Calgary recall petitioner happy he met mayor, but 'disappointed' she didn't resign
CBC
Landon Johnston got his 15 minutes with the mayor of Calgary, and he came out of the meeting still calling for Jyoti Gondek's resignation.
A local HVAC business owner, Johnston, has been collecting signatures to recall Gondek since early February.
Earlier this month, the mayor agreed to a 15-minute meeting with Johnston to discuss his concerns. That meeting happened at city hall Friday afternoon.
Walking out of that meeting, and into — presumably — his first media scrum, Johnston looked around him at the reporters and microphones and said, seemingly half to himself, "That was interesting."
He said the mayor was very polite and friendly during their conversation.
"She listened to everything I had to say. The dialogue has been opened. It just sucks that it took 50 days and thousands and thousands of man-hours for her to hear my voice," said Johnston.
"I'm happy it happened, but I'm disappointed that she didn't resign."
He said his biggest issues with the mayor remain accountability and transparency, along with concerns about the cost of living, which he believes will only get worse when the federal carbon tax is increased April 1, something he acknowledges the mayor has no control over.
"People are losing their house. People are having to move out of the city because they can't afford it," he said.
One area where he and Gondek have pledged to work together is on changes to the recall legislation itself. Johnston wants it changed because the rules make it next to impossible for a recall petition to be successful.
Under the terms of the provincial legislation that created the recall process, Johnston must collect more than 514,000 signatures by April 4 in order to force the mayor from office.
That number is higher than the number of Calgarians who voted in the last municipal election.
"Her job has always been safe under this petition because the boundaries and regulations and thresholds were always impossible," he said.
For Gondek, the concern is more about the time and cost involved in dealing with petitions like the one Johnston started.
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