Now that it’s a done deal, it’s all aboard the Green Line

City now has three major projects to inject vitality into our slumping economy

There are few things more frustrating than indecision. So when I heard our city council voted 14-1 in favour of the Green Line LRT project, I thought to myself, “OK, if these elected leaders are all that convinced and committed to this project, the best thing that I can do is to get behind it.”

No matter where you have stood on the

Green Line until now, it is going ahead and the decisive vote tells me it is the right thing to do. Our community faces a great many challenges and this is not the time to further divide us, but rather a time to rally together and face the huge challenges with one voice.

This now means that there are three major public projects underway in Calgary: the new BMO Convention Centre, the new events centre and the Green Line. This will require an enormous amount of both financial and human resources and if you are a believer in Keynesian economic theory, then you will be saying, “This is the right time to be doing exactly that.”

Our city is in a severe slump and these projects will create thousands of hours of work and billions of dollars of investment in Calgary. I hope the City of Calgary makes it a strong commitment to ensure that every professional, every architect or designer, every supplier — from the paint supplier to the carpet supplier

It is critical that our city and our province reap the maximum benefit from these decisions.

to the electrical wire supplier — is based in Calgary or at least in Alberta. It is a huge responsibility to invest public money to the tune of billions of dollars and it is critical that our city and our province reap the maximum benefit from these decisions.

This week, the University of Calgary hosted a panel on the subject of ethical leadership and one of the points that came up was the need for “empathy” in leadership. In a community with thousands of talented individuals sitting at home, a high degree of empathy is needed from our civic leadership in regard to these new projects. They will create opportunities for people to get back to work and start us down a path of recovery.

During that same panel, one of the panellists said he is concerned that Canadians do not seem to be fussed or even aware of the tremendous debt burden that our country has been taking on. He had done a calculation of federal, provincial and municipal debt, combined with personal and individual debt, and his belief is that Canada is carrying a debt load of some $7 trillion, on an annual GDP of $2.3 trillion. According to many economists, this is still manageable, but it is certainly getting to the limit of what we should consider acceptable.

So, I think we need to say that Calgary has three very expensive and very exciting projects underway, that we should stand behind them and celebrate them, but more importantly, we must hold our elected officials’ feet to the fire to ensure these projects are brought in on time and on budget.

Interestingly, many city councillors who have supported these projects will be collecting their civic pensions by the time the final bills are calculated. But I am confident that Calgarians will remember these discussions for many years and will understand the huge responsibility city hall has now taken on.

All aboard! Calgary is on a new path of expansion. Who am I to wonder how we will pay for it?