City response to document leak is theatre of the absurd
Reaction of mayor, some councillors more startling than the leak itself
There went the 2026 Olympic Winter Games.
That’s one reaction to the wild uproar at city hall over a leak of secret information.
The motive behind the leak to the CBC may be just that — to kill support for the Games in the citywide referendum set for Nov. 13.
A serious negative vote that day means it’s all over.
“That was probably the whole point of the leak,” says Ward 12 Coun. Shane Keating.
He said in a tweet: “If this leak was truly about transparency, why not leak it all? Why be so selective with the information? This wasn’t about informing Calgarians, this was about misleading them.”
But it’s highly embarrassing — in fact, it looks absurd — for the mayor and some councillors to declare this bid process the most public and transparent in the history of the Games, and then launch a KGB-level mole hunt for the leaker of one document.
That sniffs of coverup. The harder the city hunts for the culprit, the worse it looks.
Councillors’ emails and cellphones will be scoured. City employees — up to 152 of them — will be interrogated by city security.
It is an offence under the Municipal Government Act to leak information council declares confidential.
But, still, the reaction is so fierce you’d think somebody walked out with nuclear codes.
Mayor Naheed Nenshi and council might have dealt with this quietly. Most mole hunts at city hall — and there are a few, believe me — are conducted in deep silence.
The core of the leak isn’t even that serious: just the suggestion that Olympic costs could rise if the city puts the Olympic Village on the current site of the bus barns.
That’s not even a proposal, and certainly not part of the agreement with Ottawa and the province to be made public Oct. 13, a month before the referendum. If there is an agreement, that is. There you have one reason Nenshi declared a five-alarm fire when somebody lit a match.
At this delicate stage, there’s concern that the crucial agreement with Ottawa and the province could fail on the question of “trust.”
Can the city, which depends entirely on senior orders of government for a Games bid, negotiate without spilling beans at every step?
Nenshi doesn’t want the Olympic partners getting that idea.
And so, the city quickly put in a phone call to Premier Rachel Notley’s office to apologize for the leak — while vowing, it seems, that it won’t happen again.
It’s no secret that an NDP government with deep fiscal and pipeline woes, heading for an election next spring, is not absolutely wild about putting money into a Calgary Games bid.
For now, provincial sources say this one leak isn’t very serious. Nor does it jeopardize a threeparty agreement. But the New Democrats wouldn’t want it to become a habit.
That’s the second reason Nenshi and council swung the hammer. They fear that the leaker might do it again at a crucial stage, destroying relations with other governments and seriously hurting the bid itself.
If the leaker can’t be caught, they at least hope to terrify that person into eternal silence.
Another fear, wholly legitimate, is that release of “hypothetical” real estate scenarios could drive up prices if they eventually become part of the plan.
Journalists are fond of leaks. I’m a big fan. Many a crucial story would never be public without leaks of vital information.
For instance, Postmedia columnist Paula Simons’ great series on the abused child Serenity would not have gained much notice without the heartbreaking photos and other personal information she obtained, despite strict privacy rules.
But this leak?
The reaction is more startling than the thing itself. It’s really hard to dress up such a superheated response to release of information that ultimately belongs to the public.
This isn’t the Russia investigation, folks. Calgarians should regard the city hall spectacle as light entertainment, and reserve judgment until the details emerge Oct 13.