WHAT A WEEK!

We would like to congratulate the New Democratic Party on their historic provincial government victory, the successful MLAs in all the Calgary river ridings and all the candidates in last week’s election.
 
CRCAG Post-Election
CRCAG has wasted no time in adjusting to the election results and strategizing next steps during this time of change and uncertainty.  We’ve been actively reaching out to our many contacts and establishing new ones. You will see in the letter linked below, this includes reaching out directly to Premier-Designate Rachel Notley.  We will continue our efforts to engage in constructive dialogue with the Alberta Government, as we have in the past.
 
We also wrote to Mayor Nenshi on Sunday, May 10th, following media reports on the weekend implying he felt that the flood mitigation strategy voiced by the NDP (in response to the City Matters Survey and our own CRCAG Flood Mitigation Survey), which would cancel the current Springbank Off-Stream Diversion Project in favour on the McLean Creek Project, was acceptable. 
 
Without repeating the several points raised in our letter to the Mayor, we will say that our principal concern with the Elbow River mitigation strategy voiced pre-election by the NDP, is that halting the Springbank Project in mid-flight would realistically jeopardize the completion of any mitigation projects on the Elbow River, given the lengthy timeline and many contingencies to the McLean Creek Project. Many studies and analysis done to date (mostly found here: http://www.alberta.ca/flood-mitigation-studies.cfm) clearly support Springbank being the first mitigation project undertaken, and the data simply does not support another option. The Provincial Government made the right choice in September last year, and to stray from that focus, would truly threaten this City.
 
In subsequent discussions with the Mayor’s office this week, we were assured of the Mayor’s support of the Springbank Project, and of building at least two flood mitigation projects for the Elbow River, and the importance timely mitigation. We were also assured of the Mayor’s ongoing interest in pursuing all appropriate strategies for the Bow River and working with the new Government in that regard.
 
We look forward to discussing these concerns with the new NDP Government once they settle in. Based on the considerable data at hand, we are confident the conclusions reached by their predecessors will be self-evident.
 
CRCAG Mandate Survey
Thank you for your tremendous response to our recent Mandate Survey, where we’ve asked for your input to our Restated Mandate.  The survey responses indicated overwhelming support for the direction of CRCAG and we have received an influx of donations to CRCAG, for which we again thank our members.
 
Let Your Voice be Heard
We expect to soon reach out to our Members with a “Call to Action”, to have your voices heard by our newly elected representatives in the Legislature. You have always responded passionately and this message will be very important. Please stay tuned and help us to help you.
 
Annual General Meeting
We are organizing our Annual General Meeting for, hopefully, mid-to-late June. Like last year, we have invited both the Premier-Designate and the Mayor, and we hope they will be available to speak directly to our Members. We’ll provide further information on this as soon as we’re able.
 
Please let us know if you have any questions and we will try to respond as promptly as possible.
 
As always, thank you for your ongoing support!
 
Your CRCAG Board
 
CRCAG letter to Premier-Designate Notley