You want an accountable city council free of special interests? Shouldn’t you come clean about who you are and our own special interests?
About the last thing we need in politics — especially at the municipal level — is even less accountability.
About the only thing that may be worse is ongoing indifference — again, especially at the municipal level.
On this latter problem of getting people interested in civic affairs, one perhaps owes Advance Regina a little gratitude.
Unfortunately, any such gratitude should be tempered by the fact that the people behind Advance Regina seem mostly to be Saskatchewan Party operatives mostly interested in electing their politicians … or at least, defeating city councillors they don’t like.
You say you want an accountable city council, free of special interests? Shouldn’t you come clean about who you are and your own special interests?
Wouldn’t it be better to put your energies into electing MLAs in Regina and Saskatoon, which seems less and less likely by the day?
At that time, Councillor Dan LeBlanc equated this to the city not accepting advertising from companies promoting “sex, drugs and rock n’ roll”. Yep. Sex, drugs, rock n’ roll. And Esso sponsoring hockey tournaments.
Clearly, the people behind Advance Regina have long memories.
Advance Regina’s website even advocates for some concerns you may share, like the 24-per-cent increase in property taxes Reginans have seen since 2019, the dangers of city streets, the cost of renaming Dewdney Avenue or calls by some councillors for the federal government to place an arms embargo on Israel.
“Can we afford this city council?” its expensive billboards ask.
City politicians do need to be better scrutinized. If they aren’t, we could experience the ridiculously unimaginable, like nuns having their land expropriated from under them as it gets flipped by donors and business associates, or unexplained multi-million-dollar payouts to friends who didn’t get to build their office tower in the middle of the city’s nicest park.
To this point, the people behind Advance Regina seem to be more about shaming and naming and discouraging people from voting for “activist councillors” (read: left-wing councillors) like LeBlanc, Cheryl Stadnuchuk and Andrew Stevens (who is not running again).
And they also seem to going to great lengths to avoid telling us who they are … because they seem to believe that’s somehow irrelevant. (As Tank noted in his column, the names on the registry of “Advance Regina” were scrubbed from the record for “privacy” reasons.)
All this piqued the interest of CBC investigative reporter Geoff Leo, who wasn’t getting much information from the lone public name associated with Advance Regina — its executive director, Kaitlyn Blackmer-Tuchscherer (coincidentally, a Sask. Party political operative and organizer), who told Leo she had “taken a step back from the organization.”
So the enterprising reporter made arrangements for a pittance donation to Advance Regina, to see what he could see on the non-tax-deductible receipt. The receipt came from Canadians for Livable Cities (CLC), whose only project is Advance Regina. And CLC has three directors: Trent Fraser, Dean Klippenstine and Bruce Evans (former White City mayor) are all connected to the Sask. Party or the federal Conservative Party. (None of them made themselves available for comment.)
Do they have a right to advocate for who they want on council or who they don’t want? Of course.
But don’t we also have a right to know who is behind uncontrolled third-party advocacy groups with direct ties to the provincial government?
Mandryk is the political columnist for the Regina Leader-Post and the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.
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