Hallelujah, and pass that pen: it seems you can fight city hall. Just don’t expect to win.
Landon Johnston, the Calgarian pushing to have Mayor Jyoti Gondek recalled by voters, could have picked an easier task — perhaps climbing Everest in a gorilla suit, with a curling rock in each paw.
Still, where virtue signalling at no personal cost is now an addiction at the civic level, it’s refreshing to see an ordinary citizen step up and use his own time and money fighting for what he believes in. Especially knowing the game’s rigged to fail.
Did you think any politician would introduce legislation making it remotely possible to successfully recall an elected official because someone’s mad as hell and doesn’t want to take it anymore? Not a chance.
Which is why Gondek owes Jason Kenney a high-five. The former Alberta premier pushed through the recall legislation, but set the bar so high it makes the Everest challenge a breeze in comparison.
Kenney, a lifelong politician, billed the legislation as an achievable way for citizens to bring wayward politicians to heel by collecting enough signatures for a recall plebiscite. But it was another example of political virtue signalling — the Tories can do it just as well as the progressive bunch when suiting their agenda.
So, when Johnston ponied up his $500 for a petition drive calling for the mayor’s recall, he was faced with acquiring more than 500,000 signatures from verified Calgary electors in only 60 days: this in one of the most spread-out cities in North America.
And those names must be hand-signed and witnessed, as online forms aren’t allowed. (Politicians love paying homage to new technology when it suits them, but shun the digital age with a vengeance if it threatens their future livelihood.)
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So why bother? Well, as Mother Teresa once said: “Don’t wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.”
Because when it comes to this Gondek-led council, so many of us — me included — have whined and whimpered about how it marches to its own beat, with nary a thought about the majority of citizens simply trying to keep their heads above water in these difficult times.
If you’re on some approved list of victims, that’s fine. But most of us don’t care much to be victims. We simply want respect and an acknowledgment that our concerns are valid and reasonable, therefore deserving of action: especially as we’re paying ever-higher dues into the open pit that’s the city budget, with little to show except being on the listening end of arrogant lectures.
That’s why this petition is lighting a fire under Calgarians fed up with our mayor and her select band of councillor followers — just enough for an 8-7 majority on most votes — who are turning our city into a playground for daft ideas allied to pious pomposity.
Indeed, it’s touching a raw nerve as thousands of messages of support pour into the website that Johnston set up, while hundreds of Calgarians volunteer to do the grunt work of knocking on doors.
Some may recall that, when elected as Calgary’s first female mayor, Gondek promised to serve with humility.
Two years later, she inadvertently acknowledged humble isn’t the game plan. Not after council, on her urging, approved a 7.8-per-cent residential rate hike.
“We didn’t make a popular decision, we made the right one,” was how she described ignoring Calgarians’ wishes while simultaneously handing them the tab. If that’s humble then I’m Uriah Heep. (The Dickensian character, not the mid-’70s Brit rock band.)
Why Johnston bothered, I’ve no clue.
But if, courtesy of this local HVAC technician, there’s a mayoral comeuppance regardless of signature totals, then maybe we’re not as lost as a few months ago.
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