Calgary’s progressive mayor Jyoti Gondek is fast running out of runway

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This is a conversation series by Donna Kennedy-Glans, a writer and former Alberta cabinet minister, featuring newsmakers and intriguing personalities.

Jyoti Gondek has 18 months remaining in her first and perhaps only term as Calgary’s mayor. Elected in October 2021, during the COVID pandemic, the mayor’s approval ratings sank quickly and she’s had a rough ride ever since. People are being mean to her, which is not OK, but Calgarians kind of let her frame herself as a hapless victim dragged into a partisan arena.

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I sat down with her recently at city hall to unpack how it’s all gone wrong. What’s happening to this progressive mayor too willing to dismiss dissenting views is a cautionary tale for others in the country.

This February — after spending and tax increases, and city council’s fumbling of a single-use items bylaw intended to reduce waste — local business owner Landon Johnston launched a recall petition, gathering the signatures of 72,271 Calgarians who wanted Jyoti ousted from office effective immediately (she was elected with 176,344 votes). The petition didn’t meet the required 40 per cent of Calgary’s population, but the mayor’s reputation has been further battered. In late March, hockey fans at the Saddledome booed her at a Calgary Flames game.

Even those who believe the outrage is out of proportion to anything Jyoti has done as mayor continue to fume about her decision, last December, to not attend the city’s annual menorah lighting ceremony given the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. To many, that was an unforgivable misstep. A ThinkHQ survey of city voters conducted in December pegged Jyoti’s approval at 30 per cent, making her the least popular mayor in Calgary’s history according to the pollster, Marc Henry.

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Jyoti’s not yet talking about re-election. Right now, her mantra is to stay focused on the present. OK, but I have to admit, I’m one of those Calgarians who has run out of patience, even if I agree her many critics need to keep it civil.

“Did you know what you signed up for as mayor?” I say.

Jyoti takes a deep breath and replies, unsmiling, her voice steady, in what sounds like an oft-repeated mantra: “I signed up for public service and I’m committed to it. I’m committed to making sure that we have the best possible quality of life in the city and getting there is sometimes going to be a little bit tough.”

And then she pauses, looks squarely at me and continues, her voice slightly less even: “But I don’t think anybody signs up to have people come to your home, to have threats made against you. I think it’s wrong to say that politicians signed up for the level of abuse that they’re taking across this country. Not just municipally, in every order of government. I think the civility has gone.”

I really thought that we would reach a point where the pendulum would swing back towards stability and civility

Jyoti Gondek

When I arrive at Calgary’s modern, gleaming municipal building on a warm April morning — striding past the gigantic containers of (plastic) spring flowers and gaggles of Grade 5 students visiting city hall — I bound up the stairs of the 1911 sandstone building that houses the mayor and council to find myself face-to-face with a locked door. Once inside and through security, I wait for the mayor to arrive; she’s escorted by two burly guards who tower over her.

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The trucker convoy showed us what happens when politicians don’t listen. So how is this mayor dealing with the reality that people are angry with all levels of government right now and believe nobody is listening to them? Jyoti claims council has increased transparency around budgeting processes; assures me Calgarians’ perspectives are included in decisions. But, she asserts, “I was not prepared for the polarization to go on this long. I really thought that we would reach a point where the pendulum would swing back towards stability and civility.”

Jyoti is a sociologist; she has a PhD from the University of Calgary. She’s not new to the workings of city council; she was a councillor under Naheed Nenshi’s tenure as mayor. She knows, to be effective, the mayor’s job entails not just smart policy but deft politics. And yet, as I listen to her explain what’s unfolding at city hall in Calgary, hankering for a council not beholden to partisanship — I can’t help but push back.

You’ve got a predecessor, Nenshi, who is now running to lead the provincial NDP. Ralph Klein spent a decade as Calgary’s mayor before becoming a Tory premier. And if those precedents don’t make the role of partisanship sufficiently obvious, the Alberta government just tabled a bill, the Provincial Priorities Act, requiring the city of Calgary (and other provincial entities) to get approval from the government of Alberta before making any future deals with the federal government. Unilateral federal housing grants to Calgary and Edmonton — with Ottawa’s strings attached — precipitated the bill’s tabling during this legislative session.

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Calgary’s city council is set to launch public hearings into a citywide rezoning strategy that aims to permit the construction of row houses and townhouses on all single and semi-detached residential lots. The feds have offered up $228 million to the city of Calgary under their Housing Accelerator Fund; I ask Jyoti, pointedly, is the promised cash still available if council ultimately decides the public doesn’t endorse blanket rezoning? After rationalizing the strategy — housing affordability is essential in a city like Calgary where the population is booming, “even the Royal Bank of Canada declared Calgary as Canada’s current hot spot” — Jyoti acknowledges the federal funding is partially contingent on the blanket rezoning and she doesn’t know what the feds will do. She doesn’t know what the province will do either.

While she wasn’t consulted by the Alberta government on what she describes as the newly minted “provincial bureau of overreach” that will plod through funding agreements between provincial entities and the federal government, she doesn’t deny the province’s move was expected. And then, she pivots back to her focus on policy, not partisanship: At the hearings to be launched on April 22, the mayor expects city council to focus on making a planning decision, even if the “provincial order of government is at war with a federal order of government” and “we’re caught squarely in the middle.”

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On this we agree: municipalities have to abide by provincial decisions. What’s that all mean, for example, when the mayor wants more social workers on the street and the province wants more sheriffs? “I think sometimes people need to try something, they need to do a pilot … to see if it was effective.” And she continues, “The fact that Calgary Police Service is actively working with peace officers, with transit officers, with security, and with outreach organizations, I think is the opportunity to demonstrate that it can’t just be enforcement alone that’s getting bolstered, you also have to look at crisis intervention and outreach. So I think those programs are proving themselves out, but it takes time to do that.”

After our conversation — once I’m out of her secure offices and back onto the streets of Calgary — I witness cops handcuffing a guy spread-eagle against an ambulance on one side of the street, and on the other side of Macleod Trail, two police and two peace officers are disentangling a couple of guys fighting while bystanders egg them on.

There’s the data the mayor is looking for, right in plain sight.

If you have story ideas, get in touch at dkennedyglans@gmail.com.

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