We Were First

Today I was searching through previous social media posts and I found one of the videos that was put out a few months about about A Better Calgary Party forming Ward Associations. What people do not realize is that we were working on that a full year before that video aired. A Better Calgary Party is not new. We have had a group of people working on it long before we had our first annual AGM in October. Long before this video was released in September we were hard at it. Long before thousands of people expressed their displeasure with the blanket rezoning and were ignored by city council in the spring of 2024 we had been meeting. When did we start?

Some of us were talking about a need for change while Nenshi was still mayor. We saw then that large union dollars were supporting his campaign and we could see how he cared little for regenerating the downtown core and that his sole interest was in creating a bigger salary for himself. The real icing on the cake however, was the day that Gondek declared that her priority was "climate emergency." That is what woke us up. Shortly after that people began to gather and talk about what could be done. Some of us had already discussed a Recall Campaign before it was started by Landon Johnston. Once he got it going we watched with interest and many of our core team supported his initiative and got more involved in what was going on at City Hall.

By the fall of 2023 regular meetings were already happening to discuss how to form a party. Why? It seemed to be a good solution. The left had been running a party type system for years already. We could identify the PACs that were gathering union money and donating them to their vetted candidates. This had brought us Nenshi, and now Gondek. We could see that it made sense to start a party so we could more effectively raise money, and we could stop the vote splitting. There were the rumblings coming from the provincial level that they saw the problem as well. They could see that we had 8 councillors voting together with the mayor on every issue and that the constituents were not being served. They could see that the Greenline project was not sound, and that common sense was not being considered. So while we were creating a plan to do something about this mess, our provincial leaders were thinking about how to change things as well. It was a perfect storm of events.

By the beginning of 2024 we were well on our way with regular meetings happening. We decided that we wanted to be a big tent. We wanted to draw together center to right conservatives. We formed working committees and we found unity. We wanted to make a grass roots plan that would help get candidates in place in every Ward in Calgary that cared about this city. The plan was not just for this next election, but for all future elections. This is the biggest difference between us and other "parties" that are coming out. They are not real parties. They are slates. They don't have a plan for the future. They are trying desperately in this shifting reality to be viable. They are trying to get elected for one election. They are choosing their candidates and they don't have members to vote for their candidates. This is like comparing apples to a watermelon tree. They are not even close to what A Better Calgary Party is. They are even saying "We are not a party."

We did the work. We had many meetings and a team created the logo and then people voted on the logo. A team created the branding colors and another committee made the 10 Principles on the website. Then we all voted on them. Another committee worked for months on the by-laws. That was an incredible amount of work. By-laws from other organizations were reviewed and research was done. Then this group worked tirelessly for months to create a document that is more than 70 pages long. Then it had to go to the lawyers for recommendations and then it had to come back to the committee and then it was voted on by the Founding Committee. Then after all of that, it had to be voted on again at the AGM in October.

We created Ward Associations so that candidates from those wards can step up and then we can run an internal party election before the city election. Why? Because this stops the vote splitting. We don't need 5 candidates who believe the same thing to run against each other and cancel out each other votes. Ego does this. Unity does not. We run first inside the party. Party members vote. The winner is supported by the party. Others step down and support the winner. Then we have a chance against union money and the ongoing purple machine created by Nenshi.

There was a Launch Event in May of 2024 with over 300 people There was a Stampede Barbeque in July of 2024. There was an AGM in October, just for starters, besides other smaller supporting events. We didn't hatch this up because we were forced to respond to legislation as existing councillors have declared. We formed a party. We made a plan for the future. We did it right. We did it first. We are here for the long haul.

We are proud to say that we are a party. We are proud to say that we are common sense conservatives from a big tent. We are the only option in the next Calgary election. Join as a member today so you can vote for your Ward Candidates and encourage all conservative candidates to get on board, even if they are in a slate. Together we win!