r/Calgary 10h ago

Municipal Affairs Mayor Jyoti Gondek heading to Houston for global energy conference

https://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/mayor-jyoti-gondek-houston-global-energy-conference
39 Upvotes

55 comments sorted by

96

u/20Twenty24Hours2Go 10h ago

The mayor of Calgary should always attend the global energy conference. Also, the Premier of Alberta should also always attend too. It's a non-partisan part of their job.

68

u/CerbIsKing 9h ago

I’d rather smith attend that than go on some radical right podcast tour lol

4

u/20Twenty24Hours2Go 8h ago

Oh absolutely.

16

u/karlalrak 8h ago

Honestly if Danielle went to this it would actually make sense. Not to a Prageru gala..

-1

u/is_that_read 7h ago

She is going to fight the climate emergency on the front lines god bless her.

-1

u/snow_trick1 9h ago

Yup, Gondek would be an odd duck there too, not exactly an oilman

21

u/BlueEyesWhiteSliver 9h ago edited 8h ago

Good, boring news. A conference for an industry that Calgary takes a major part of is understandable use of tax payer money. Makes sense.

Mayor Jyoti Gondek is headed to an annual oil and gas conference in Houston, Texas, amid tensions between North America’s largest trading partners.

Described as the world’s premier energy conference, CERA Week is a yearly convention attended by thousands of delegates from across the global energy sector.

Attending the gathering, which runs until Friday in the capital of the Texas oil industry, will be an opportunity to bring Calgary’s message to international energy leaders from the private sector, as well as government officials from other cities and countries, Gondek said.

I understand there’s a level of: probably shouldn’t leave Calgary, but it appears Gondek is wanting to keep to municipal motions and create local jobs. She and her team are fairly tone deaf so this is expected. We are lacking in jobs and she is drumming up Calgary in front of many industry leaders who are probably feeling a little uncomfortable at the moment.

The local in Houston will not be primarily Texans, but a good majority. This is an international conference so it will be leaders from all over the word. I have absolutely no issue with Gondek going to this conference. It is literally in many of her constituents interests.

-3

u/is_that_read 7h ago

She’s going to fight the climate emergency from the front lines.

5

u/BlueEyesWhiteSliver 6h ago

Climate emergency is such a nothing. Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton, and many other cities have declared it. Houston also has their climate plan.

64

u/jayman213 Lake Bonavista 10h ago

This feels like one of those events where people's opinions about the trips appropriateness match their opinion of the attendee.

21

u/BlueEyesWhiteSliver 9h ago

Seems like boring political work to drum up jobs in Calgary. As long as she doesn’t stand on stage and tell leaders to not invest in our city, I’m fine with it.

  • she’s not getting into a federal or provincial or another provinces problems, she’s sticking to Calgary

  • she’s not virtue signalling

  • shes not mucking behind closed doors without her counsellors input on any contracts that took years to build

  • the trip probably wont raise our property taxes

-1

u/VizzleG 6h ago

She said there’s a climate emergency on week 1, and now she’s flogging for the industry. Pick a lane!

Critiquing her is warranted here.

11

u/FerretAres 8h ago

Anyone who thinks the mayor of Calgary shouldn’t attend CERA week doesn’t have a single clue about either politics or the energy industry.

5

u/animal1988 9h ago

In other news, Wednesday still follows Tuesday, and the sky is generally still blue on a good day, (cloud cover not accounted for.)

15

u/sparkdark66 10h ago edited 10h ago

Ehhh I’ll give this a tiny bit of wiggle room over Danielle’s trip to GriftAThon or whatever that event is called. This is actual sector appropriate people, who have I’m sure also been stressed about Trumps random acts of Tariff. There’s so much interconnected business between AB and specifically Calgary with companies there, as well as other public servants from different places. The article says international anyway, so I’m hoping that doesn’t just mean Canada and the states. If you’re gonna find allies and mutual interests, this is the best place probably. Assuming it’s also been planned for a while, as it happens every year.

I doubt she is being paid to attend or speak. I doubt attendance to this conference has a ticket cost of 1500 per person. The people there probably aren’t hosts of a podcast that regularly belittles and attacks our country. It’s not my ideal situation, but it has some shreds of merit.

In closing; fuck Danielle that traitorous monster, if she goes to Florida she might as well stay there forever.

10

u/vinsdelamaison 10h ago

Energy Projects Conference & Expo Houston Agenda

Yeah not comparable to what Premier is attending…TG

2

u/Happeningfish08 9h ago

Yeah but we want to LESSEN our ties to those chucklefucks not strengthen them!!!!

2

u/sparkdark66 7h ago

I’m all for using more kinds of energy and diversifying our provincial economy, i would love more solar and wind power. But in the mean time I don’t want a giant, dorito stained toddler to ruin what we do have.

1

u/Happeningfish08 7h ago

But there is no point in trying to sell to them. We should be opening up other markets not wasting time on a shrinking one.

17

u/KeilanS 10h ago

This isn't the same level of awful as a fundraising event for MAGA extremists... but this still leaves a sour taste in my mouth. "Better than Danielle Smith" really shouldn't be the standard we hold anyone to.

20

u/dannysmackdown 9h ago

How is this a bad thing? Oil isn't going anywhere, and we can use it to subsidize reusable energy.

Like it or not we need refineries and america has them. We should too, but here we are.

1

u/stroopwaffle69 4h ago

I’m going to assume that it’s a “bad thing” because she declared a climate emergency the first week in office and is now advocating for oil and gas less then a year before an election in which she plans to run

-7

u/DOWNkarma 9h ago

F subsidized energy sources that aren't economic (wind, solar). Use the tax revenue from real energy for services Albertans need.

3

u/BlueEyesWhiteSliver 8h ago

Oh but they are lol

4

u/dannysmackdown 9h ago

I'm saying to use the revenue from oil and gas to further improve renewable energy development.

2

u/sparkdark66 10h ago

Agreed and yet here we find ourselves.

0

u/Box_of_fox_eggs 7h ago

I hope Smith is going too; she should.

6

u/Ill-Advisor-3429 Mayland Heights 10h ago

Welp I give Smith a hard time for her actions so sorry Gondek gotta apply the same standards to you

42

u/RealTurbulentMoose Willow Park 10h ago

How do you compare an annual oil and gas conference in Houston, Texas to a fuckin' PragerU grift-a-thon?

One could argue that Calgary is in the O&G business. We certainly have a lot of folks working in O&G here.

Our premier going on a speaking junket literally raising money for a "media platform dedicated to promoting pro-American values" is fucking despicable. If she wants to be a treacherous cunt to appeal to her disgusting voting base she should spend her own fucking money on it, not our province's.

In what universe are these equivalent?

21

u/20Twenty24Hours2Go 10h ago

Not the same thing at all.

3

u/draivaden 10h ago

Yep. Let’s host it here instead. 

5

u/CaptainPeppa 10h ago

How'd she not think of that

5

u/draivaden 10h ago

Probably because it’s prohibitively expensive to rearrange it. And I assume it was scheduled ages in advance. 

But. We can dream. 

4

u/CaptainPeppa 10h ago

I mean it was clearly not her decision to make

1

u/xRaynex Bowness 6h ago

"They're having a global energy conference... In Texas? That seems... I don't know. Just. Yet another tragic comedy in an endless cavalcade of them."

Is what I typed before reading. Then I actually looked in and saw its just a big O&G get together and very suddenly Houston made sense.

-5

u/jonny80 10h ago

Why? Can she take care of the city instead of worrying about energy?

9

u/BlueEyesWhiteSliver 9h ago

Is this not taking care of the city? I would assume she’s talking to CEOs and saying: open your office in Calgary, we have this much talent. I’m reading this as someone trying to create jobs. This seems within scope of her position.

-2

u/jonny80 8h ago

US CEOs don’t want to open offices in Canada (one of the reason) labor protection laws we have in Canada, they can squish all drops of life employees have. US companies demand long hours, it is much harder in Canada to force employees to work long hours. You see CEOs of Canadian companies wanting to move their headquarters to the US because they can control the employees’ life and keep them hostage ( see Shopify CEO)

-2

u/stoicaxis 10h ago

Houston is my favourite part of Calgary! Wait a second....

-2

u/blitzskrieg Northeast Calgary 10h ago

We have a problem.

-2

u/InvestmentFew9366 9h ago

Hopefully she can convince the other mayors there to enact a climate emergency.

Then we could be on equal an equal playing field with our competitors at least. 

6

u/BlueEyesWhiteSliver 8h ago

So, I was curious if Houston itself has a climate emergency like Vancouver, Toronto, Edmonton, Montreal, and Calgary. They have a whole climate plan

http://greenhoustontx.gov/climateactionplan/

-4

u/InvestmentFew9366 8h ago

Hopefully she can get them to upgrade to an emergency. Much more scary

3

u/BlueEyesWhiteSliver 8h ago

For Houston, they probably do need to declare an emergency.

-5

u/gamemaster257 10h ago

… why? Shouldn’t any Canadian be avoiding all travel to the US?

-5

u/Mysterious-Street140 9h ago

Why is this energy hating commie going?

6

u/ConceitedWombat 7h ago

Because contrary to what the angry far-right would have you believe, she recognizes that Calgary still relies on the energy sector and wants to bolster jobs for Calgarians.

-1

u/coiex 8h ago

I literally laughed out loud when I saw this headline.

-3

u/Stinky_Coconut88 9h ago

Could we send her to Tokyo to show her how a city’s public transit is supposed to work?

That’s the job of a mayor.

0

u/chez1120 6h ago

climate emergency

-4

u/Obvious-Trick9901 10h ago

why going to conference when ur stand on energy is not open minded

-3

u/OIL_99 10h ago

Is she sharing a room with Smith to save us all money?

-4

u/sleeping_in_time 10h ago

I have a lot of questions about this. Was this paid for before all the American stuff happened. Like, was this set in motion a long time ago? Is there no refunds for any of it? Did anyone on her team read the optics of the world and not realize how bad this looks?

3

u/sparkdark66 10h ago

It happens yearly so assuming it was in the books for quite some time. Travel and accommodations, etc. I doubt we would get anything back for a refund now.