Corbella: Mayor Nenshi flies to Netherlands, but fails to tell deputy mayor
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Ward 3 Coun. Jyoti Gondek had her Stampede-packed schedule jostled about like a rodeo cowboy Wednesday, after Mayor Naheed Nenshi flew to the Netherlands in the middle of the Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth without bothering to tell her or any other members of city council.
Gondek says she first heard that the mayor bolted to Rotterdam to speak at a conference — in the middle of Stampede — during a meeting with the provincial government’s Municipal Affairs Minister Kaycee Madu at city hall on Tuesday morning. Madu has apparently repeatedly tried to meet with our mayor but has been seemingly rebuffed, according to some council colleagues.
“It was a complete surprise,” says the first-term councillor, who like all council members takes turns acting as deputy mayor for one month on a rotation.
“I would think when you’re deputy mayor and the mayor’s out of town, you would be given, at the very least, a head’s-up that you’re on,” said Gondek.
“My biggest concern being we’re in the middle of the Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth, which has all kinds of implications. It would have been nice to know that I’m it,” added Gondek, who was reached Wednesday on the Stampede grounds.
“Forget the fact that I’m deputy mayor right now. In my opinion, it’s a professional courtesy to let your council colleagues know that you’re going out of town for something, particularly during such a busy time like Stampede.”
On Tuesday, Gondek was asked “very politely by the Stampede Board, because they’re lovely and considerate, and they said ‘if you can make it, if you could come for 7:30 a.m. on Wednesday morning to have you help kick off Kids’ Day.’ But let’s not forget,” she said, “I’m a mom and I have an aging mom that I have primary caregiver responsibility for, so, I would have made plans for all of that had I known in advance, but after some scrambling, I managed,” she said.
Scrambling is putting it mildly. She had to cancel an early morning Wednesday appointment with her 80-year-old mom. She drove to city hall, hopped on the CTrain to the Stampede grounds, delivered a speech on the stage at the Grandstand at 7:30 a.m., took the train back to city hall, drove back to her ward in Calgary’s northwest for a 9:30 a.m. meeting, picked up her 14-year-old daughter and her friends, dropped them off at the Stampede grounds, went back to city hall to do some work, then came back to the Stampede grounds to catch the rodeo. Whew.
“The usual deal,” she says with a laugh. “Lots of last-minute changes but we make it work.”
Gondek says she and the other members of council have “had this conversation with the mayor before and he doesn’t share our perspective but, as deputy mayor, I would certainly assume that there’s protocol somewhere that indicates that I should be at least advised.”
She’s right. Nenshi doesn’t agree that he had to tell her or anyone else that he was jetting off to deliver a speech at a conference halfway around the world during Stampede, which is such a busy time for politicians it’s been dubbed the Greatest Outdoor Politician Petting Zoo on Earth.
“I’m back from Rotterdam, where I was invited to speak on a panel at the Urban Resilience Summit,” Nenshi said in an email. “I was there for 36 hours, working remotely, with all travel and accommodation covered by the conference.”
A spokesperson for Nenshi said: “The mayor was working while at the conference, so there was no need for the Deputy to take action.”
Except there was and she did. It wasn’t do or die, of course. Let’s face it, those little kids and their parents were undoubtedly much more interested in their free pancake breakfast and the beckoning midway rides than they were in any speech Gondek was delivering. However, there might have been a lot less cortisol running through her veins on Wednesday had some consideration for her time and schedule been demonstrated by Nenshi and his office. It doesn’t seem too much to ask.
Ward 4 Coun. Sean Chu tweeted in part on Wednesday: “Where’s the priority? If you were the Mayor, would you bug out during the most important time #CalgaryStampede . . .? Most of us, including Deputy Mayor, weren’t told.”
Nenshi — who truly does work extremely hard — clearly thinks burning up huge amounts of CO2 to be on a panel in Holland was more important.
Fair enough. Reasonable people can disagree on which is more valuable for Calgary’s well-being. As for showing more respect to his council colleagues, few could argue that it’s past time a little more of that kicked in — and not just during Stampede.
Licia Corbella is a Postmedia opinion columnist.
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