The race to be Calgary’s next mayor is heating up with several announcements across the city on Thursday, including the launch of incumbent Jyoti Gondek’s re-election bid.
Gondek opened her campaign with a promise to crack down on public drug use as a cornerstone of her platform.
“We will end open drug use on Calgary streets,” Gondek told reporters at her campaign office. “We will provide options and supports for people who are seeking recovery from addiction and we will make downtown and Beltline communities safer.”
Gondek said her plan is to partner with the community court program to support people charged with an open use bylaw infraction, without sending them to criminal courts.
She added she will work with the province to offer “comprehensive alternatives” to the Sheldon Chumir supervised consumption site, which the provincial government said would come before its closure.
While Gondek said it is time to “move beyond failed models,” she did not delve into what specific models are failing.
“Specific to policies is not what I’m getting at, it’s the actions that have been taken that have been fragmented,” Gondek said.
According to political experts, the announcement was a change in tone for Gondek as she hopes to garner new support from more moderate Calgarians.
“It’s a response to concerns that have been raised and obviously have some traction,” said Lori Williams, an associate professor of policy studies at Mount Royal University.
“It’s also an area where she may be seen as having some weakness… She’ll be trying to persuade Calgarians that she’s in a better position than other candidates to address them effectively.”
However, one of her main mayoral race rivals, independent candidate Jeff Davison, was critical of the announcement.
“I think the mayor has had three and a half years to figure this out and in an election year with 45 days to go, has all of a sudden realized that people care about public safety,” he said.
Davison, meanwhile, held an announcement in the Beltline promising to put a four-year freeze on construction of new bike lanes in the city.
If elected, Davison said he would evaluate existing bike lanes, re-locate any lanes that have been deemed disruptive and commit to moving some bike lanes off the street over time.
“I’m not saying that we’re going to remove every single bike lane that’s out there, I think there are some of the major corridors that are working,” he said.
“But in areas that are not showing the positive impact for citizens, we’ve got to be able to move the needle and get rid of it.”
Farkas promises park protection
Former city councillor and independent mayoral candidate Jeromy Farkas launched a petition Thursday which calls for a ban on the sale of city park spaces.
Speaking near Richmond Green, where five and a half acres of land was sold to a developer in 2024, Farkas said his campaign pledges to invest in the creation of new park space and retrofit older or single-use parks.
“Once green space is gone… they’re never coming back. So we need to protect what we have,” he told reporters. “We need to be more creative in terms of bringing more green space online.”
Sharp denounces climate emergency
Ward 1 Coun. and Communities First mayoral candidate Sonya Sharp is calling for an audit of city spending related to council’s declaration of a climate emergency in 2021.
Sharp, along with Communities First councillors Andre Chabot, Dan McLean and Terry Wong, plan to introduce a motion prior to the campaign period to rescind the climate emergency declaration, account for climate-related expenditures and find cost savings and duplications.
All the co-signers of the motion, except for McLean, voted in favour of the climate declaration at the time.
“The climate emergency declaration was never about delivering better services to Calgarians, it was about political symbolism,” Sharp said in a statement.
“This audit is about accountability, clarity, and getting back to core responsibilities.”
Gondek, who spearheaded the move to declare a climate emergency as one of her first acts as mayor, questioned the timing of the motion and pointed to the wildfire smoke filling the skies as a sign climate policies are necessary.
“I’m interested to understand why my council colleagues want to repeal a decision we made four years ago,” Gondek said.
“What took them four years if they believed so strongly in it?”
The nomination deadline for candidates in the upcoming election is Sept. 22 at noon, and Calgarians will head to the polls on Oct. 20.