It's healthy to talk about Calgary's growth

I write a regular column in the Calgary Herald. Here is the full text of my May story: 

What a couple of weeks it has been in municipal politics. Not only did city council pass the new ethical guidelines I've long been working on, and embark on an unprecedented public consultation about how best to use this year’s tax surplus from the province, we also had some high political drama.

By now, most of you have seen the video released by Global News, which showed a meeting where a few individuals detailed what appeared to be a plan to take control of your city council. “You don't need the mayor,” they said, “as long as you've got eight votes.”

The parties in the video seem to be upset about the direction of the city in relation to residential development. Neither of them has been directly involved, to my knowledge, with any of the many consultations we've held with their industry, nor have they brought any of their concerns to us. So, it’s not entirely clear what they are upset about.

There have been some attempts to paint this as an urban versus suburban split, and that is simply not true. On the video, we hear that your mayor and council will not allow there to be more than 2.5 bathrooms in new homes, and that we will cap the number of cars you can own. Both allegations are, of course, ridiculous.

While planning and development issues take up about 20 per cent of what city council does (we also run a police service, a fire department and a transit system, while building and maintaining roads, parks and recreation facilities, to name only a few), they are important.

For a long time, subsidies to growth on the fringe of the city meant more than 100 per cent of population growth occurred in new neighbourhoods. We were slowly hollowing out the city from the middle, and all taxpayers were paying the price.

This city council has cut the subsidy in half, and has attempted to cut red tape for all development. As a result, the industry is doing very well, and prospective homeowners have more choice in more neighbourhoods. Still, about 95 per cent of our growth is now happening in new neighbourhoods.

In fact, I recently received an e-mail from a senior member of the development industry who said that, in his 34-year career, the city process has never worked as well as it has on his recent major files (including a new suburban neighbourhood). There’s still a great deal more work to do, which is why improving our planning process is one of my top priorities.

But you know what? The difference of opinion — who’s right and who’s wrong — doesn't really matter. We can and do have a healthy debate about how this city grows, and an election campaign is a great time to continue it. Everyone has the right (I would say: the responsibility) to get involved in the political process, regardless of their concerns.

This involvement, though, needs to be transparent, ethical, and, above all, legal.

Our rules on campaign finance in Alberta are very weak, and I have been fighting for many years for clean and fair elections. Certainly, the rules need to be strengthened and I will run the 2013 election as I did in 2010, as though tougher rules are in place.

But everyone needs to abide by the current rules, as weak as they are.

In the video, we have what appears to be an admission of at least one violation of campaign rules in the 2010 election. It seems that a company provided the maximum allowable donation in cash to a challenger in Ward 7 and supplied him with company trucks.

Unless those drivers were personally paying the insurance, maintenance and gas on those company trucks, this seems to be a donation-in-kind under the law. This would mean, if true, that the company donated more than the legal maximum.

Second, the video raises some questions about the role of the Manning Centre in the upcoming municipal election. While the Manning Centre is a tax-exempt non-profit (not a charity), the Manning Foundation is a registered charity that issues tax receipts and cannot be involved in any way in partisan politics.

Did any of the donors of the $1.1 million mentioned in the video receive a tax receipt, and, if so, for what purpose were these funds used?

Even if no tax receipts were issued, I believe that a tax-exempt non-profit should not be directly benefiting any specific campaign, particularly if the donors to the non-profit have already donated the maximum amount to the campaign.

In the video, it’s said that the donation was given “in order to bring Preston (Manning) on board” and that the Manning Centre has hired an employee to work “on behalf of this group.” Most charities and tax-exempt non-profits, in my experience, would refuse donations with even the appearance of strings attached.

Political drama aside, we mustn't lose sight of what we’re all trying to do here: build an even better Calgary through public debate, decisions and action. We won’t always agree, and we may not all always be happy, but we should always work together, out in the open, to get where we want to go.

- Mayor Naheed K. Nenshi