Bell: Nenshi on Calgary water pipe fiasco, he throws city hall suits under the bus

Alberta NDP leader and former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi is on the radio.

CBC Calgary.

He is on the radio because he was the long-time mayor of Calgary, in office more than a decade.

Surely Nenshi would have something to say about an expert report ripping to shreds Calgary city hall for its gross mishandling of the city water system.

Surely Nenshi would say his piece, especially since much of what went wrong happened when he was the mayor all those long years and there are Calgarians holding his feet to the fire.

Still, Nenshi has a legion of stalwart defenders, filled with an almost religious fervour.

Many Calgarians for many years considered Nenshi to be the smartest person in any room, a political rock star, the saviour of the city, an individual who would bring huge change to city hall and the city itself, perhaps even a future progressive prime minister.

He would bring politics in full sentences to Calgary. His diehard devotees didn’t know exactly what politics in full sentences meant but it didn’t really matter because it never happened.

Calgary didn’t get grassroots democracy, it got an agenda shoved down the throats of those of us considered too stupid or too nasty to follow the progressive pied piper.

Still, among the true believers nothing sticks to Nenshi.

He is considered so game-changing by the NDP they picked Nenshi to be their leader and the NDP became the Nenshi Democratic Party, the party members calculating he and he alone could kick out Premier Danielle Smith and the UCP.

Nenshi faces some good questions from the radio host and the answers are very revealing.

In 2017, when Nenshi was mayor, this massive water pipe providing most of the water to Calgarians was marked as high risk.

Did Nenshi know the water system was at high risk of failing?

“I did not,” says the man who was mayor of Calgary from 2010 to 2021, a man his many devoted followers believed knew everything.

How is it possible Nenshi as the mayor did not know?

“That kind of information didn’t filter up to the key decision makers.”

He says when he was mayor he didn’t even know the water pipe blew in 2004. Nenshi says city paper shufflers thought it was a very isolated issue.

“It was never anything that came up in our conversations.”

Nenshi insists he did ask a lot of questions about the water system.

He says it was not so much city council making the wrong decisions. It was council not having the information to make decisions.

Nenshi says the city’s water system was focused on pipes in new parts of the city and “it was difficult to keep in mind the old stuff.”

He says some in the city’s water system focused on how they were really good at patching up leaks and maintaining the old stuff and not having their eye on the risk of much bigger problems.

Nenshi is asked about cutting costs in the water system when he was mayor.

He says the economy fell in late 2015.

He says Calgarians were very concerned about the cost of living and the Nenshi-led council’s job was to keep taxes and fees as low as possible.

How did that work out? And why weren’t there substantial cuts into the actual flab of the city hall management crowd and why didn’t the essentials get the money rather than pet projects desired by the cool kids?

Finally, and quite rightly, Nenshi is asked if he feels partially responsible for not fixing the system.

He won’t admit to not fixing the system but says it is not all the fault of the city hall suits.

City council’s job is to ask the right questions and dig deeply.

“Clearly we should have been digging deeply and I will take responsibility for that,” says Nenshi.

That, folks, is as much of a sorry as you are going to get.

Meanwhile, we could get some news next week in the Heads Will Roll department.

Some councillors have the knives out. Some are trying to locate their backbone.

Someone has to pay for the water pipe disaster. Nenshi and former mayor Jyoti Gondek are gone.

Calgary city hall bigshots are still around.

The experts say the status quo cannot continue. The responsibility falls to the top of the house.

The hope for the NDP and the Nenshi groupies is their man’s part in this nasty drama will fade quickly.

Premier Danielle Smith’s UCP are committed to not having that happen.

rbell@postmedia.com