‘Who do you trust?’: Calgary mayoral candidate on current council failures and looking ahead

Jeff Davison on Alberta Primetime Oct 9, 2025.

Calgary mayoral candidate Jeff Davison speaks with Alberta Primetime host Michael Higgins about his plans for public safety, affordability and infrastructure.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Michael Higgins: What do you feel makes this the most important civic elections Calgarians are going to face?

What prompted you to take this second run at the mayor’s chair?

Jeff Davison: The interesting thing is, whether we talk about public safety, affordability or infrastructure, city council has failed, and I think that is the biggest thing that people are going to consider in this election. More importantly than that, it’s all going to be about: who do you trust?

We’ve got candidates who used to represent they were somebody, and now they are somebody different. We have candidates running on behalf of City Council who have had four years to get things done and haven’t done anything. But now that we’re in an election, here they are.

For me, this is all about - how do we address crime and disorder, how do we fix our failing infrastructure, and how do we do things like a tax freeze, so that we create affordability for Calgarians.

MH: You’re among the many mayoral candidates looking to repeal blanket rezoning.

What would you replace it with, while addressing affordability and growth in Calgary?

JD: The interesting thing with blanket rezoning is, we were led to believe this is about affordability. But when the average row house is starting north of $700,000, that’s not affordable. For Calgary, where we’re really growing by about 70,000 people every year, building four units at a time is simply not going to keep up with demand.

I look to work I did as a former city councillor. I looked at three new districts within existing districts, all of them will add about 55,000 residences to the west side. All of them have mixed use, mixed product type. We have amenities built in, park spaces, the types of communities that people are looking to buy into.

We can’t grow the tax base and keep up with growth if we’re not simply looking at larger projects to develop. Building four units at a time and simply having neighbors fighting over parking with one another is not the goal.

MH: Featuring prominently in your platform is a tax freeze.

How deep would cuts need to be to municipal government to make that a reality?

JD: A lot of my competitors are going to say that means cuts. It absolutely does not mean cuts. It actually means re-investing in core services and getting out of some of the pet projects. We’ll pause the $45 million council has allocated for new bike lanes. What we’ll do is reallocate that to things like roads and other infrastructure. When 40 per cent of our roads are now in disrepair, we need to focus on the basics before we start building additional amenities. To me, a four-year tax freeze is absolutely possible.

Remember, I did this job for four years as a city councillor - looking at how we manage our investment income, looking at how we grow tax base to offset inflation, looking at an industrial land strategy that will help us additionally build tax base where one doesn’t exist today. All of these are how we’re going to manage money differently in order to ensure that Calgarians have predictability in what their taxes are going to look like over the next four years.

MH: You’ve identified public safety as the priority issue to be addressed by the next city council.

How would your approach differ from what’s already being done?

JD: We have city councillors running in this race that are showing up to say, here’s what we’re going to do to address public safety. But they’ve had that opportunity for four years, and they failed Calgarians. They failed seniors who won’t walk around downtown. They failed young people who don’t feel safe on our transit system. They failed people like me who don’t feel safe walking around without checking over our shoulder all the time.

The idea here is, we’ve got to get everybody together and agree we have a simple problem that we have to solve, and it’s a collective problem. That’s going to take all the orders of government working together. That’s going to take our policing agencies, all of our community and social agencies. We have to sit down at the table and say, how do we collectively solve this; agree that we have the same problem, and then work within our own lanes to solve the problem for everyone.

This is a national problem that we’re seeing in all of our major cities. The difference between Calgary and everyone else is being an entrepreneurial spirit city, being a city that gets things done. I actually think we have an opportunity to put a pilot program in place that will help North America solve public disorder.

MH: How much would you have to lean on the provincial government to accomplish that?

JD: This council has had a failure to build partnership right, and when it comes to mental health and addiction, that is the purview of the province. I work in health care right now, and I can tell you that’s not the city’s responsibility. But probably 90 per cent of the problem we have on the streets right now relates to mental health and addiction challenges.

We’ll work with the provincial government on how we’re going to police. We’ll work with the federal government on how we’re going to create bail reform and ensure that criminals who are arrested are staying off the streets and not continuing to prey on those victims that they often seek once they’re let back out. Then it’s really working with the provincial government on how they plan to deal with the mental health and addiction challenges that we’re seeing, which may include recovery centers.

MH: What approach would you take to navigating new relations with the Smith government under a city council led by yourself?

JD: In business, you learn that you don’t always have to like your partner, but you do have to find the common ground and get things done together. I actually look forward to building new relationships, both with the provincial government and the federal government. At the end of the day, we need a better deal for Calgarians, and that’s absolutely what I’m here to fight for.

MH: You’re running as an independent, yet you’ve received an endorsement from the “A Better Calgary Party”.

Any concerns about what that might say to voters?

JD: No, I’m absolutely thrilled that we have the endorsement. I am running as an independent mayoral candidate, but when large groups of people who have formed a party also say, this is somebody who we can work with, this is somebody who has aligned vision and goals with our values, I’m happy to take their endorsement.

I continue to say we’re going to elect people from all different walks of life. My job as mayor is to, simply put, bring everybody together, find the common ground and get it done. That starts by city council delivering a strategic plan to Calgarians over what the next four years is going to look like. There should be no surprises in what we’re going to do going forward.

MH: How tight a mayoral race do you expect this to be?

JD: It is right down to the wire. When you think just about less than two per cent have gone out in early voting right now, it tells you that 50 plus per cent of eligible voters are undecided. This week is incredibly important. I think it’s a tight race.

I think everybody should vote for who they believe is going to be the best candidate. I asked Calgarians to think about one thing, who do you trust and who has a reputation of getting things done? That’s going to matter in terms of how we set up the next four years, and, frankly, potentially the next decade here in Calgary.