Why Donations to Independent Candidates are Important.

Municipal Council

To start off with…who can donate?

There is some confusion over who can donate inside of Municipal elections and with Bill 20, even more so. Finding a CFO who can not only do the book keeping but ensure that my campaign is in line with financing regulations, took some time.

But to simplify this…

Anybody who lives in the Province of Alberta, can donate to a Municipal Campaign…as in, you do not have to live in my Ward nor even the same city to donate.

Any Business operating in the Province of Alberta, can also donate…again, not required to be be in the same Ward nor city.

Each business and person can give up to $5000…

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Why donate outside of your Ward or City, you may ask?

Calgary needs change. Improvements need to happen from inside of communities, throughout Wards and have people representing their ideas in city council - not just those who toe the line with a party or Third-Party-Advertiser (TPA)

You’d be surprised to learn that 8 Calgary City Councillors are backed by a union based, TPA - Calgary’s Future, or by their Registered Name - Calgarians for a Progress Future.

I am sure that you will recognize some of their names:

This can be confirmed through their website - as well as what their ideas look like for Progress in Calgary: LINK

So far, 4 of them have decided not to run in the 2025 election, because their support of densification - Blanket Rezoning - is not in line with their constituents and their failures on infrastructure and maintaining our water main feeds makes them too much of a gamble for the Union Money to sponsor. They don’t want to bet on horses they know don’t have a great chance of reelection.

Blanket Rezoning was pushed through despite the super-majority of the 737 presentations and over 6,000 written submissions being against this bylaw.

Calgarians were left with water restrictions at the end of the summer in 2023 and throughout the summer of 2024, where the City has known about a failing system for over 10 years - 25% water loss. Despite collecting nearly a Billion Dollars per year from Calgary Residents, still requested to borrow an additional Billion Dollars from the Provincial Government for upgrades and maintenance in 2025.

This doesn’t even begin to discuss the cost overruns on the Green Line boondoggle, where the proposed track, by former Mayor - Naheed Nenshi, was set to be 50kms long and cost Calgarians $4.6 Billion to their current idea of seeing only a total of 9kms for $6.2 Billion, where $1.5 Billion has already been spent without an inch of track having been installed.

Nor does it touch the Billions committed to EV buses, that have already been proven a failed concept in Edmonton, where the manufacturer went bankrupt, leaving Edmontonians with a 60 EV Bus Fleet, that is parked because they have no warranty and cannot get the parts to repair.

The Calgary version showed similar issues where their initial test-market multi-million order was immediately followed by a multibillion dollar order and before Calgary had received a single EV bus, the company that had taken our order went bankrupt - Vicinity Motor Corp, and secondary orders going through Lion Electric - which initiated bankruptcy proceedings this year - 2025.

And what about replacing the Saddledome?

Initial budget was $550 Million that ballooned to $608.5 Million but thanks to negotiation fails on behalf of then, newly elected Mayor Gondek now has Calgarians paying a whopping $1.22 Billion.

$670 Million/330k homes = over $2k per household in additional taxation to cover.

While losing naming royalties on the deal.

And of course, when Calgarians were told that there is no room for Budget Cuts, in the same year where over $5 Million was paid to rebrand the Stampede City, proud of our heritage to “Blue Sky City”, which has no significance.

$87 Billion Climate Emergency Fund?

$3 Million invested into renovating a highrise in the downtown core, where the contractor went bankrupt?

Cancelling Canada Day Fireworks because they are Racist?

$10.39 Million for Marketing?

Through all of this, we see the downtown core continually become less safe, more crime and people smoking meth in the streets, along Stephen Avenue and at LRT stations.

In a period of less than 2 years, the City of Calgary had increased the number of employees by 2,268, whereas just to try and deal with the rising crime situation, the Province had to step in to hire 50 new officers over this same period.

Why would the unions back these failures?

I can think of about 3 Million Reasons…per year.

The Budget for Staffing over this period has increased by approximately $200 Million Dollars, where all of those employed are Union Employees.

In dues, the unions collect approximately 1.5% of this $200 Million = $3 Million/Year.

This isn’t the total funding that the unions get, it’s only the increase they’ve been able to realize over the last 2 years of the current city council - $6 Million raised through additional Property Taxes.

What did it cost them?

According to the Form 28 that Calgarians for a Progressive Future filed with Elections Calgary, for the 2021 Election - they paid $1.7 Million.

Which wasn’t funded by “Calgarians” who wanted a “Progressive Future”. It was 100% funded by 3 unions and the Calgary & District Labour Council.

And in case you’d missed all of this, it’s because of the delay in reporting and being folded into other news cycles, you probably missed it.

CBC Reports: LINK

They ran candidates in each ward plus sponsored Mayor Gondek. While not all of their councillors were successful in their runs, 14 councillors plus the Mayor - funding looks like:

$100,000/ Ward

$300,000 for the Mayor.

In Ward 4, I will be running against the same candidate that Calgarians for a Progressive Future endorsed in the previous election:

Where now that this Union Party has been successful in buying their way onto city council before, and with an additional $6 Million in dues collected per year, it is speculated that they will be doing this again.

And if you want to see how successful they were, they’d almost unseated fiscally responsible and principled conservative Sean Chu, coming with 100 Votes of Victory:

Last year, this same city council had proposed not only additional Property Taxes, but also city taxes being added as:

• Personal Income Tax;

• Corporate Income Tax;

• Occupational Privilege Tax;

• Road Pricing;

• Advertising tax;

• Telecommunications franchise fees;

• Municipal General Sales Tax;

• Accommodation Tax;

• Parking Tax;

• Fuel Tax;

• Tobacco Tax;

• Amusement Tax;

• Land Transfer tax;

• Alcohol Tax;

• Cannabis Tax;

• Vehicle Registration Tax;

• Insurance Premium Tax; and last but not least, another municipal

• Carbon Tax!

It’s not just that Calgarians cannot afford to have Gondek return as Mayor, we need to combat the Unions from placing their selections of city councillors that will work to do even more of this following the 2025, fall election.

Please donate to my campaign now to put an end to this!

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