Pipelines dominate first UCP leadership debate
Issue of campaign donations takes centre stage as candidates spar again
Candidates vying for the United Conservative Party leadership offered a varying mix of iron fist and velvet glove on the issue of stalled pipelines as they met in the party’s first leadership debate Wednesday night.
On stage at Mount Royal University’s Concert Hall in front of a crowd of more than 700, former Progressive Conservative leader Jason Kenney threatened “consequences” for British Columbia if that province’s NDP government attempts to block the already approved expansion of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline.
He said an Alberta government could potentially stop oil and gas exports to B.C. through the existing pipeline by refusing to sign permits.
“The mayor of Vancouver says he wants a carbon-free economy by 2040. Maybe we should help give him a carbon-free economy by 2020,” said Kenney.
He also called for court action over the recent National Energy Board decision to consider indirect greenhouse gas emissions in its review of the proposed Energy East pipeline to Quebec and New Brunswick.
Candidates continued to spar over the issue of campaign donations Wednesday, as the University of Calgary hosted the second mayoral debate since 10 contenders for the job filed their nomination papers this week.
Nine of those candidates were in attendance at the University of Calgary’s MacEwan Hall for the event, but sparks continued to fly largely between Naheed Nenshi, who is running for a third term, and Bill Smith, the candidate seen as one of the incumbent’s chief competitors for the mayor’s chair.
Nenshi has been prodding his opponents to disclose their list of campaign donors, a subject he broached again before the crowd of about 400.
“Mr. Smith presided over a PC party that accepted half a million bucks almost from the owner of the Edmonton Oilers,” said Nenshi, who was cut off by competitor Andre Chabot dismissing the comment as “not relevant” to the question at hand.
Smith responded to Nenshi’s jab a few minutes later, citing a donation on the list released by Nenshi’s campaign.
Nenshi’s staff said the inclusion of Ottawa Redblacks owner John Ruddy should have stated it came from the real estate developer’s firm, Trinity Development, and not from the individual.
“I read about it and we looked at the rules and his company does business here, and it was a mistake — it appears that it was an honest mistake,” said Smith.
The donation to the PC party that Nenshi referred to was “investigated by Elections Alberta very thoroughly and they said there was absolutely nothing wrong with the donation,” Smith added.
“I think there’s more wrong with how we treat people in this city, how we treat our developers … how we treat our Flames, by deliberately bargaining to an impasse, how we treat those poor people at Midfield Park by making them homeless,” he stated.
Nenshi then accused Smith of presiding over a PC party that had “dozens of election violations of rules that you yourself helped to write” and added that the donation on his own list was “100 per cent legal.”
“The moment Mr. Smith … and the rest up here choose to disclose their donors, perhaps they’ll have the moral authority to have this discussion,” Nenshi said.
Other topics broached during the two-hour debate, which was also attended by candidates Jason (GoGo) Achtymichuk, Brent Chisholm, Emile Gabriel, Larry Heather, David Lapp and Curtis Olson, included the opioid crisis and supervised consumption sites.
Nenshi called the kind of facility planned for Calgary’s Sheldon Chumir Centre a “very important part of keeping people alive so they can get better.”
“We lose more people to fentanyl in this city than we lose to car collisions and all violent crime combined,” he said.
“People are dying in every single corner of this city.”
Smith said that while many years ago the idea of a supervised injection site would be seen as a “crazy idea,” results from other cities have shown the model’s success in helping people battle addiction and in deterring crime.
He added that on the enforcement side, it’s “critical” that local police be provided with the resources they need in order to be “effective on the streets.”
Lapp, a front-line worker in the shelter system who has responded to overdoses, said he doesn’t believe supervised consumption sites are the answer, but rather “quality case management” and getting people into treatment.
Calgarians will head to the ballot box Oct. 16.