Candidate Interview: Jonathan Sunstrum

By Jon Roe

<1. What do you think the big issues in this election are?
2. How are you planning to address the city’s crime problem?
3. What can the city do to ease the crunch on affordable housing?
4. What transportation infrastructure need would you address first?
5. What separates you from the other candidates?

1. I think one of the biggest issues in this election is accountability.

You have an incumbent who’s been in there for six years who’s done an unprecedented amount of fundraising. You’ve got campaign legislation laws that are the worst in the land and this is after the review last year. It’s rife with corruption and potential for abuse.

2. One of the fundamental issues here is you have a drug-fuelled crime issue here in the city that I proposed to one of the police officers, who I know, ‘have you ever contemplated building a crack shack in the city?’ He said, ‘what do you mean?’ ‘I mean a place where they can go in and do their business with immunity and have nurses or doctors or paramedics outside.’ He said, ‘of course not, that wouldn’t be politically feasible or palatable.’ I said, ‘oh really? Then tell me what do you call that thing on eighth street and seventh avenue? That’s the same thing except it doesn’t have four walls on it.’ This is nonsense.

3. Smarten up and grow up. Utilization of existing brown fields or any space or place we have. So we can stop closing down existing accommodations, case in point would be the lovely deal they did with EnCana. EnCana’s known as a kind, caring company that really cares for the people in this community and its neighbours which is the biggest load of horse shit. When EnCana bought the York hotel behind closed doors with an untendered deal with the Mayor’s involvement and then dragged Calgary Housing into it, they removed over 200 people from that building and then scattered them around to different apartments in the city and then gave them that offer to do that. The affordable housing thing, I do not think that the current administration takes it seriously.

4. Initially, people thought it was a very glib answer when I was asked what do we do with transportation and I would answer: drive less. Think about it. The change is not going to come at the top of these corporations that are hiring a lot of people. The problem here is for people to contemplate a change, that means a change for everybody.

This car-centric city has just gotten silly. If you’ve ever tried to ride your bicycle from Chinook mall to the downtown core, go ahead, be my guest. There’s no straight-line path.

Less cars on the road, more bicycles. More healthy options. Maybe to go faster than 20 km/h. For crying out loud, 20 km/h is third gear on your bicycle.

5. Passion and purpose. For me my passion is real and my purpose is real. Mine’s not a cheesy slogan backed up by cut-and-paste policies as his worship’s.

ATD. It’s called Attention to Detail. I noticed the Mayor wiping his brow when he got off the train the other day. I guess he didn’t notice they didn’t have air conditioning either.