Over the weekend, prominent conservative political figures including Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, many of the other usual suspects on the right, and eventually what appeared to be flocks of right-wing online bots took to social media to attack Calgary Mayor Jeromy Farkas.
If this sounds familiar to you, it should. Smith’s United Conservative Party (UCP) and its political allies spent an awful lot of energy bitterly attacking Farkas’s predecessor, former mayor Jyoti Gondek, throughout her term in office from 2021 to 2025. Apparently they saw her as too woke, whatever that means.
But if you expected the UCP to stop picking fights with the chief magistrate of Cowtown after the election of Mr. Farkas, nominally a conservative of at least the fiscal variety, you were obviously mistaken.
Well, as another former mayor of Calgary famously observed not long after leaving that job, “Danielle Smith and the UCP government only know how to do two things: They know how to pick fights and they know how to waste money.” That, of course, was Naheed Nenshi, who is now the leader of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition in Edmonton.
Farkas’s political crime, real or imagined, was apparently the implementation of recent changes to the city’s noise control bylaws to reduce the amount of noise late on week nights from music venues run by the Calgary Stampede, which will run from July 3 to July 12 this year.
“Looks like the fun police have struck again in Calgary, this time targeting the Calgary Stampede music scene,” griped Smith in a verbose post on the social media site previously known as Twitter.
“By reducing allowable noise levels and shutting shows down early on weeknights, the city will negatively affect hundreds of workers and create additional public safety and crowd-management problems due to guests leaving in a shorter timeframe,” she said, stretching the likely impact of the changes considerably but at least sounding faintly coherent.
Poilievre, an Ottawa resident for more than two decades, cranked up the volume a few decibels and introduced a nastier tone. “City Hall gatekeepers are making a big mistake killing jobs, smothering country music culture, and cutting back performances at the world-famous Cowboys celebration during the Calgary Stampede,” he complained. (Country music culture? Or, as a separatist commentator for a right-wing Alberta website put it: “Stampede/cowbody (sic) culture.” You can’t make this up!)
“Millions flock to the Stampede because IT IS FUN to stay up late and listen to loud music,” the commentator added with some Trumpian ALL-CAPS. (And if you happen to pay taxes, live nearby and have a baby that can’t sleep, I guess, TOUGH S#!T!)
Other contributors to this increasingly fractious debate included Rob Anderson, Smith’s increasing obnoxious chief of staff; Calgary Nose Hill MP Michelle Rempel Garner; Stephen Harper scion and former UCP staffer Ben; and even separatist blowhard Jeffrey Rath.
For his part, Farkas, channelling California Governor Gavin Newsom’s tweet war with U.S. President Donald Trump, fired back at Premier Smith: “Looks like the fun police have struck again in Alberta, this time targeting people trying to enjoy a pint. This last-minute hike before Stampede will raise the minimum price of a beer from $3.20 to $5, a 60% increase. The provincial government will negatively affect thousands of workers and create additional problems for bars and restaurants already facing higher costs.”
Well, that’s a fair comment about Smith’s tax-and-spend Conservatives. Farkas also corrected misinformation in Rempel Garner’s and Anderson’s posts.
“We are taking public safety in our downtown seriously,” he told Rempel Garner, who is said to live in Oklahoma, far from the noise generated by the Stampede. “Last year several hundred people brought complaints. People reported property damage, windows shaking, items falling from shelves, music until 2 a.m., disorder, and excessive intoxication spilling into nearby neighbourhoods. … No (one) gets a free pass to disturb residents or create unsafe conditions. A great city backs major events and holds operators accountable.”
Interestingly, back when Gondek was mayor, a Postmedia columnist sympathetic to the UCP used to bleat tirelessly about music promoters with “zero respect” for the neighbours and the lack of response from City Hall, “where the headbangers rule the land.”
“City Hall has to do something,” wrote columnist Rick Bell last summer. “Lay down the law. Bring the noise down.”
Now? Unlike the streets around Stampede venues, there’s nothing but crickets from Postmedia.
So what’s this really about?
Normally, when Ms. Smith spins up a little Internet furore like this, the goal is to distract from one scandal or another. It’s hard to guess which one it might be right now, though, because there are so many possibilities.
Why this particular city issue would have attracted the attention of prominent federal Conservative politicians, ex politicians and their children may also have to remain a mystery.
Perhaps it was a favour to a supporter that just got out of hand.
