Now also at @collenbe.bsky.social ! Enjoys traveling, meeting people, creating Places & a rare native Calgarian.
Calgary
Joined March 2010
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Chris Ollenberger retweeted
Notably absent from today's budget presentation was any discussion of the impact on non-residential taxpayers. Calgary businesses paid 46% of the property tax share in 2025. As budget deliberations continue, @cityofcalgary should be transparent about what proposed increases mean for local employers and small businesses.
NEW: Calgary city council has released preliminary budget estimates for the 2027-30 budget.
It outlines three property tax increase scenarios that would see the typical Calgary homeowner paying an additional $52/month.
Chris Ollenberger retweeted
Pieces like this by Ontario based academic spouting anger towards Alberta is not the way to deal with this issue. In fact, it makes it worse.
Opinion: Why we should stop taking Alberta separatism seriously theglobeandmail.com/opinion/…
Chris Ollenberger retweeted
Sorry, no dice we need 45’ so go ahead and lop the first 15’ off each building and increase road deaths by 7x. For safety.
Seems kind of obvious that the best possible form of urban living is small streets and 4-5 story dwellings , with lots of street calming and vegetation.
Perfect density but still calm . Incredible walkability but also safe for kids. Mixed use zoning obviously
Somehow we fell in love with towers and bungalows and parking and pedestrianization , huge parks and wide boulevards and the extremes
Chris Ollenberger retweeted
Yeah. Been saying this for a while.
I just had a talk with one of 🇨🇦’s former top bankers.
He made a great point:
🇨🇦 banks are remarkably comfortable lending you $ to buy a house- but talk to an entrepreneur about asking banks for $ to build a company & you get a very different answer.
Then we wonder why our house prices soar while our productivity/entrepreneurship lag.
We’ve spent decades designing a banking system that encourages one & discourages the other.
Maybe we should change that.
Chris Ollenberger retweeted
Roughly, there’s ~$800 billion in taxpayer-funded education sitting outside the province that paid for it. With Alberta and B.C. the largest beneficiaries.
My latest for @TheHubCanada on the largest financial transfer nobody talks about: thehub.ca/2026/07/02/the-big… #cdnecon #cdnpoli
Chris Ollenberger retweeted
NEW: Calgary city councillors are eyeing alternate alignments options for the Green Line through the downtown core as part of a city functional study on an elevated line. Ward 5 Coun. Raj Dhaliwal voted against.
Chris Ollenberger retweeted
The default size of a fire truck the U.S. is entirely based on the personal preferences of firefighters & their love of big trucks.
The rest of the world designed the trucks to meet the city. In the U.S. we designed our cities to meet the expanding trucks.
In return we got the following:
-no superior outcomes in fire deaths
-more road injuries and deaths
-less space for people and housing
-more expense
-less enjoyable cities
Great job @fordnation. @CanadianPM needs to make this happen federally asap along with all other provincial and muncipal governments across the country. theglobeandmail.com/canada/a…
Chris Ollenberger retweeted
The extant major oil export pipelines (Keystone, TMX, Enbridge) were at 93% of capacity in the last month of public data: Keystone at 100%, Enb at 96%, and TMX at 75%. "Excess" capacity of about 350k bbl/d across the three lines. That's ~ AB forecast production growth to 2033.
Chris Ollenberger retweeted
The orange crash.
Showing the NDP in low single digits in Toronto-area ridings, and not much better in BC seats where they used to get in 20s. (Oh and Jagmeet Singh a distant 3rd in his riding)
We returned to twelve ridings this week in Ontario and British Columbia
Liberals lead in all but one of the ridings we polled
cardinalresearch.ca/?researc…
Chris Ollenberger retweeted
The S&P 500 has lost 10.5% of its value in two days.
Since 1980, we've only seen larger declines three other times: the '87 crash, Nov 2008, and Mar 2020. And those weren't due to policy choices.
This may be the largest self-imposed destruction of wealth ever.
Chris Ollenberger retweeted
How bad was today's stock market decline?
Of the 11,406 trading days since January 1980, only 29 had larger declines.
An interesting read! Not sure I agree with all instances of “greedy” even when used as allegories to make the point, or who is driving inner city densification (both reasons & incomplete list), but it certainly thought provoking nonetheless! #yycplan #yyccc #yycre
"Perhaps we all need to look in the mirror to see who is the greedy one." Have a read and let me know what you think. bit.ly/3Dzb3Nt @BILDCR @collenbe @CalgaryChamber @creb @BrookfieldHomes @djkelly @kourtpenner @SonyaSharpYYC #calgaryhousing #Calgaryrealestate
Chris Ollenberger retweeted
Potentially massive policy move here by Nova Scotia. 👇
Nova Scotia vows to lift internal trade barriers for provinces that pass similar laws /via @globeandmail theglobeandmail.com/business…
Chris Ollenberger retweeted
What a photo 📸 #4Nations
ALT The entire Canadian team standing on ice for O Canada and looking up at a Canadian flag. Above them is a Canadian flag on the big screen.
For Canada ❤️ #4Nations
ALT All the Canada players on ice side-by-side singing O Canada and looking up at the Canadian flag
Chris Ollenberger retweeted
Cotton candy skies and mountain highs.
📍 Baldy Peak, Kananaskis
📸 IG: kwitkowski.photography | #ExploreCanmore #ExploreKananaskis