Thursday 25 April 2013

Hypocritical Outrage




Surprise! Not everybody supports Mayor Nenshi. His Worship is either naive or delusional to think that he has 100% approval. In light of a secretly taped presentation to a private meeting of developers Cal Wenzel of Shane Homes had the audacity to express his opinion and dislike of some current elected officials. How dare he, in a democratic city be able to say that he does not approve of the way that business is conducted at City Hall?

Mr. Wenzel , in the tape is seen and heard saying that he and other developers made donations amounting  to $1.1 million to the Manning Centre for Democracy. This money is apparently is being used to educate prospective candidates in the next municipal election. From the known facts I do not believe that such contributions contravene any municipal electoral laws. There is no difference to donations made to the Pembina Institute, Tides, or the Fraser Institute or any other organization which supports political or activist causes.

So far as we know there is no such thing as a slate for the next municipal election. What we know is that the Mayor and other members of Council belong to Civic Camp, a community activist group. If the developers group broke any laws, shouldn’t we also investigate the involvement of Civic Camp, the Sierra Club and other leftist organizations who supplied volunteers to the Mayor’s, and other Aldermanic campaigns? It is a myth to believe that there is no party politics at city hall. If not we should at least recognize that there exist some form of coalition.
While there have been extensive coverage of the ‘secret tape’, the media has never covered the involvement of any other ‘leftist’ groups in the City. Would the media consider secret tapes of some Aldermen meetings?

While we can sympathize with a media industry in constant search for the next controversial issue, there is one point missing in all the reports. This tape is very reminiscent of a “Mitt Romney- 47% moment’. However the statement made in both these recordings may have been in poor taste or ill timed, but they were both truthful in fact and content. 

There has not been any outrage of the covert recording, by some body that Mr. Wenzel obviously trusted, but that is typical of a leftist reaction. Let us remember that when the Mayor had his fundraiser behind closed doors there was no ‘right wing’ nut making any recording. It seems that taping other people’s conversation is more common on the left than on the right.
If there were any laws broken, it deserves the full attention of the Minister of Municipal Affairs; otherwise it is purely a political issue.  Ironically it is rumoured that the Labour Unions want an investigation, this coming from a group that constantly is involved in electoral campaigns either covertly or openly by funding certain candidates. While the whole saga makes for good copy it may just be another hypocritical outrage by a Mayor who has failed to be transparent as he promised.

Marcel Latouche

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