Meet a candidate for mayor: Brad Field

Calgary will soon see a new face in the mayor's chair.

In advance of the Oct. 18 municipal election, CBC Calgary is profiling five leading candidates in the mayoral race; the other profiles can be found here.

Candidate Brad Field spoke with CBC's Sarah Rieger about his story, his vision for Calgary and why he feels he is the right person to lead this city into its next chapter. 

Here's what he had to say.

(Editor's note: His comments have been edited for length and clarity.)

On coming to Calgary

I was born on Vancouver Island in a small town called Campbell River, B.C. I tell the story that I moved to Calgary when I was two and I brought my parents with me.

I grew up in south Calgary, in Bonavista, bordering Fish Creek Park. 

My greatest memories were when Anderson Road was literally the end of the earth — we'd ride our bikes through Fish Creek Park to Midnapore because [at the time] Midnapore was out of town. [Just] terrorizing south Calgary as a kid on a bicycle as much as you could, playing hockey, football, baseball.

[My wife], Sheryl, she's the love of my life. We met in Grade 10. I tell the story that she chased me for two weeks and I finally buckled. She tells the story totally different — of course, it's probably more accurate. 

We've been married 33 years, together 39 years. We raised three wonderful children: Mitch, 30, Kyle, 28, and Haley, 22. And they've, you know, they've all chosen their own journey in life, which is really cool as a parent.

(Ed.: A few years ago, as empty-nesters, the Fields moved to the East Village.)

I had reservations about living downtown but now that I'm down there, walking the pathways, walking the river and meeting new people, it's cool. I like it.

If I get the time to walk, I'll walk from East Village to the Peace Bridge and then back. The Simmons Building, Charbar, is right there. There's lots of coffee shops. I don't drink coffee … I drink hot chocolate.

The path to politics

I started [my first business] at age 12. It was a commercial cleaning business. 

You're like, what 12-year-old can do that? Well, I had one client. It was my dad. 

So, I cleaned his office space on weekends. He said, "You know what? You're going to start a business? You do it right." And he taught me. So I incorporated and got a commercial bank account. It was really inventive. Name: Brad's Cleaning Service. 

My mom was a nurse in the early years. My dad was always in insurance, equipment, appraisals, heavy equipment repair. He was a serial entrepreneur.

[I] bought my first real estate here in Calgary in my teenage years.

I was paying $650 a month rent for a decent apartment in [south Calgary] in the middle of the 1980s, which was a lot of money back then.

I was a little bit of a car junkie … so I sold one of my cars for a down payment. I bought my first house, and my mortgage payment was $13 more a month than my rent payment. 

I bought and sold houses for a long time, flipped houses. I got married and Sheryl asked me to slow down a little bit because we were moving every year. 

I got a call one day from my dad, and he said, "Hey, have you ever considered coming to work in the family business?" And, no, I hadn't. He wanted the two brothers to take over … and so we did. I'm coming up almost 30 years in this business.

I'm a vendor with the City of Calgary, along with other federal, state and provincial municipalities throughout North America.

(Ed.: Field has run multiple businesses, from owning a medical clinic, to supplying fire suppression equipment to military vehicles in the Middle East, to his current role as president of BRC Group, which does commercial vehicle repair. He's also been involved with various non-profits.)

I'd rather do it off the radar, but I guess when you're in the public eye, you get to, you have to talk about it.

One of the top ones [was the] Terminator Foundation. We would take young adults as they came out of [addiction] treatment and train them in the sport of triathlon.

For me, what was transformative at that time is I found myself reflecting I was judgmental because I didn't understand addiction.

What I realized, as I worked with these young adults … they had the same hopes and dreams and wants as we all did. 

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[I] travelled to Africa … with my kids when they were young and spent time there doing that typical safari, but ended up getting to know our guide Emanuel quite well. His whole goal in life was to own his own farm. So Sheryl and I funded his first 10 acres of land in Tanzania.

I get a little emotional about this because the greatest success I've had in life is … I love giving back to the community. 

(Ed.: Field says he doesn't use social media much, but his wife keeps in touch with Emanuel — he's since started a family.)

I had never even considered public office. 

But I started to think about it and I thought, well, what is public office? And it was what I was doing every day for decades. It was working with people, solving issues, collaborating — all that kind of stuff. And I thought … let's go for it.

The system is broken. It's not the people. The people are great. We just got to fix the system … and that starts at the top.

We're good, but we could be great … I want to empower [the city's thousands of employees.]

On the issues: property taxes

Short answer is priority-based budgeting. Right now, how we operate on budgeting is we use last year's spend and predict next year's budget 

The challenge with that system is every year every department is asking for more money and we have inflation, we have population growth.

What [priority-based budgeting] does is it starts out with a predetermined amount of money and through citizen input and business owners' input, we prioritize spending — just like you would in your home if you have a fixed amount of income coming in on a monthly basis. 

It's, you know, are we going out for pizza and a movie on Friday night? Or if there's no money, you're not going out. Well, in the city, we just keep going out for dinner every night whether we have the money or not.

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You prioritize … anything below that line doesn't get funded that way. 

What I'm [also] going to propose is a two-year budget freeze. It creates enough time that we can implement the process and get through the budget cycle we're already in.

On the issues: revitalizing downtown

I'm concerned a little bit about some of the line items.

Arts Commons [expansion] … I think is a necessity if we're talking about a vibrant downtown.

[But] there's a $10 million line item related to hiring more staff … we have [more than 1,000 people] in the planning department at the city … we're looking to hire another $10 million worth of salaries?

WATCH | Brad Field on how a career in business prepares him for politics:

Brad Field on how a career in business prepares him for politics

3 years ago

Duration 0:56

Calgary mayoral candidate Brad Field on how his business background has prepared him for politics.

If you trust the experts, we're [also] overbuilt by six million square feet. So we're talking about converting some office space into retail, residential. I'm for that. 

We can beautify the downtown, we can do Arts Commons expansion. We can create some affordable housing … [but] if we can't make it safe, then people aren't coming downtown.

When I talk to the next generation, they want to do everything in the downtown core. I've committed to a young adult 20/30 advisory council so they can have direct access to the mayor's office.

On the issues: the Green Line

I'm in support of public transportation. My challenge around the Green Line specifically is how it's unfolded. It was an election issue in 2017. It's now an election issue in 2021; we're no further ahead.

Let's talk about getting [the southwest leg] started. 

I'm no geologist or an engineer, but … my point of view is that we should not be tunnelling under downtown Calgary. If we remove the downtown tunneling, I would say that we have a better chance of facing the Green Line on time and on budget.

(Ed.: Asked, if not underground, are we talking about a raised or at-grade downtown LRT track?)

There's lots of options out there … It's just a matter of picking which one's best for as many Calgarians as possible. 

We [also] have to push forward with … connecting our international airport to downtown Calgary. 

If we were to be able to connect through downtown Calgary to Banff, we would be the only major centre in all of North America that would have rail transportation from an international airport through a major downtown corridor and then out to world-class destination. 

On the issues: the new arena

Again, world-class city, we need world-class amenities and facilities. It's not just about [the] Calgary Flames, it's beyond that. It's about concerts, about arts, entertainment, functions, conferences. So yeah, there's no question I'm in support of it. 

Again, a little disappointed that we're not shovels in the ground yet.

On the issues: the environment

I love this discussion because my son Kyle … went on to get his master's degree in environmental sciences in Germany. He's my educator on a regular basis. 

First of all, we have to recognize that climate change is happening, but we have to talk about supporting the energy sector. Some of the greatest innovation in clean energy has come right from Calgary.

We should be looking at a multi-year, major building retrofit to city-owned buildings over the next 10 years. We should be able to reduce our energy consumption by 25 per cent. 

Some of the greatest greenhouse gas emitters here in the city are the city fleet, trucks, buses, that kind of stuff.

Let's start moving forward with pilot projects. We have one that is just starting in the next 12 months around electric buses.

Another idea that we came up … [with is] a circular materials warehouse and network. What that does is it takes reusable building materials out of the landfill and gets it into the hands of non-profits and community associations. 

Cutting red tape

I love talking about attracting new businesses, but we quite often forget about retaining and supporting the businesses that are already here.

I'll give you an example, the building I'm sitting in, in southeast Calgary, commercial light industrial … when I bought this building, I had to do some minor renovations, which in turn opens up the proverbial Pandora's box of development permits.

Every week I would get a new box to be checked. I asked, "why don't you just give me the list in advance?" [They said] "that's not how we work" … it cost me an extra three months. 

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Getting down to the nitty-gritty before I took occupancy and licence, the permit officer came by and said, "OK, we've got one last thing … bike racks."

I actually got excited. I've already got a bike rack. 

[But] he says to me there's a formula … they predetermine how many employees you're going to have. They don't ask me how many employees … and they said of that number, a certain percentage of those staff will ride the bike to work every day. 

So, I spend another $5,000 buying another bike rack … how many times have either of those bike racks been used in four years? Let me tell you. Zero. 

Entrepreneurs, we take market risk every day … what we can't take is regulatory risk.

I always equate everything back to the necessities of life: food and shelter. We're talking average citizens that are struggling. 

So for me … [it's about creating] that environment where everybody has equal opportunity to be successful. 

Personal growth

(What's something about yourself that you know you have to work on?)

I'm going to have to be more patient. 

When you're an entrepreneur or business owner, typically you work very quickly, you're nimble, you're fluid. 

Whether they're the right decision or wrong decision, you can make them within minutes sometimes. You just pull the trigger and you live or die by the choice you make.

We all know that government moves slower than the private sector. I know that I'm going to have to work on my patience around going through the process and bureaucracy a little bit. 

On working with a new group of councillors

I'm super excited about the amount of new fresh faces that are going to be on council; new ideas, new perspectives.

Less baggage, too. I think once you get into politics, you start to get mired down in bureaucracy, in red tape.

My greatest skill is working with people — building relationships. 

I love going into a meeting with an open mind to listening, learning and sharing knowledge. It's amazing what you can learn if you just open your mind to it, and it doesn't mean we always have to agree. 

In fact, we may disagree, and that's OK … and that's where real progress happens. I firmly believe that the vast majority of people are really in the middle around collaboration and teamwork. It's not as divisive as we all see in society and social media.

I've got a fairly large staff and I make contact with every one of my staff members every single day in a personal way … it's not all about work. It's just a "good morning. How are the kids doing?" Having that relationship with council members and city administration, it makes it so much easier to talk governance or have those tough discussions.

Lightning round

What's one of your favourite made-in-Calgary meals or foods? 

That's easy. Tom's House of Pizza — thin-crust pepperoni.

Name a Calgary musician, artist, writer or filmmaker you're proud to share this city with.

Paul Brandt, Jann Arden, George Canyon. I love music that tells a story. 

What's a personal achievement you're proud of?

Beyond the obvious, raising three wonderful kids, still married to my high school sweetheart. 

I climbed to Everest base camp in 2016 with my youngest son, Kyle. I ran the Athens Marathon, which is the original marathon … you start in the town of Marathon and you finish in the Olympic Stadium in Athens, Greece.

Ginger beef. Stampede mini donuts. A Caesar. You can only pick one: 

First of all, I don't drink alcohol. Now I'm down to two. (Ed.: Field briefly pauses to raise the unfairness matching a savoury food against a dessert.)

Mini donuts. My wife would say, if you print that, she's going to hate me because I'm gluten intolerant. But … I'll take it. 

You've got a week's vacation to spend in Canada, with an unlimited budget, but you can't stay here. Where are you headed?

I don't need a budget to do it. I would probably go to the Okanagan Valley. Just sit on the lake and hang out with the family. We do it every year.