Colley-Urquhart surprises council with early return from Antarctic trip
Bad weather brings councillor back for key budget debates
A city politician under fire for skipping important budget talks to vacation “with penguins and icebergs” in Antarctica is home early from her $25,000 holiday after mechanical problems left the ship adrift in light seas and eventually ended the luxury cruise.
Ten days after Ward 13 Coun. Diane Colley-Urquhart penned an e-mail to her colleagues, obtained exclusively by Postmedia, stating the “once-in-a-lifetime experience” would cause her to miss a few weeks of council, she surprised observers and colleagues by returning to council chambers on Monday for budget deliberations, with a toy penguin.
On Monday, Colley-Urquhart told reporters she flew out of Calgary to Houston, then on to Buenos Aires, on Nov. 13 — the same day a notice of motion that she co-signed with Ward 11 Coun. Jeromy Farkas was shot down by council.
She was scheduled to return home from the Earth’s southernmost continent on Dec. 3 — after embarking “on an educational expedition voyage on board a ship deep into the Antarctica to spend time with penguins and icebergs” — and would have missed the 2018 budget debates, which started Monday.
But, Colley-Urquhart said the inaugural $25,000 Silver Cloud expedition cruise she was on was hit by bad weather and the initial itinerary was changed, before the ship’s fuel pump seized on Nov. 20 and the entire trip was called off.
“I didn’t quite realize how serious it was until the captain sat with us at dinner Wednesday night and said that we were probably in pretty serious danger,” Colley-Urquhart said.
“I want Calgarians to know through hell or high water I’m back, rolling up my sleeves and working on the budget,” added the politician, who was first elected in a 2000 byelection and won her seat in last month’s municipal election by a wide margin.
Asked by reporters why she scheduled a vacation during budget talks, Colley-Urquhart said August is the only month council doesn’t have meetings, and it’s not a good time to visit the Antarctic.
“When you’re a public figure, you’re always looking at balancing your public life with your personal life,” she said.
“This is something that I’ve wanted to do for a long, long time and saved up for a long, long time to do it. Thank goodness they’re reimbursing everything. You can’t really get into the Antarctic in August.”
The veteran councillor also said councillorsStevensonandMagliocca “took a whole bunch” of time off in 2014 for that year’s budget talks “with no letter to anyone.”
In 2014, Coun. Joe Magliocca and then-councillor Jim Stevenson made headlines when they missed a portion of five days of budget meetings to attend the Grey Cup in Vancouver on behalf of the city.
Asked why she informed her colleagues about the trip on Nov. 17, four days after she had already departed, Colley-Urquhart said the city clerk was aware of the voyage and councillors are under no obligation to share with their fellow councillors when they’re going to be away, or why.
“I have never received a letter like I wrote and sent to my colleagues, from any of my other colleagues,” she said of her memo, which included a promise to her co-workers to “tip one for each of you and think of you,” while in Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands.
Mayor Naheed Nenshi said he was “pleasantly surprised” to see Colley-Urquhart at Monday’s meeting, noting he’s not familiar with an elected official ever missing budget.
“To be fair, Coun. Colley-Urquhart volunteered to step up to be the deputy mayor for the month of August, which is the time when the rest of us, hopefully even me, get a little bit of time off,” he said.
SOUTHWEST BRT
Colley-Urquhart was en route to Antarctica during the Nov. 13 regular council meeting when a notice of motion she co-signed with Farkas asking to pause the second phase of the southwest bus rapid transit line was overwhelmingly rejected.
“I guess you could say I got thrown under the bus,” Farkas said after the vote, when asked by Postmedia where Colley-Urquhart was.
Colley-Urquhart said Monday she regrets signing the notice of motion with Farkas and recorded an earlier conversation between the pair, in which they agreed to submit an administrative inquiry about the Southwest BRT, rather than a notice of motion.
“I recorded our conversation he and I had on November the second, a Thursday evening. I was at home that night. I went to great lengths to explain to Coun. Farkas the pros and cons of a notice of motion versus an administrative inquiry,” she said.
Colley-Urquhart said she soon found out Farkas had decided to go the notice of motion route and had a media strategy tied to the move.
“To support him, I let my name be used to stand with the notice of motion, which I regret,” she said.
Farkas told reporters it was “weird” the pair’s conversation was recorded, though he said he acts the same whether he’s in public or private.
“There was a lot of ideas that we threw around; obviously I would not have submitted it unless we were both comfortable,” Farkas said of the failed notice of motion.