You know, even in the economic downturn in Alberta, there are restaurants in Calgary, and even in Canmore up the mountain, that cannot open for lunch because they cannot find staff. And they cannot find staff because there's nowhere for those people to live. And so safe and decent housing, market housing, subsidized housing, the whole bit, we really, really need to have our heads on straight on this, and we don't yet.
Naheed NenshiYou know, the key issue is that city issues are not to be put in a box and say well, that's what the mayor wants. They're Canadian issues. Cities account for 75 percent of our GDP. If you don't have a plan for cities, it means you don't have a plan for the economy.
Naheed NenshiAll three of the leaders looked like they were surprised to be asked about housing. And really none of them had anything interesting to say. And so this is something we need to push hard on to ensure that they understand that our housing crisis is really a major economic issue. It's not a social issue; it's an economic issue.
Naheed NenshiI'm happy that Canadians are having a good debate about infrastructure, and not whether it's important but more how we're going to pay for it.
Naheed NenshiWe still need to hear more about things like water and wastewater infrastructure and community infrastructure, like local rinks and libraries. But at least we're much further on that debate than we were in the last federal election.
Naheed NenshiBut of course in my world nothing is political. And everything's about policy and governance. And maybe a bit of politics.
Naheed NenshiWhen we look at cutting people's commute - like that word infrastructure is boring. Who knows what that means? But what it really means is we got to cut people's commutes, we got to reduce congestion. Congestion costs the economy tens of billions of dollars a year to have people just stuck in traffic and non-productive time. So we got to fix that. And the best way to do that is invest in transit. And - so I'm happy that all three of the main parties seem to agree that investing in transit is important.
Naheed Nenshi