Calgary’s Mayor Jyoti Gondek and recall petitioner Landon Johnston met at Calgary city hall on Friday, to discuss issues that Johnston said led to him starting the recall campaign.
The March 22 meeting between the mayor and Johnston was the second such meeting, after Mayor Gondek informally spoke to Johnston weeks earlier.
Johnston, who said that he was disappointed that he wasn’t able to share his concerns earlier with Mayor Gondek, was able to get the meeting after filing a request formally through the mayor’s office.
He got a response that he could have 15 minutes on Friday.
“Doesn’t seem like enough time. But if that’s all she’ll give me, I’ll take it,” he said.
“I’m happy it happened. But I’m disappointed that she didn’t resign, because under any other threshold, in any other legislation in the world, we would have already passed two or three different thresholds based on the percentage of voters of the last election.”
He said to date that he has counted personally more than 42,000 signatures with many more uncounted yet to tally, but that figure has not been independently verified beyond statements made by Johnston.
Previous numbers cited by Johnston at the beginning of March to Postmedia columnist Rick Bell had estimated over 100,000 signature collected.
The threshold to recall the mayor of Calgary is 40 per cent of eligible electors in Calgary by the last Calgary census in 2019, with 514,284 signatures required.
Mayor Gondek said they had a fulsome discussion of the provincial legislation around the recall petition.
“I believe the comment was, ‘I don’t think you’re going to resign, but I would like to know how many signatures it would take for you to put this to a vote.’ And I indicated that that’s not how our system works,” she said.
“The legislation that governs who gets to stay in office is actually done by the provincial government. So he and I also had a very fulsome conversation about the flaws that he saw in the legislation, and how disappointed he is, and how the government crafted this legislation.”
She offered to work with him on a joint submission to demonstrate to the minister what the petition experience is like from the petitioner and the one being petitioned.
‘Nothing better since day one’
The inability for Mayor Gondek to solve a number of perceived issues in Calgary regarding affordability, crime, and receptiveness to public opinion about her performance as mayor.
“She’s the leader of a group of councillors, she has the ability to make the city a better place every single day. She’s had 50 days since this petition has been filed. I thought she would do a better job knowing that there’s a drop performance review going on about her. Nothing’s been better under her watch since day one,” Johnston said.
“Because she’s an elected official, we’re supposed to give them four years. That’s not how it works anymore. The power is in the people; the power is in the people going out getting signature, the power’s in the people having their voice heard. It’s us who makes the decisions. It’s us who has the right to safe see trains, it’s us who has a right to a safe street outside their house.”
Johnston said that he was not happy with Mayor Gondek defunding the Calgary Police Service, while receiving security at her own home.
In November 2020, Calgary City Council rejected calls by Defund2Fund to remove $20 million from the Calgary Police Service budget, instead choosing to fund alternative service response models by $8 million from fiscal stability reserves.
Then Coun. Gondek, along with the majority of council, 9-5, voted to consider the reallocation of up to $10 million in 2021 and $10 million in 2022 for a framework to address gaps in responses during crisis responses for individuals, their families, their support networks, and for outreach services and the emergency response system.
The service had offered up $40 million in cost reductions, made up of transfers of funding towards alternative service call models, and $20 million in Covid-19 related impacts.
Council voted 8-7 in January 2022, to cover up to $8,000 in home security costs, following protests and threats of violence directed towards council members and elected officials at their homes.
Johnston also took issue with the declaration of a climate emergency in Calgary, and Mayor Gondek and other councillors not taking Calgary Transit as a result. He said those who voted in favour should all be taking transit daily.
“If it was an emergency, then that would be they’d be screaming top of their lungs that this world is going to fall apart because they didn’t take the CTrain,” Johnston said.
Mayor Gondek, who lives in Ward 3, said that despite there not being a train to her community, she frequently took the 301 bus as a city councillor.
“I think you’ll all remember the times that I live tweeted from taking the bus because I don’t have a train up in north central Calgary,” she said.
“I took 301 all over the place. My life is a little bit different now. And because it’s different, sometimes I don’t have the same opportunities I had in the past. But my commitment doesn’t waver. My commitment doesn’t waver because my family uses public transit, because my friends use public transit and because all Calgarians deserve a safe experience on public transit.”
Mayor Gondek said that she was grateful for the opportunity to sit down with Johnston, and that they both share the desire to do good things for the city.
“He and I may not agree on policies. But I do think that we share a desire to do good things in Calgary, and that’s why I agreed to sit down with him today,” she said.
“We realize that good things can be achieved through collaboration and civil discourse, as opposed to just focusing on polarizing rhetoric. Now given this, I’m directing my focus away from those who are attempting to manipulate processes, and recommitting towards listening to Calgarians.”
Will do better to listen, says Mayor
Mayor Gondek said that she recognized that the petition has resonated with some Calgarians, and that the current affordability crisis has played a part in that.
“I understand that as the mayor, the spotlight is on me to help Calgarians thrive. I was elected to be a leader and I will continue to make Calgarians my focus, I’m going to make it my job to listen even more closely to Calgarians concerns and work even harder to address all of the things that I can,” she said.
The mayor said that it was also important that she takes more time to explain the decisions that council is making.
“It’s easy for me to get lost in the work and forge ahead without fully and plainly explaining the what and the why, to those people who elected me. Now, during the turmoil of the last few weeks, I have taken some time to reflect on the things I said during the 2021 campaign. At that time, I made a commitment to do my best to end polarization,” Mayor Gondek said.
“I’m still committed to doing that. Polarization in politics is taking us down the road that we don’t want to be on. At the municipal level, we are closest to the people and we’re closest to the day to day things that they need from us. There’s no room for posturing. There’s no room for party politics. And there’s no room for extreme positioning at the local level.”
Mayor Gondek said that what Calgarians expect is clear language that explains council decisions, along with clear links between the asks of the public and the decisions that have been made on their behalf.
Mayor rejects claims of conspiracy against petitioners in removal of signs
The mayor also rejected claims by a second Recall Gondek group, operated by Project YYC, that her office, the City of Calgary, and the Calgary Police Service had been involved in interfering in the recall petition campaign.
“Oh, my goodness, we don’t have time to be going out to do anything other than the work that we have on our plates right now. My team works incredibly hard. Council and their teams work incredibly hard to get through the amount of work we have to do. We don’t have the time to be engaging in things like this,” she said.
Those claims, made in a statement to the media on March 22, alleged that petition gatherers were being intimidated after large Recall Gondek signs were removed under the city’s Temporary Sign Use bylaw.
“It’s disappointing but not surprising that Mayor Gondek is now using the strong arm of city authority to intimidate petition gatherers and now, just twelve days before the end of the campaign, to order the removal of the campaign signs lawfully erected across Calgary,” said John Williams, a Director of Project YYC in that statement.
The group said that they were in compliance with campaign signage guidelines, but under the bylaw, exceptions are made only for some election signs during an election period.
The statement said that it was being issued in support of Landon Johnston’s recall campaign, a statement that Johnston flatly rejected while speaking to reporters.
“I gave them money, I talked with them. Nobody sends anything on my behalf. If it’s not from me, then it’s not on my behalf. I’ve never given anybody permission to say anything on my behalf,” Johnston said.
“That’s why there’s two different websites. There’s the official website, and then there’s what everybody else had planned on doing before I filed this.”
The City of Calgary said that they have not received any permit requests by recall petitioners to place large signs over 0.6 metres in size.
“Like most municipalities across Canada, The City of Calgary has rules and regulations regarding temporary roadside signs to balance the need for signage with safety and aesthetics. All temporary roadside signs are subject to the Temporary Signs on Highways Bylaw 29M97,” said the City of Calgary.
“Signs will be removed if they are in contravention of the bylaw, which may be due to a variety of factors, including allowable location and allowable size. Continued offences may result in fines.”
The city said that they have removed nearly 2,000 non-compliant temporary signs since January, and that the owners of signs are given the opportunity to retrieve them from the city.
“We are aware of a number of signs placed by Project YYC that are not in compliance with the bylaw due to size or location and have either been removed or will be scheduled for removal as they are reported as part of our standard processes,” the City said.
