Shaoli Wang wants to make Calgary a better city by lowering property and business taxes to make life more the economy sustainable for everyone.
Wang says lowering property taxes will make it easier for the younger generation to buy their first homes and make the cost of living cheaper for everyone. He also says that lowering the business tax will create more jobs within the city, making it easier to get a job for those who have lost their jobs or graduates entering the workforce.
Wang has spent all of the pandemic working on his campaign and trying to educate others online. He believes no matter the restrictions in place, everyone should be staying home as it is still a pandemic. He has made it his responsibility to stay digital and reach out to those via social media.
The Calgary Journal asked our city’s mayoral candidates five questions about themselves and their campaigns. Here’s what Wang told us:
Five Questions with Shaoli Wang:
Brooklyn Palin: What issue is most important to you as a mayoral candidate and how will you solve it?
Shaoli Wang: Yeah, I’ll sit here in a crisis, because the issue we can’t handle at municipal level is the property tax issue. Thank you.
How do you plan to solve this?
All cities’ overspendings are well known, but they’re not providing the public with all the details, like the peace bridge we all know. But they did provide us some details about a city’s salary. And the city’s salary increased over spending in the last sixty years. I have those details. Costs us over half a billion every year now. First, the other issue we have, I have evidence. So I’m going to cut the city’s overstaffing over increased salary. So not to lower our tax but lower our business burden.
Why should young people vote for you?
Yeah, I know so many of my neighbors, they have young adults. Some have two or three. Some that are already parents, some even with these kids already, they can’t afford the living costs. And also because the job market is shrinked and put pressure on their jobs, salary and a future promotion. So young young adults face all these challenges already. But we can’t solve that issue, all of these issues overnight.
At the municipal level, there is only something we can do here: is lower the tax, specifically all business property tax. You know, the last few years some businesses got, say their property tax doubled in the year. Got five times in five years, something like that. So well, this is going to close jobs lost. We lost a job. And at a city level, we have to learn how to turns out direction. And if we can’t save all business here. We can confidently say we can attract more business here. That means jobs. All kinds of jobs, not only are green energy if you are not your specialty, is not in that area.
You may not be interested in all kinds of others as a city of this size. We should be interested in all kinds of businesses. So that’s so that’s the only contribution a city should do and must do to but it can’t you can’t see. You may not expect any terms anytime soon. It takes a lot of courage. It takes some time. Thank you.
Let’s say you have some downtime from your campaign. Which local bar, restaurant, coffee shop are you going to and why?
I made the decision the first day. I mean, I decided to run this election. I’m not going to go door knocking or mass gatherings. Doesn’t matter how or what all restriction orders are. We are still in the pandemic. We know that since last year or last fall, quite a while. So all in all even for my nomination paper to fill my nomination paper. Most of them I drove to a door leave a note say I’m going to come back on that next day and pick up most of them some some drop rolls on my door. So thats That’s what I can do, no door knocking anything after, so that’s just to be safe, to be respectful to all for people’s safety, no matter what our restriction orders are.
So my position from the very beginning is. I take personal responsibility. To help us go through this pandemic so all the elections are worth a lot. Means a lot to me and to all Calgarians. But a people’s life is worth much more than that. Thank you.
What’s one TV show or movie that helped you get through the pandemic?
Oh, I’m sorry, I don’t have time to watch TV or anything like that this campaign time is very special. I take everything online. So I spent a lot of time searching for the pandemic impacts all around the globe. I want to find something to help people so anytime I got some time, I help my online friends and also I deal with people on Twitter. But I was always respectful, I persuaded most of the people. So I persuaded people not to hate those. Oh, who Those anti masker anti vax people don’t hate them. They are all people. You may be right, you may be wrong, but respect them, try to convince them that’s the only way we can go through this, but we can’t afford to be splitted up. Thank you.
Calgary is in a difficult economic spot right now and many young people are looking elsewhere for opportunities. What would you do to help the city prosper as we eventually emerge from this pandemic?
Yeah, that’s a painful question we all know. When we are in the economic boom. Everyone feels confident. But when the job market shrinks. The young adults, the new grads face huge challenges. You have to compete with those with decades of experience. That’s a huge challenge. And you can’t even argue it because you don’t have those experiences. You can’t even compare. You didn’t lose your job from the industry. The city at all levels of government promised they’re going to create the jobs and bring in some new industry here. I know that will not impress you that much, because if you take a petroleum engineer, or something like that, you are expecting a job. You know the gas company. But the government is talking all about green energy. That has nothing to do with you. But you can’t say you’re against green energy because of a political correctness issue – topic, right. So you can’t even argue with the government because it looks good to be confident, the confidence you have and your senate actually offers them more confidence.
So I stand for all people, against those liars, against those lying promises. So why don’t we? You’ll say you’re going to attract businesses, create the jobs, keep our young adults. while all you did was raise the tax, overspending and push business on auto business and push people out. So you can’t let that happen. We are losing people. We are losing businesses that last for six years. No, we are 6,000 businesses short of. Our population base is 6,000, that means 60,000 jobs. So I feel really sad to our young people who don’t have a voice. You have to follow their political correctness. You shouldn’t, you should say if you can’t keep your business here, you can’t keep us here. So we need to know our business. You know, Cayman Island, I want to tell people, especially young adults, to look at the Cayman Islands. They don’t have an income tax, corporate tax, property tax, no up on a per capita basis. They have over no, everyone over the population, they have two businesses there. Now here in every ten families we have only one business. You know that’s over 50 times. So if you can’t, we can’t go to zero tax but we can go lower, we can lower our tax, especially when we have that many years of a tax hike. Thank you.