'Ups and downs': Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi on 11 years in office
CBC
With less than a week until Calgarians elect a new mayor, outgoing Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi reflects on his 11 years in office, and how the city has changed in the past decade.
There have been four states of local emergency declared in 136 years. Nenshi has been mayor for all of them.
"Lucky me," Nenshi says, adding that floods, windstorms, hailstorms, economic drops, and the COVID-19 pandemic have had one constant — people coming together.
"The flood, of course, is the best example. Thousands and thousands of people coming into the flooded areas and just cleaning up stranger's basements. But through the pandemic, through every other crisis we've had, the number one thing we've been able to count on is the kindness of people looking after one another," Nenshi said.
"It also meant that we were able to build a very flexible government. And to me, that's very exciting because people know they can count on their government to be there at times of crisis."
Nenshi said Calgary is a very different city compared to when he was first elected in 2010, when the city's population had just grown to a million people.
WATCH | Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi says city politics largely non-partisan:
Intelligence regarding foreign interference sometimes didn't make it to the prime minister's desk in 2021 because Canada's spy agency and the prime minister's national security adviser didn't always see eye to eye on the nature of the threat, according to a recent report from one of Canada's intelligence watchdogs.