It is my pleasure to announce I will be running for the ward 13 seat upon McLean’s vacancy. Councillor McLean and I share such deep values and brotherhood, and it is only right that I continue his good work.

Calgary councillor seeks place in the United Conservative Party ctvnews.ca/calgary/article/c…

People speaking up about their communities isn’t “weaponized democracy”it is democracy. When residents organize, sign petitions, or demand a say in decisions that affect their neighbourhoods, that’s not something to fear. It’s something to respect. Dismissing those voices as somehow dangerous simply because they don’t align with a particular viewpoint misses the point. And when leaders stop listening, voters notice. In Ward 11, we just saw the result: the largest defeat of an incumbent in Calgary’s history. Democracy isn’t dangerous, ignoring people is.

Blanket rezoning failed to deliver as promised. The majority of Calgarians want a full repeal, a reset back to RC-1/2 & locally-informed planning. #yyccc

Carla Beck and Naheed Nenshi don’t have to appeal to the median New Democrat in their provinces, they need to get ~47% of the province to vote for them What “prairie New Dems” think doesn’t matter, what the voter who voted for Scott Moe and Danielle Smith who might vote NDP does

I was in council chambers yesterday and here are my top five observations: 1) In interviews after council broke for lunch some media framed support and opposition to blanket rezoning as close to 50/50. My take: I don’t believe this is accurate and if you want to see blanket rezoning straight up repealed, you have to speak out now. 2) As pointed out by @SonyaSharpYYC, @floragillespie and @Ortman4Ward9 yesterday, it doesn’t appear that mayor or council or the public understand the replace portion of the amendment to repeal and replace blanket rezoning. It was described yesterday by someone as “clear as mud” and I agree. My take: I believe this issue is too important to Calgarians and the future of our city and support and support a clean repeal and an entirely new process with updated community engagement including updating how local area plans are created. Trust is broken and in order to rebuild it, we need to cleanly repeal and start from scratch. 3) A few councillors listened to the Mayor take questions from the media yesterday. My take: This isn’t normal and my suspicion was confirmed after seeing @Landonforward14 share this post yesterday. Councillor @Landonforward14 is on the right side of this in my opinion. If the Mayor can read 300+ pages of a provincial report on something that does not impact the operations of the city, priorities are not in the right place. I agree with @JeromyYYC that Calgarians deserve to be heard *and* I believe the it was made clear during the 2025 election plus however long each candidate campaigned that repealing blanket rezoning was overwhelmingly supported by a majority of Calgarians and that drawn out delays to this process will enable an amended version of blanket rezoning that Calgarians will be disappointed by. 4) Seeing the discussion between the Mayor and Council might make some people uncomfortable because it’s being done in the public square. My take: As someone also weighing in on this in the public square, this is great for Calgary. This is accountability and democracy out in the open and this kind of polite yet challenging dialogue is going to make sure we get to a better place on this. As is said, sunshine is the best disinfectant and we are all grownups. As @JeromyYYC often said during the campaign, you can walk and chew gum at the same time and I believe that applies to working together and engaging in this kind of discourse online but if that changes, this needs to move offline to sort things out because there are 3.5 years left for this group to work together. 5) We aren’t staying in our lane as a city. My take: I made this point during the election and I will continue to make it: housing is not a municipal issue. Municipalities are responsible for the management of land-use planning, zoning and building permits, which directly influence the supply and type of housing built. General housing affordability, as in does a house cost $350,000 or $1,000,000 is not the job of the municipal government. Being homeless and requiring the social safety net of government is different than the question of how much someone makes and what mortgage they qualify for. The job of the municipal government, along with its provincial and federal counterparts, is to create the conditions to drive the economy, not be the economy. But so much of what the municipality is doing is being the economy. Spending must be controlled. Cuts need to be made. Taxes were lowered artificially by borrowing from reserves. This isn’t safe for us a city. Mayor and council need to print off a list of the responsibilities of municipal government in the Canadian political system and every time someone asks for money or a decision needs to be made, if it’s not in the Municipal Government Act, the request is politely redirected to the provincial or federal government. kings-printer.alberta.ca/126… I will hopefully be sharing my comments on blanket rezoning with council on Monday but if I’m not able to do that,