When Alberta Transportation Minister Devin Dreeshen sent his letter to Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek last Tuesday telling her the province was pulling its promised $1.53-billion contribution to the Green Line light rail transit project, he triggered the Pottery Barn Rule.
If you break it, you own it.
Mr. Dreeshen, Premier Danielle Smith, and the rest of the United Conservative Party brain trust can try to pass off the Green Line fiasco as an effort to block a boondoggle supposedly caused by former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi, now the leader of the Opposition NDP, as the minister claimed in his letter to Ms. Gondek.
But that’s like trying to persuade the Pottery Barn manager that someone pushed you just before you dropped that expensive lamp. (OK, the Pottery Barn rule is just a folk tale. The political Pottery Barn Rule, though, is real.)
It’s Mr. Dreeshen who signed the letter saying the province was pulling the plug on the Green Line. (He cc’d it only to Rob Anderson – which is telling, suggesting the director of the Premier’s Office, Alberta separatist, and former Wildrose Party House Leader really is the power behind Ms. Smith’s throne.)
So it’s Mr. Dreeshen, as the front man for the United Conservative Party, who broke the Green Line, killing as many as 20,000 Calgary jobs in the process.
And therefore, Dear Readers, it’s the UCP that owns the Green Line fiasco now.
Mr. Dreeshen himself now stands a significant chance of being thrown under the wheels of the LRT if this brainiac scheme to put Mr. Nenshi on the spot in his new job by painting him as mismanaging an expensive civic project in his previous position goes south like the first phase of the Green Line was supposed to do.
Hitherto best known for being photographed in a red MAGA cap at Donald Trump’s New York election night victory party on Nov. 8, 2016, and for the cries of Shields Up! in his Legislature Building office before the day-drinking began, Mr. Dreeshen could now go down as the fellow who infuriated enough Calgary voters who might otherwise have been tempted to stick with the UCP to change history.
Then again, kicking Calgary in the teeth is unlikely to bother many voters in his rural Innisfail-Sylvan Lake Riding, so he probably doesn’t have to worry about job security any time soon.
Still, this certainly hasn’t pleased the Calgary Construction Association, so that’s one source of donations to the UCP that may be about to dry up. None of Calgary’s 12 Conservative MLAs has screamed publicly, but that doesn’t mean sharp words aren’t being exchanged in private.
Even Don Braid, the veteran Calgary Herald political columnist not known for unkind sentiments about the UCP, politely warned the government that it’s playing with fire in Calgary if it can’t find a way to get this train back on track.
“Whatever happens, the province is honour-bound to build the Green Line,” he wrote, sounding a plaintive note. “It’s leaving a lot of leverage in the hands of political opponents.” Well, it’s hard to argue with that part!
The province might set up a provincial agency to take over the city project, Mr. Braid suggested. But, speaking of potential boondoggles, there’s no guarantee the feds, who had also pledged $1.53 billion, or even the city, would fork over more dough to a UCP managed project.
And from now on, the government will have to wear anything that goes wrong with the project if it’s restarted, and take the full blame if it stays dead, or even if Mr. Dreeshen’s promised review just takes too long.
For her part, Mayor Gondek is now looking for a way to get the project rolling again.
She’s already convincingly refuted Mr. Dreeshen’s claim he changed his mind about the Green Line only after he saw the city’s scaled-down Aug. 15 business case. No, she told the CBC, they gave him the information “early and often” in July.
Thanks to the dumb way Mr. Dreeshen and whoever advised him played it, Mayor Gondek holds some pretty decent cards.
NDP chooses Rob Miyashiro as Lethbridge-West by-election candidate
Rob Miyashiro, a former two-term Lethbridge city councillor and the Alberta NDP’s candidate in Lethbridge-East in the 2023 general election, has been chosen by party members to run in the upcoming Lethbridge-West by-election.
No date has been set for the by-election, required by the resignation on July 1 of former MLA Shannon Phillips, but one must be called before New Year’s Day.
The UCP has not yet named a candidate to contest the riding, which has been represented by Ms. Phillips since 2015. Ms. Phillips endorsed Mr. Miyashiro.
NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi was on hand in Lethbridge Saturday for the results of the vote in which Mr. Miyashiro defeated Bridget Mearns, also a former city councillor.
Winning the Lethbridge-West by-election would be a significant symbolic victory for either party, so both the NDP and UCP can be expected to contest it vigorously whenever Premier Smith gets around to calling it.
Devin Dreeshen, much like his boss, Danielle Smith does, succeeds in making a big fool of himself, at the expense of the taxpayers, and while trying to own Naheed Nenshi. The UCP wants to take Naheed Nenshi down, but likely ended up with egg on their faces.
The UCP also has other ideas, for other things that they want to waste money on, so the Green Line is not a priority for them. It will be interesting to see what transpires further here, and how Jyoti Gondek and Naheed Nenshi handle this from here on out.
This reminds me of another tale – Humpty Dumpty. Can all the Queen’s horses and all of her men put it back together again? At this point I’m not so sure.
I suspect Calgary’s municipal officials would be glad to wash their hands of it now and just let the UCP take the blame for it at this point. The city can take whatever they haven’t spent and put it to some other good use.
The Feds are probably also tired of UCP dithering and interference in a project that has gone nowhere in about a decade since Kenney, a Federal Cabinet Minister at the time, eagerly backed it. The Feds know they can take their money and spend it on a less fraught projects in places where they may also get more political credit.
I don’t disagree with Mr. Braid that the UCP may want to save it, but without Federal and municipal money the cost could be way too high, equal to the entire current year surplus. If so, I don’t think even Mr. Dreeshan wants to explain to his constituents where that surplus went. Its one thing to pay for part of a new arena in Calgary, but a cost of over three is too much.
So the moral of the story is one should be more careful in the political Pottery Barn and not break things that exceed your budget.
No Green Line, well that isn’t much of a surprise. I’m sure Smith has more things she plans to cancel or just forget about. Its not what is best for the province and its citizens, its what is best for Smith and her supporters. Next election she will be going on about how much money she saved the province and how she is going to cut taxes.
Perhaps she is going to have a private company build and run it, but it is doubtful other levels of government will be interested in sending money to the project. Wonder what she is going to do next?
Another brilliant scheme is a Banff-Calgary rail link….just when everyone but the UCP is screaming that Banff has hit peak tourism.
Lefty: I talked to my Parks Canada contact about that and was told that they’d love to see a train to Banff, as long as it’s an affordable train not a luxury line. The introduction to the Canada National Parks Act says: “The national parks of Canada are hereby dedicated to the people of Canada for their benefit, education and enjoyment, subject to this Act and the regulations, and the parks shall be maintained and made use of so as to leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.” For the people. For their benefit, education, and enjoyment. The problem with peak tourism right now, my contact says, is basically cars and infrastructure to support cars. The Canadian Pacific (pardon me, Kansas City) right of way is already there, so one of the best solutions to the crowding problem would be the right kind of train. DJC
Breaking the kitchen, one mug at a time. https://youtu.be/QqzOAyXSJMI
Devin Dreeshen is one more in a long line of UCP ministers who wouldn’t be able to find a job in the real world. He’s never had to work a day in his life because he comes from wealth. His drinking at work would have cost anyone else their job. How is it possible that his antipathy toward Nenshi is allowed to cost thousands of Calgarians their jobs?
Thanks to good ol’ boy Devin Dreeshen, Ric McIver has some ‘splaining to do to his constituents in Calgary-Hays. Remember Ric, the former transportation and infrastructure minister? Well, it might take a bit more than showing up once in a while at an A&W show-and-shine to get votes next time around. Cars, baby. LRT cars. The long-awaited Green Line in one of its incarnations would have gone all the way to Calgary Hays. Now it’s done like dinner and all Calgary-Hays has to show for it is glory-days Ric.
Where’s Waldo, I mean the premier? Rumor has it she’s on vacay, leaving DD as the bearer of bad news. Suitable punishment for the wrongful dismissal lawsuit and rumored seven-figure settlement, perhaps. Did she show up to meet with Mayor Gondek and DD after the hat dropped? No. Did she send the deputy premier? No. Where is the deputy premier? Where is the deputy-deputy premier? We are in the same situation that Jason Kenney created a few years ago: nobody home while the home fires rage. An elected official should have met with Mayor Gondek on a major file like this, not staff. Rob Anderson, therefore, is the premier of Alberta in fact, if not title.
A private express rail line from YYC to Banff for tourists instead? A rail alignment that goes nowhere near where the people who might use the Green Line live? Secret meetings about the Banff rail proposal with the premier’s spouse? Rumors swirl while the premier dips her toes in the sand, or whatever she’s doing. Why cut a perfectly good holiday short? Why appoint a deputy-deputy-deputy premier, since nobody else seems to be around?
One thing’s for sure. It was a bold move to leave the federal government out in the cold and let them find out about this funding withdrawal by reading the news. They were funding the Green Line, too. Now try to convince them to come back with cash for whatever comes next.
Is all this chaos intended to collapse the City of Calgary, by making infrastructure projects extremely expensive as contractors build in risk to their estimates? Calgary is in the midst of major infrastructure work to replace failed and failing water feeder mains. Calgarians’ tempers are short after a summer of water restrictions. Now this.
It would be crazy if Danielle Smith thinks she can ride in on a white horse and seize power over Calgary city council to save the day. That would be a serious miscalculation. Is she ever coming back? Apparently there’s some talk about Russian propaganda in the news. She might want to check that out, too.
Boondoggles are only for the UCP I guess. Is anyone paying attention to this story on the utilities regulator? I’m hoping you have someone to help explain this. You have some very well informed readers.
https://thenarwhal.ca/alberta-aeso-natural-gas-contracts/
If I learned anything from the Conservative MLAs I knew when Lougheed’s energy minister Bill Dickie was a brother in-law of one of uncles it was that True Conservatives create jobs, Reformers destroy them. True conservatives collect proper royalties and corporate taxes and fund healthcare, education and municipalities properly while these Reformers are only interested in looking after themselves and their Reform Party friends while they help the rich steal our oil and corporate tax wealth adding more and more debt to the people’s future. They were certainly right that’s exactly what these Reformers are doing.
Alan K. Spiller: This is Alberta, where they vote Conservative, and they don’t know that it’s just in name only.
This is not the first time the UCP has pulled the plug on projects that were well underway. Just over a year ago they left private companies hanging when they put a halt to renewable energy projects in Alberta. If I’m not wrong only one company resumed work when the ban was removed. Based on that, private construction companies are unlikely to, and would be well advised to turn their backs on another stop-work fiasco before they too get burned. Dreshen talks about a P3. The research was done on the plan that existed last week, not this iteration. No private company is going to risk money on a plan based on a whim, without solid studies guaranteeing them a positive ROI. I think the corporate world as well as the federal government and the CofC will all run from the project as will voters in Calgary. A stampede of sorts. Leaving the UCP where it clearly belongs – in a clown barrel.
“Got a half jug a thet good prairie wine
Way down on that Calg’ry Green Line.”
John D Loudermilk couldn’ta wrote it better.
Now that the UCP is calling Bloc Quebecois MPs ‘separatists’, no one should be surprised by the mental gymnastics at work in Alberta. It reminds me of the recent municipal election in Edmonton, where a candidate for mayor wanted to ‘demolish’ all the public transit infrastructure and make cars great again. And the bike paths, too, because four wheels are better than two. When the matter of the billions of dollars, from all levels of government, already spent on all that infrastructure came, the candidate shrugged his shoulders and pretty much said it’s not his problem to care. And so it goes in the current political climate, where an orange-dyes, shoe lift wearing, bad smelling, compulsive lying, rapey-raping, proud-to-be-stupid presidential candidate becomes highly electable, you know we really are in a new dark ages.
Perhaps Ms. Gondek could start referring to this stalled project as the “Dreeshen Line”?
ILH: That’s an excellent suggestion. Ms. Gondek is probably too polite, but I’m not. DJC
An added benefit to your wonderful suggestion, ILH, is that would get rid of the name ‘Green Line’, which is the real problem UCPers have with the project. Green Line makes the project sound like it is environmentally friendly, something our premier would never tolerate. Having read Devin Dreeshen’s mind (it was a short read) I can report that he hated the project as soon as he heard the name.
Reading Devin Dreeshen’s mind?
It would be a short reading, including the slurred speech, sudden herky-jerky movements, followed by stumbling and falling flat on your face.
Salud!