all of this because it drew great scrutiny to his record.”

Well, actually the attempts to "scrutinize" Nenshi's record were not only blatantly partisan, they were full of lies to boot, and the Manning Centre's report on "council voting patterns" turned out to be a bunch of poorly analyzed statistics which really did not show what the far right claimed they did.

I don't think the Manning Centre/Developers did themselves any favours by having Jon Lord play the "angry old white guy" candidate for Mayor either.  He simply ended up looking stupid, especially when competing against incumbent Naheed Nenshi whose tireless work during the June flooding crisis had likely already won him the election entirely.  The real fight was to ensure that the developers didn't get their way with controlling the individual members of council.

But the Manningites also have some ideas about how citizens can use information technology to keep better tabs on city council. Researcher Jeromy Farkas crunched numbers from Calgary city council, from councillors’ attendance to the number of questions they ask staff to how often they vote with or against the majority. 

Some of the data’s meaning is open to interpretation. A councillor who asks a lot of questions may be keeping a skeptical eye on the bureaucracy, or just fond of the sound of his own voice. But the point is voters get more data to interpret. The Manning Centre intends to offer this analysis for other cities, including Ottawa, and that’s pretty cool.

 The problem is that these kinds of statistics aren't overly meaningful, especially the way that the Manning Centre went about the analysis.  It was clear enough that they were trying to interpret things to draw a particular picture.  As the old saying goes:  "There are 3 kinds of lies in the world:  Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics".  Like the Fraser Institute's "ranking" of schools, you have to realize that there is a political agenda being played out, and groups like the Manning Centre are pushing their agenda.  Examine their statistics very carefully, and interpret them with a healthy dose of skepticism.

One last reminder about the creeping partisanship in Canada's municipal politics:  The Fords in Toronto are very well connected to the federal CPC.  It is no big secret, or surprise, that Rob Ford received significant help from the CPC campaign machinery when he was last elected.  Further it is no surprise that we keep seeing the Fords using the same rhetorical practices that Harper has used.

This isn't healthy, it is ultimately undermining Canada's democracy at all levels.

Cal Wenzel Hasn't Got A Leg To Stand On

I didn't think much of Wenzel's allegations when he filed his lawsuit.  After reading the statement of defence filed by Naheed Nenshi today, I don't think Wenzel has much to work with.

Perhaps the most damaging to Wenzel's case is a series of tweets by Wenzel's supporters referring to him as "The Godfather" - before the interview in which Nenshi allegedly defamed Wenzel by referring to him as "The Godfather".

I think more concerning than the lawsuit itself (which is truly "pass the popcorn" political theatre) is the response of Alberta Justice regarding alleged funding irregularities in the 2010 election:

"Sometime later, Alberta Justice advised Mayor Nenshi that while there appeared to have been a violation of campaign finance law during the 2010 Calgary municipal election, based on Wenzel's statements in the Wenzel secret video, Alberta Justice had no authority under the applicable legislation to investigate the allegations and enforce the law."

If Alberta Justice doesn't have the authority to investigate and enforce the laws in Alberta, then who does, and why haven't they been tasked with investigating the irregularities and enforcing the laws?

Perhaps Alberta Justice doesn't have the direct authority to enforce the laws in question, but surely they could have passed the case along to the appropriate body for further investigation and enforcement.  That they did not suggests that the watchers over our elections are ineffective and worse than useless.

There is a serious problem here - and it is politicians undermining the very machinery of democracy. 

So ... Wenzel Is Suing Nenshi?

It came out in the news yesterday that Shane Homes' president Cal Wenzel has decided to sue Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi over statements made during this year's election campaign.

At first, I found myself scratching my head over this lawsuit.  Why bother?  It was one sentence in one interview in the middle of an election campaign.  Big deal.

Then it occurred to me - the move is consistent with a SLAPP lawsuit.  In the short term, it has little to do with actual defamation of Cal Wenzel - I think that the leaked video that he was so angry about did far more damage to Cal Wenzel's reputation than any statement that Naheed Nenshi had made in an interview.

But, looking at it going forward, the implications of Wenzel's lawsuit are significant.  It sends out a message to candidates that during an election, you better not tread on toes of the rich and powerful, for they will sue you after the fact.

Consider the impact of this lawsuit on future campaigns.  Suddenly, you have a situation where candidates will be unwilling to speak out on significant issues in the campaign (and the developers themselves became an issue in the 2013 campaign) for fear of being sued after the fact.

Is YOUR Boss Telling You How To Vote?

It's Calgary, 2013.  I thought we had a fairly mature democracy.  Certainly one above the kind of political shenanigans that the builders are pushing.

In today's Calgary Herald, an article appears which talks about the President and CEO of Excel Homes and Apex sending a memo to the employees of his company suggesting strongly how they should vote.

(alternate source for the memo:  http://globalnews.ca/news/909342/leaked-memo-points-to-builders-slate-of-election-candidates/ )

“There has never been a more important time in the history of this industry that our collective voice is heard,” states the letter signed by Greg Lefebre, president and CEO of Excel Homes and Apex, a land developer. 

“We encourage each and every one of you to do your own due diligence on the issues at stake in this civil election and elect the candidate that will best represent your interests on our city council.” 

Despite this open-ended encouragement, Lefebre’s note adds: “as an organization we have endorsed the candidates as attached to this memo.” 

Attached is a map of all 14 city wards, with names of candidates. They include challengers to incumbents in five wards, including sitting aldermen that Shane Homes founder Cal Wenzel suggested were “the dark side” in a secretly videotaped political speech to industry colleagues.

Let me be abundantly clear - under no circumstances should an employer be telling their staff how they should be voting - EVER.  That Mr. Lefebre thought that this was an appropriate action to take says a great deal about how far big money in this city is willing to go to ensure that its interests are looked after.  (and you can be sure that the interests of big money aren't likely to align with the average person's interests)

If this is anything, it is a revealing of the whispered "Builder's Slate" - the candidates that the builders are endorsing for Calgary City Council.

The list of candidates implicitly endorsed in this builder's memo:

Ward 1:  Chris Harper
Ward 2:  Joe Magliocca
Ward 3:  Jim Stevenson
Ward 4:  Sean Chu
Ward 5:  Ray Jones
Ward 6:  Joe Connelly
Ward 7:  Kevin Taylor
Ward 8:  
Ward 9:  Richard Wilkie
Ward 10: Andre Chabot
Ward 11:  James Maxim
Ward 12:  Shane Keating
Ward 13:  Diane Colley-Urquhart
Ward 14:  Peter Demong

Mayor:  Jon Lord

Well ... at least its out in the open now.  Vote as you see fit, but please make sure it's an informed vote.

In the realm of electoral reforms, it seems to me that it's time to take this kind of money-driven nonsense out of the picture.  Actions like this should carry with it penalties.  Remember, corporations are run by people, but corporations ARE NOT PEOPLE, AND THEY ARE NOT CITIZENS.

Pay to Go Politics in YYC

So, yesterday there was an "all candidates forum" sponsored by The Calgary Chamber of Commerce, the Urban Development Institute - Calgary and The Canadian Homebuilders Association - Calgary Region.

I did not attend this forum - for several reasons.  We already know that the developer community (or at least notable cabal within that group) have a "bone to pick" with the incumbent city council, and would dearly like to make things more "developer friendly" in the future.  They are entitled to that opinion and to advocate for it.  I have enormous problems with the obvious attempt to sponsor a slate of candidates trained by the right-wing Manning Centre - but that is because I object on general principals to the obvious play of partisan politics that smacks of.

However, there is a little nugget about last night's forum that I want to bring to your attention:

That's right - they are charging $25+GST / head ($26.25) for people to hear what candidates have to say.  If there is one thing that makes me angry, it is this notion that during an election, voters should have to fork out money to hear what the Candidates running to represent them have to say.

I'm sure that the sponsors would all wring their hands and talk about "cost recovery" and so on.  I have news for you - what you did by making that a "pay to attend" event is you immediately placed a price on information during an election.  Screw you.

The manufactured outrage that you have been fostering in this election campaign is revolting, and it is clear that you are only interested in talking to those willing to let you influence them with your propaganda.  Ever since the 2010 election, the right wing in this city has been on an anger-fest over Mayor Nenshi.  Big money lost that election, and they are trying to manufacture outrage to overturn Nenshi - or at least get enough of "their people" on council to make Nenshi's life hell for the next four years.

The UDI put out the following in a brochure at the start of the election:

UDI - Calgary calls on all 2013 municipal candidates to:
1. ACKNOWLEDGE the ongoing need for a strategic, innovative, and collaborative approach to managing growth in Calgary.
2. RECOGNIZE Calgary for what it is, as well as for what it was designed for - a UniCity with room for growth within City boundaries.
3. DEMONSTRATE leadership in putting Calgarians first when working to balance municipal fiscal capacity and control with business certainty and consumer demand. 

What this boils down to is that the developers in this city want to keep their business model as it is.  Why?  Simply because it is easy for them.  They know they can make money developing this way.  The rest of us have to live with the results.

If I were running any of those firms, I would be looking at changing the business model to adapt to the inevitable changes that are coming.  Calgary cannot be allowed to sprawl indefinitely for the next fifty years.  Doing so is unsustainable on so many levels it isn't funny.

We saw that when the initial builds for Douglasdale, Mackenzie, Mackenzie Towne caused traffic lights to be installed on Deerfoot Trail.  Possibly the dumbest decision ever made, but one made out of expediency.  Deerfoot is already running over capacity, even with all the lights removed, after a decade of construction projects to replace controlled intersections with interchanges.  ... and that is just the infrastructure that we can see.  The miles of water, wastewater, gas and electrical infrastructure that have to be installed in subdivisions is huge, and that means upgrades to sewage treatment facilities, the pipelines that feed them, new reservoirs for water (anybody else notice that Calgary is fairly arid most of the time?), generation capacity for electricity and so on.  We can't seem to keep up with the infrastructure problems we have now (there are roads in my home community that are crumbling and should have been replaced years ago)  Public transit in Calgary is a bad joke.  If you live east of the Deerfoot in south Calgary, it's even worse.

Calgary is growing.  There can be no mistake about that.  We need to find ways to grow that are more practical than simply spreading out indefinitely.  I may live in a suburb today, but I have long since recognized that the psychology of the suburb is rapidly becoming non-viable.  We need to change how we build this city.  Continuing to do what we are doing today will simply exacerbate the problems that are already brewing.

The developers are trying to protect their business model - and they don't give a damn about the long term problems that they are creating.  As a Calgarian, I want something better than that for the generations to come.  More of the same isn't it.

The Mayor's Debate in Calgary

Last night, Calgary's Civic Camp organization put together an all-candidates debate for the Mayoralty.

The format of the forum was excellent, and the effort to crowdsource the questions to be debated produced far better results than other political debates I have seen.  I must admit to being disappointed with the Live Stream facilitated by LiveStreamCalgary.com.  The video feed for the first half of the debate was extremely choppy, with almost incomprehensible audio as a result.

However, between the video feed and following #yycvote on twitter, it was possible to follow the debate reasonably well.

There were a few moments that I thought were of interest.  As expected, most of the candidates running for the Mayor's chair are really not terribly credible.  Larry Heather (the unofficial CHP candidate) started things off with what amounted to a sermon about how Calgary has broken its "covenant with God", Milan Papez read from a rambling prepared statement that made slightly less sense than his campaign website.  Jon Lord is playing the "angry old white guy" card - I'll come back to him.  Norm Perrault is a perennial candidate in this arena - I'd have to say that he acquitted himself fairly well, but he continues to be somewhat naive about what the Mayor's job entails.  Bruce Jackman thinks he's in the race to "provoke discussion" - I suppose that's a realistic approach, since he's not likely to get many votes.  Carter Thomson demonstrated a surprising level of cluelessness, claiming that "urban sprawl" is not a problem - clearly he has not been paying attention to the discussion around infrastructure costs.  Naheed Nenshi sounds much more polished and politically aware than he did in the 2010 campaign.  Sandra Hunter didn't show up.

Ever since Jon Lord showed up as a candidate, I have suspected that he is the "chosen" candidate of the conservative power structure in Calgary.  Last week, when he was attending this BBQ competition in the US, he was interviewed on CBC Calgary's "The Eyeopener", and it was fairly clear that he was planning to skip yesterday's debate.  So, when he jumped on a plane to get back for last night's debate at the last minute, I started to suspect that whoever is behind him had spent a lot of time on the phone arm twisting Lord.

Lord spent most of his time whinging on about reducing taxes.  This is a standard right-wing trope - moan about how taxes are too high, and then when in power and have reduced the taxes, they start moaning about the cost of running the services that the city has to provide.  He was playing the classic "angry old man" routine for the most part.

On Twitter, it was interesting to watch the debate.  Reporters from the Sun were busy boosting everything Lord said, and sniping at Nenshi at every turn.  No surprise - the Sun has been the unofficial outlet for the outrage that the conservative powerbase had when Nenshi won in 2010.  Perhaps more amusing was the attempt to manufacture outrage on the livestream website's discussion forum.  There were a small handful of Lord's backers trying to shout overtop of everyone else in a sloppy attempt to manufacture outrage directed at Nenshi.

As for Nenshi, he's running a much different campaign this time.  He's much clearer on policy issues, and seems to have a better understanding of the big picture that the Mayor has to deal with.  He knows that while he has ideas, his job is to facilitate finding solutions rather than to formulate and impose.  As much as I would love to see more of the "I've got great ideas" Nenshi of the last campaign, I have to admire the degree of growth that he has shown since 2010.  His points in the debate were clear and direct - exactly what you would expect from a mature, seasoned politician.

Calgary Sun Plays The Racist Card ...

It's never been a big secret that lurking just underneath the surface of Canada's right wing politics is a religiously-inspired vein of racism.  It reared its head back in the late 1980s when the debate over turbans in the RCMP was at full volume, and the Reform Party voted to ban turbans as part of the RCMP uniform, and frankly has never really gone away.

In the Calgary Sun today, we find a column decrying the alleged silence over various attacks on Christians in the Muslim world.

More or less, the reasoning in the column seems to be that the world community is being "silent" about these attacks, and is somehow being hypocritical about it.

A church is bombed in Pakistan and 85 people are killed while more than 140 more are maimed. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility. 

Violence and civil unrest rocks Damascus and Aleppo, forcing Syrian churches to close their doors, possibly forever. 

Thousands of elite Philippine troops battle Muslim guerrillas of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) who raze churches before they occupy the key port of Zamboanga. 

Christians in the southern Egyptian town of Dalga are forced to watch as a Muslim mob set fire to an ancient monastery and steal its contents. 

All played out against the backdrop of a shopping mall terror attack in Kenya where Muslims are asked to leave before hostages are taken.

The implicit message underlying all of this is that Islam is a "violent religion" bent on erasing Christianity from the face of the earth ... and why, oh why, isn't the world's political leadership speaking out on this?

According to the column's writer, it's because they are afraid of the Muslims:

As long as our ruling elites remain terrified of offending Islam, the self-proclaimed religion of peace that claims sole ownership of the term ‘persecuted minority,’ the fundamentalists will do as they please.

But, it is not so simple as that in reality.  Yes, as the article points out Canada has spoken out on such matters.  What the article fails to recognize is that such statements will have no effect whatsoever.  The radicals which carry out these acts are not themselves governments, and do not care one whit what governments have to say about it.

The only "threat" that we can make to them is a full scale invasion to eradicate the extremists.  Except that anyone with their head out of the sand will have long ago recognized that such approaches don't work.  Western powers have spent the last decade and a bit cleaning up the mess made in Afghanistan and Iraq, and as many had predicted prior to the invasion of Afghanistan in 2002, the radicals had simply gone to ground at the height of the hostilities, and are now quietly re-emerging from the shadows to assert their claims to power again.

But, underlying the column is the usual line of xenophobia about a religion and culture that frankly most people in the western countries simply do not understand.  We're supposed to be afraid of these people because of their religion, instead of the fact that they have organized themselves into what amount to paramilitary gangs like al-Shabab.

Canada is a uniquely peaceable country.  I'm not sure what it would take to provoke the kind of rioting that we have witnessed in Egypt, nor do I particularly want to find out.   That makes it all the more puzzling when we see the kinds of rioting on TV news that has resulted in churches being burned down.  We have space here - lots of it.  What provokes a mob to attack a monastery?  Who knows - perhaps when this land has been occupied by competing powers for a few millennia we will have a more direct understanding.  Many of those religious sites in the Middle East have belonged to different faith communities multiple times, and there are competing claims for the same location.

So ... why is the Sun publishing columns which simply repeat tired, old arguments about the "evils" of a particular faith?  Largely because they can.  It's easy, and it plays to the fears that the Reform/Alliance/Conservative parties have used to build up their base.  There's no secret that the Sun has become the unofficial mouthpiece of the CPC in Canada, saying the things which the base wants to hear, but that Harper doesn't dare allow to be uttered by his politicians.  There is a good reason for this. Fear is a powerful weapon in politics.  Bush II demonstrated that in spades.  The poorly understood, like cultures in far off lands, are prime targets for "othering" - painting in a particular light that seems reasonable until you start asking prickly questions about things.

Why now?   That's a bit more of a puzzle.  It's not like there's anything going on in Canada that justifies this kind of ignorance based attack ... or is there?  In Calgary right now, we are in the throes of a municipal election, and the incumbent mayor is a Muslim.  Make no mistake about it, the Sun and their far right power masters, have been supremely angry ever since Naheed Nenshi was elected in 2010.  They have made no secret of their desire to get rid of him.  If they can chisel away at his support a little bit by calling into question him by way of their characterization of his faith, they will.

Analyzing The Manning Centre Report "City Council Vote Tracking"

The Manning Centre released a report this week, "Growing the Democratic Toolbox:  City Council Vote Tracking".

The first thing about this that I find interesting is that this appears to be a sign that the Manning Centre is going to start positioning itself in a manner similar to the Fraser Institute, which has spent much of the last twenty years spouting ideologically slanted "research" as if it is somehow unbiased and logical.  The fact that this report's release coincides with the launch of the "Common Sense Calgary" campaign and the launch of Calgary's civic election suggests that there is an attempt to attack the current city council incumbents who don't align well with the Conservative cabal that wants to control all levels of politics.

The report is lengthy - some 38 pages, and filled with lots of statistical analysis of council meeting minutes.  It is filled with lots of "pretty graphs", but graphs seldom tell the whole story - in fact, statistics themselves have proven to be a somewhat suspect tool in analyzing politics in general.

[More Detailed Analysis After The Jump]

Let The Astroturfing Begin

It seems that the astroturfing of Calgary has begun, with the Manning Centre sitting right behind it.

Common Sense Calgary has been launched using funds from the Manning Centre.

Started with $10,000 in seed money from the Manning Centre, content for the website is being provided by the Manning Foundation.

A video leaked in April showed Shane Homes CEO Cal Wenzel urging a group of fellow home builders to financially support industry-friendly candidates. 

He and 10 others gave $100,000 each — totalling $1.1 million — to the Manning Centre, part of which was used as the seed money for Common Sense Calgary. 

“It’s not a charity, it’s not a not-for-profit, we are not soliciting contributions,” Billington said. “It’s an initiative of a group of private individuals.”

A few moments of poking around their website makes the agenda pretty clear.  The news page is filled with an assortment of articles that are critical of incumbent mayor Nenshi's positions (if you scroll down their news page, there's rather a lot from the Calgary Sun ...).

Looking a little further through Common Sense Calgary's website, their position on key areas are classic conservative positions (with all of the nuance of a sledgehammer), and mysteriously they are backed up by reports published by the Manning Centre.

It has been no secret that the Manning Centre has been building a set of positions relative to municipal politics for quite some time.  Then we get this group, funded by the Manning Centre no less, coming forward to promote them.  How unsurprising.

... and when the man at the front of the organization is Rick Billington, a man with unquestionable ties to the local CPC power structure, it seems even less likely that this is anything but an astroturf organization.  Consider that this group is funded by the Manning Centre, and if the Calgary Sun is correct using some of the $1.1 million from the developers community.  This doesn't sound like anything remotely resembling "grassroots".

[Update]
In today's Calgary Herald, there is a similar article, but it attempts to claim that this is going on "across the board":

The city’s labour unions are the other traditional big interest in civic politics, bestowing money on progressive candidates and encouraging their thousands of members to vote and volunteer for them.
In this fall’s campaign, the unions for city hall and transit staff are working more closely together than before, and will choose preferred candidates in many wards. 

“What we’re looking for is ideally candidates we can work with and candidates that won’t target labour,” said Alex Shevalier, president of Calgary and District Labour Council, an umbrella group for unions. He warned of politicians who may outsource civic jobs or press to cut worker benefits and wages. 

“They very much want to end city planning as we know it and understand it, and it would be a very libertarian approach to city council,” said Shevalier. “And one person’s red tape is another person’s due process.” 

The labour council is co-ordinating unions’ efforts and has its own knowyourcanadidates.ca campaign website.

The difference here?  The labour council's knowyourcanadidates.ca website is informational at this stage - it tells you who your candidates are in a given ward.  They apparently have a survey out to all of the candidates, but so far the results haven't come back yet.  The nature of the survey is not known to me at this point.  

At least the site is upfront about the fact that it is being funded by the Calgary Labour Council - unlike the Common Sense Calgary group whose website tries to portray it as being a "bunch of concerned citizens", when it is being funded and facilitated by a political think-tank.
[/Update]

Slates In Calgary Municipal Elections

While Calgary's municipal elections are ostensibly "non-partisan", in so far as we don't have the various political parties directly involved, it is naive to think that we don't have slates of candidates backed by interest groups of one sort or another.

In the last several elections, we have had what I will politely classify as "right wing" slates of one sort or another fielding candidates.  In 2007 and in 2010, we had slates running which were backed/endorsed by the political far right.  The usual outcome was that one or two of the slate candidates might get elected.

Over the last fifteen years, these groups have gotten more subtle, and much more careful about letting themselves be known.  If you try to pin any of the candidates down as to their affiliations, they will prevaricate and dodge the question as much as possible in order to maintain the appearance of being non-partisan.

That is partly why the Cal Wenzel homebuilder's video that came to light this spring is so significant.  It was common knowledge that the Manning Centre was making a play in the civic politics arena, and Wenzel's speech told us a lot about who was behind it.

Do we have a slate running in Calgary in 2013?  Officially, no.  Practically, we do.  It came to light again this week when six candidates and two previously unheard of "grassroots" (possibly astroturf groups, it's hard to tell) organizations banded together to take out a full page ad in the Calgary Herald.  When five of those six candidates are running in wards that Wenzel specifically named as targets for unseating the incumbent, it smells distinctly like we have a slate running.  Even fishier is the fact that they are taking out this ad about a golf course that isn't in any of the wards they are running for.

I don't like slates for one very simple reason - they are inevitably very narrowly focused on a particular political viewpoint, and as such are ultimately partisan in nature.  When the funding is coming from people who are willing to push seven figure amounts around, I think we have to become extremely worried about the expectations that will be attached to that kind of money in the long term.

There is also an underlying dishonesty with slates.  They inevitably try to run below the public radar (the slates in 2007 and 2010 could be identified by some common affiliations, with the slate running this year, the affiliations are better hidden, and except for Wenzel's speech, would be difficult to unearth unless you had access to the "student" lists from the Manning Centre's training programs.

While I am not thrilled with Mayor Nenshi's response to this ad, I can sympathize with the fact that it's quite clear that the big money conservative power base in Calgary are gunning to undermine Nenshi whatever way they can.  Ever since his victory in 2010, the Calgary Sun has been overtly hostile to just about everything he has done, and the fact that the developers led by Wenzel were willing to fork over a million dollars to the Manning Centre to "train" a group of sympathetic candidates, one can imagine that Nenshi feels distinctly under siege.

If we are going to play partisan politics like that, let's get it out in the open so that voters know what they are voting for and can assess it with a clear head.  Anything less than this is dishonesty on the part of our candidates.

Canada's Far Right Next Attack On Nenshi

It's no big secret that the Conservative power base in Calgary was profoundly pissed off when Naheed Nenshi won the Mayoral race in 2010.  The amount of vitriol seen in the Sun's pages after election day was astonishing, and since then, they have taken every opportunity to snipe at Nenshi.

This is no surprise.  They were also suspiciously silent when it came out that Cal Wenzel and a bunch of his pals had ponied up over a million dollars to the Manning Centre to build a slate of candidates that would be "friendly" to their interests in the next city council.

Their most recent attack on Nenshi began this week, with the Canadian Taxpayer's Federation publishing an "exposé" of how the City of Calgary had spent money with the Pembina Institute.  According to the CTF, the City spent somewhere on the order of $113,552  (which, frankly, is barely one professional consultant salary) annually with the Pembina Institute.  Apparently, this is a big bad thing.  I will note that CTF says nothing of whether the city has spent money with other "think tank" consultancy organizations or not, but they are certainly vocal about complaining that money was spent with the Pembina Institute.

The funny part about the whole thing is that CTF tips their hand in their interview with the CBC:

But Fildebrandt said it’s hard to imagine the city hiring the right-leaning Fraser Institute to consult on something such as property tax reform.

In short, whether Fildebrandt admits it or not, he's really complaining because he doesn't like the political stripe of the Pembina Institute's positions.

A closer look at the documents that the CTF recovered from the city reveals something much more significant about the spending with Pembina that calls into question the CTF's complaint:

1)  The documents retrieved show spending with the Pembina Institute starting in 2007 through 2012.

2)  Over half of the spending took place before the October 2010 civic election put Nenshi into the Mayor's chair ... which means that the process started under developer darling Dave Bronconnier's tenure as Mayor.

Take a close look at the following summary of invoices from CTF's FOIP documents:

Year	Total Invoices
2007	$10,504.64
2008	$25,196.58
2009	$13,701.92
2010	$178,446.55
2011	$131,384.32
2012	$787.50

If we take a raw average across the full five years, the annual average spend with Pembina was $60,003.59; If we chop off 2007 and 2012 as the outlier times the average spend jumps to $87,182.34.

Going a step or two further, prior to Mayor Nenshi being elected in 2010, the city spent $212,998.53 with the Pembina Institute, and $147,022.98 since.  

While Ezra Levant and the rest of the Sun Media crowd has dutifully jumped all over this faux issue, the reality is that very little, if any, of the spending was initiated under Nenshi.  More to the point, there is no evidence presented that there is any wrongdoing taking place.  

The CTF is busy trying to politicize a non-issue that they likely wouldn't be complaining about if the recipient of this spend was the Fraser Institute or other group that they found to be "ideologically acceptable".  

One can just imagine the outcry if the City of Calgary paid the Fraser Institute to write a report on building a competitive business environment or property tax reform. The contents of the report might contain excellent data and recommendations, but that is to miss the point. Groups engaged in political debate – even the non-partisan – should never receive a penny of taxpayer’s cash.

As we all know, these organizations can structure themselves in such a way that it never appears that the "lobbying part of things" intersects directly with the "consulting" division.  It is no secret that the "Manning Centre for Building Democracy" is built up of at least two divisions:

The Manning Centre is a non-profit corporation that focuses on political, conservative-oriented activities. As such, it is not a registered charity and donations are not eligible for tax receipts. Activities such as research and education, which are classified as charitable, are undertaken by the Manning Foundation – a registered charity.

Note the division of responsibilities?  So, if the City was to hire the Manning Centre for some kind of consultancy would ultimately be hiring what is obviously a partisan organization.  They could create a division called "Manning Competitive Institute" to engage in economic competitive consultation.  On the surface, it would appear to be independent of the other parts of the Manning Centre, but it still ends up as a division of the same organization.

The CTF moaning about the Pembina institute and trying to cover their partisan bias by saying that "no think tank" should get public funds is a very flimsy fig leaf cover.

I might have more respect for the CTF if they had done a survey of how much money is being spent on think tanks in general, instead of attempting to go on a partisan muck-raking expedition and then lying and distorting the results.  

Calgary's Angry Old Guy Crowd Speaks Out

Calgary's conservative power brokers are lining up to put their money behind conservative radio show host Dave Rutherford.

I will note that after the last civic election, the Sun became the outlet for the right wing's rage that their man, Ric McIver, didn't get elected to the mayor's chair.  They've been fairly hostile towards Naheed Nenshi ever since.

Of course, we now see Rutherford starting to unveil his thinking in terms of how to attack Nenshi:

Tax hikes of 30% over three years. This year a 13.1% jump in taxes on the city side of the property tax bill if the city takes your $126 provincial tax break.

It is the biggest increase in three decades.

“Do we need a tighter rein on finances? Absolutely we do. Maybe a fiscally conservative candidate could do that and get Calgarians interested in what they’re seeing on their tax bill,” says Rutherford.

Oh yes.  The standard bitching about taxes.  We won't bother to mention that the reason for the bulk of the tax increases was the mess that conservative predecessor Bronconnier left as he handed the developers everything they wanted on a silver platter - and left Calgary with an enormous deficit in terms of infrastructure and sustainability.  Calgary cannot be allowed to sprawl across the prairie indefinitely.

Where the problem lies for Rutherford is twofold.  First, playing the "cranky old man" card doesn't exactly engage voters.  Bitching and moaning about taxes is a popular activity among Calgarians, but most recognize that we have an enormous amount of infrastructure to support - has anybody else noticed the number of severe potholes in our existing roads lately?

Second, much of Nenshi's vote came from younger voters who see things through very different lenses than Rutherford and his crowd.  Nenshi remains highly popular among those voters for good reason - he engages with them directly and in terms that they understand.