We deserve more from those that are supposed to represent us

I would like to thank the Honourable Minister Deepak Obhrai for responding to my letter, which was sent to all Calgary MP's, regarding the reversal of the decision to fund Calgary's application to P3 Canada.

His letter does seem a bit of a carbon of what I have seen from others, but he did, at least, respond. I can not say the same for my MP Jason Kenney.

Below is the response telling me that Mayor Nenshi has unfairly criticized the Federal Government by demanding that they answer to their decision to deny Calgary's application to fund recreation centres through the 'arm's length ' P3 Canada Corporation.

I do enjoy how the Federal Minister places the blame on someone else for allowing the criteria to be placed on the P3 Canada website - "There was never any legal authority for P3 Canada to fund rec centres. We regret if information on program eligibility was inaccurately provided by P3 Canada. P3 Canada has corrected this error, clarifying that recreational centres do not, and never have, been eligible for funding".

To the Honourable Minister Obhrai, I think that there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. I understand that no one ever likes to admit when they have done something wrong, particularly a government that relies on popular opinion to stay in office, but this is clear failure on your part, the Federal Government.

You and your colleagues know that we deserve more from those that are supposed to represent us.

Below is the response I received the Deepak Obhrai. Enjoy

deepak.obhrai@parl.gc.ca to me

show details Dec 2 (4 days ago)

Dear Adam Chapin,

Thank you for your email of November 27^th expressing your concerns with regards to P3 funding for new recreation centres in Calgary.

Mayor Nenshi has unfairly criticized our government for rejecting a funding request for public-private partnerships for four recreation centres in the city.

Our Government has demonstrated our commitment to Calgary’s infrastructure priorities; we have provided over $200 million in infrastructure funding to support the City’s priorities, on top of $60 million in annual gas tax revenues the City can use as it pleases.

Our Government does not pick winners and losers - federal infrastructure funds are typically allocated on an equal, per capita basis across the country.  Calgary received its fair share of these funds based on the size of the population. 

We’re focused on supporting Canada’s economic growth – especially renewing and improving vital infrastructure. The P3 Canada fund is a limited fund, as one part of our Government’s larger plan to support Canada’s infrastructure.

When the federal government created P3 Canada, limits were placed on what kind of projects could be funded. There was never any legal authority for P3 Canada to fund rec centres. We regret if information on program eligibility was inaccurately provided by P3 Canada. P3 Canada has corrected this error, clarifying that recreational centres do not, and never have, been eligible for funding. This principle has been applied across the country.

I hope the above will serve to help you better understand our government’s commitments through P3. Meanwhile, we continue to stay focused on economic growth and creating jobs for Canadians.

Thank you again for taking the time to write to me. I always appreciate hearing your views.

Sincerely,

Deepak Obhrai
Member of Parliament – Calgary East
Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs

Letter to Minister Jason Kenney

Below is an email that sent to each Member of Parliament today as well as each Alderman (and Mayor Nenshi) at the City of Calgary to voice my concern on the recent PPP Canada decision to deny rec centre funding to Calgarians.

_________________________________________________________________________

from [Offline] Y Vote YYC y.vote.yyc@gmail.com

to jason.kenney@parl.gc.ca

cc rob.anders@parl.gc.ca,

stephen.harper@parl.gc.ca,

diane.ablonczy@parl.gc.ca,

devinder.shory@parl.gc.ca,

deepak.obhrai@parl.gc.ca,

michelle.rempel@parl.gc.ca,

lee.richardson@parl.gc.ca,

Peter.Demong@calgary.ca,

diane.colley-urquhart@calgary.ca,

Shane.Keating@calgary.ca,

Brian.Pincott@calgary.ca,

andre.chabot@calgary.ca,

gian-carlo.carra@calgary.ca,

john.mar@calgary.ca,

druh.farrell@calgary.ca,

Richard.Pootmans@calgary.ca,

ray.jones@calgary.ca,

Gael.MacLeod@calgary.ca,

jim.stevenson@calgary.ca,

gord.lowe@calgary.ca,

dhodges@calgary.ca,

themayor@calgary.ca

date Sun, Nov 27, 2011 at 11:25 AM

subject PPP decision

mailed-by gmail.com

hide details 11:25 AM (2 minutes ago)

Hon. Minister Jason Kenney

jason.kenney@parl.gc.ca

Dear Honourable Minister Kenney,

I truly regret having to send this email to you today. It is regretful because of the fact that the issue I write about was quite foreseeable for some time.

I will admit up front that I am a strong supporter of both the Provincial and Federal Conservative Party, but in the last Federal election, you name was not the one that I put an X beside because of the events that lead up to the Federal Election.

As my Member of Parliament, I expect a modicum of representation from those that are are elected serve their constituents. I feel that you have not a fair job at that.

During the last civic election, you openly used the position of your office as Minister to endorse a civic candidate, for which I had contacted your office several times to voice my concern. Granted there may not have been any regulations about using a Minister's office to endorse a political campaign, particularly when that campaign does not deal in party politics, but the optics were quite murky.

During the Federal election, you neglected to campaign or even meet with constituents throughout the process, instead, you spent your time and efforts bolstering candidates in Quebec and Ontario.

Now comes the decision to overturn the PPP application that would have seen 4 recreation centers in Calgary. One of which would have been in your riding.

I watch the Prime Minster speak about how recreation centers were never part of the program, though the application criteria clearly states ,, from Mayor Nenshi's online documents, that they are. I can't help but hear the sounds of silence from your office as the communities demand a rational response from anyone.

To refer back to my first paragraph of this letter, there is no indication to the contrary that your office was unable, or unwilling, to support the interests of the residents/voters who gave you and the Federal Progressive Conservatives a majority government.

For you, as an elected official, to assume that Calgarians would blindly follow your party because of its incredible support in this city for the past several decades, is an insult.

I expect better than to be taken advantage of.

I know that your party will likely be victorious come the next Federal Election as the ideals of the PC Party do not transfer to other parties yet. Regardless, Calgary expects you to be our representative first, not Ontario and not Quebec.

Sincerely.

Adam Chapin

Ric McIver - Did I really agree completely with your column?

On September 1st, former Alderman Ric McIver, penned another Calgary Herald supported critique of everything to which he laments with the new order in Calgary's City Council titled "Searching for shepherds among the sheep", referring to both the civic and provincial governments..

Plugged on Facebook and Twitter, the former mayoral candidate promoted his article and engaged in conversation.

It is no secret that I am not a huge fan of the themes of the former Ward 12 Alderman's musings in the Calgary Herald, for no other reason than that they only seem to serve the glorification of negativity, not progress (I invite you to read the archives of Mr. McIver's Calgary Herald articles and take a drink every time you read something positive; you won't even get a buzz on). I digress.

I did make a few comments, via social media, on the latest article themed on how there are no leaders in Council or in the current PC Leadership race, only followers.

My comments on twitter to Mr. McIver served to clarify why he feels that the only way for governments to function properly, and to serve the interest of the public, is to argue and bicker (see below).

Now, I will also include the link to the Calgary Herald article (http://www.calgaryherald.com/opinion/Searching+shepherds+among+sheep/5337898/story.html) to allow everyone a chance to read it. I could be completely out in left field with how I interpreted the piece.

What I took from the roughly 676 word essay on how cordial-to-a-fault Calgary's elected council is was that, unless there is distension, or the presence of a 'Dr. No" in chambers, the interests of voters aren't being met. That is until, as Mr. McIver presumes,  the current crop of future incumbents begin gearing up for election 2013.
 
My whole line of thought and questioning, to the 'Dr. No' article is that, last October, the people of Calgary put a new face on Council. A face that is made of of forty percent new experiences, new personalities; and forty percent less of what was there one year ago.

The current field of elected officials may not have stood up to cause open revolt on all council decisions, but if you take a moment to look at what this current crop of the press's patsies in Council have discussed and voted on, you may find that the City of Calgary has gone beyond the hickster status that we had decades ago and have become a modern municipal leader all without the verbal bloodshed you seem to be waiting for.

• The Airport Tunnel - a decision that could have been decided on by those Councillor who sat in Chambers prior to the recent election but was deferred onto the new council who voted favor of the tunnel.
• Green Trip - Another deferral that was saddled on the shoulders of a fresh council to accept horrific recommendations from the previous administrative direction. If I remember correctly, it was the rookie who succeeded Mr. Mciver that kept the interests of Southeast Calgary in mind to rework the proposal.
• Fluoride - Yup, if you recall this was a slam dunk decision. A decision that involved much 'distension' and discussion. Without pandering to lobby groups, Council voted to remove Fluoride from the water system.

There is a reason that Nenshi, Pootmans, MacLeod, Keating, Carra, Demong are sitting in Council Chambers and Hawksworth, Fox-Mellway, Connelly, Ceci, and McIver are not.

Progress does not always come at the expense of dissent.

Who is Your Front Runner?

With one month to go until the first ballot to find the new leader of Alberta's PC Party, I wanted to take a cue from, well, everyone else these days, and throw out an unscientific poll to see who Alberta feels is the front runner.

In the coming days I will do what I did with each mayoral candidate during Calgary's civic election and post the platforms of the various hopefulls.

I have taken some effort (though only through Twitter as that is best my schedule can accomodate) in engaging some of the candidates so far, and so far, very few have either responded or posted what they plan to do to make a better Alberta.

Thank you to Stephen Carter from Alison Redford's team and Doug Griffiths for engaging me in the discussion so far.

I look forward to chatting with the other 4 leadership hopefulls.

Dear Mr. Griffiths

Mr. Griffiths, You had asked me what issues I would like to see addressed that are not being discussed during the leadership race for the Conservative Party.

Chances are quite likely that either you, or one of the other five candidates, will be the Premier of Alberta following the next provincial election; I have little doubt about that.

What I do have is the same doubt that I had with a majority of the Mayoral candidates during Calgary’s civic election last October.

There were a lot of platitudes put forth by each candidate on how they would work with the province and the feds to accomplish what Calgarians needed.

I am hearing a lot of the same from the various leadership camps. I have referred to them as  “PR spun quotes”, the verbiage being attributed to the various policy statements.

I would provide examples of some of what I am talking about with respect to your campaign, as this is primarily a response to our discussions , but to be honest, I am having a hard time finding policies and specifics that you are proposing. 

I did come across your five points of interest: Education (kindergarten to post secondary), land stewardship and environment, reforming government, healthcare solutions and reinvigorate the PC party, though I have had a difficult time finding further information.

Each candidate seems to have a great writing staff on board to draft these high level talking points, but there is very little in the way of specifics.

Of course there are the hot topics that have popped up (Queue jumping and Calgary’s versus Edmonton’s crime statistics) that seem to get a lot of ink in the media, but still little in the way of specifics.

You had asked what the issues were that I was referring to. The gas price issue was a bit of a red herring and is something that baffles me, though my issues focus more so on some of the following.

Healthcare

Canada has what I consider one of the best health care systems in the world.

Wait times are a huge issue, for non life threatening services. I have gone into the ER to experience the long wait that comes with a trip to the Foothills, though I appreciate that someone with a compound fracture will be seem much faster than someone with a scraped knee.

Has the province considered opening or contracting out, walk-in type clinics at the hospitals to funnel the scraped knees from the urgent care centers so that those clients on stretchers in the hallway don’t have fight through the hoard of headaches waiting in the ER.

I have noticed that the Foothills Hospital Pharmacy is now a Shopper's Drug Mart. Great move if they are paying a fee to the hospital/government. What other partnering can be done throughout the province.

So much of health care is managed and doled out to the province/city through the federal government. There was a time when universal health care meant 'universal health care'; eye glasses and dental care would not cause a family of 2 adults and two children to go into debt.

Those days have changed. I couldn’t expect a return to the days when a trip to the dentist and optometrist wouldn’t leave a $2,000 dent in my pocket book (multiply that by 4 family members).

Single parent families or even families with a low income go years without checkups because the cost of eyesight and painless eating is too much.

I don’t know the answer to this, but I am posing the question to you. What real ideas or plans do you have to for health care?

Transportation

Specifically what will you do as Premier to work with the City of Calgary get an LRT in the Southeast? 

How is it possible that the entire Southeast portion of Calgary is shut down because both the city and the province couldn’t, or didn’t, communicate and opted to move ahead with major construction in the same area at the same time?

Your five key areas of interest

What specifically will you do for education? There is already plenty of access to post secondary education in the province; the issue facing students is the cost of education. There is no way now that I could afford the Post Secondary education that received when I was in college.

I will be honest, I m not aware of the Land Stewardship issue having live in the city. But for those who are affected by the bill, what do you propose?

Reforming the government, healthcare solutions and reinvigorating the PC party; I truly want to hear more from you and the other candidates, not the guy that writes the Blog articles and press releases

Like I said in one of my last tweets to you Mr. Griffiths, I don't expect you to know it all or have all the answers (I would be likely quite skeptical if you did), but I think that I, and the millions of Albertas that you are vying to govern, would expect that plan.

That goes for all of the candidates.

Thnak you

Suite Sounds of Controversy in City Hall

It appears that the suite sounds of controversy have begun to bellow in Calgary, a mere four months into Council’s newest term.

At the centre of this recent debate is veteran Alderman, John Mar, and rookie Alderman, Shane Keating.

What started out as an important discussion on the concept of legalizing secondary suites in Calgary has turned into a circus of the small town variety, with Calgarians on both sides of the door arguing, not the logistics of the issue, but the fact that the two Alderman had excused themselves from the vote.

Alderman Mar, who became a proud new father during the debate, had realized that his involvement in the discussion had put him into a conflict of interest. Prior to the birth of his new child, Alderman Mar began the process of building a Nanny suite with an application to rezone his home.

Alderman Shane Keating, who is planning to apply for a secondary suite in the “near future” to accommodate some family members who will be moving into his house, was forced to remove himself from the discussions as well, as, according to both Alderman, ‘by applying for a secondary suite, they, or their immediate families, may benefit as a result of their vote’.

That seems fair and easy enough. Not so apparently.

In a council that heralds only 15 votes, losing 2 votes due to abstention may hurt the proponents of secondary suite legalization in Calgary.

I have only ever conversed with both Alderman via Twitter, but I may be safe to assume that Alderman Mar and Keating are pro secondary suite, being themselves in the process of legalizing theirs.

However, their vote will not count during this debate in Council, bringing the voting pool down to 13 from 15.

So, instead of an 8-7 majority, the secondary suite issue needs a vote 7-6 either way. If there are 7 Alderman who oppose the legalization of secondary suites, then the swing votes of Alderman Mar and Keating could be the difference.

Having involved myself in the ongoing discussion that is taking place on Twitter, I have read the comments like “I wish my Alderman would represent the interests of the ward over his own” and that “the residents of Ward 8 & 12 won’t have a voice if they don’t vote.” The fact is, they are both representing the interests of their ward over their own.

If both Alderman join Council and take part in the next discussion, and vote on it, they would be breaking the law.   Not a criminal law but a law that instructs all elected officials in Alberta to remove themselves from any discussion where they, or their family, could benefit directly from the vote.

Likewise, if both Alderman join Council and vote on the issue, their votes could easily be challenged and their swing vote could be negated and end up doing more damage to the secondary suite issue, the City of Calgary and Wards 8 & 12 in the process.

To claim that Alderman Mar and Alderman Keating are not representing their wards, the fact that they could be removed from council by voting on an issue that they know could provide a benefit to them tells me otherwise.

To also say that Alderman Mar and Alderman Keating only declared an interest in the issue to avoid voting on the subject is sad.

I tweeted this comment before and I will write it here, I am pretty sure that no one in Council, or anyone who has ever ran for a government seat, has ever done so only to be able to avoid a vote that affects their constituents. Some people really have to grow up.

Calgary Herald - http://bit.ly/i8Fhgy

Alderman Keatin's blog - http://bit.ly/eFyZnu