Calgary’s municipal election is now less than a month away and nine people are vying for your vote for the mayor’s seat. CTV News Calgary invited each of the mayoral candidates this year to answer the same three questions in three minutes or less. The video segment is posted in full above – and the answers are transcribed below. Larry Heather is a mayoral candidate running as an independent. Why are you running for mayor? Heather: “I really appreciate living in Calgary. It was a fantastic town in the past. We’ve seen a great decline in civic spirit, and you look at the maintenance of the city, so I’ve run... this is my fourth time to run for mayor. Each time I bring up questions that are generally not brought up by other candidates. And I do have questions about the functioning of the city. “I know quite a bit by attending city council, how the administration operates and how different things are hidden from the public. I know how to uncover that and expose it. One of the biggest problems in the City of Calgary is the conduct of the elections. I do not believe the election process is as secure as it could be. “We’re now having six days of advance voting and 42 separate polls. The chain of custody for the ballots gets weaker and weaker the farther it is separated apart from the day of election. “Now we’re going to have a counting center where perhaps up to half the votes are going to be counted in a dislocated center that is, like, a cavernous hall – poorly lit, very echoey. That’s the Big Four Building. I don’t know where they’re getting the extra 1,300 or so extra vote counters… whether they’ve hired out an election service company, if there’s a non-disclosure agreement about this election. “I’m very... I’ve seen too many slip-ups in the past, like advance votes, not checking off the voters and being left to their purely honour system that they won’t go vote again. Now, this time, they’re supposed to check it out, but I’m always watching for what’s going on. I’ve taken the City of Calgary to court twice.” What’s the most important issue that needs to be addressed in the city in the next year? Heather: “Well, funny that it should be this location of the Canyon Meadows Aquatic Center. We had a vote in council that decreed that all city washrooms would be accessible to all gender declarers.” NOTE: CTV News chose not to include Heather’s complete answer as it was inflammatory and included non-factual claims. “In fact, they put a bylaw in that you could not protest within 100 metres of this on anything to do with charter rights. And I do have that an appeal court to overturn that bylaw right now.” Why should Calgarians vote for you? Heather: “You should vote for me because I am a social conservative Christian who is under the Lordship of Christ, just like Charlie Kirk was.”
