Councillor Pincott on Calgary and Politics

It's October 20, and Councillor Pincott and I sit down to write my blog. I feel comfortable and at ease with him. He is definitely not what I get from most politicians. He is a people person, and has the ability to connect to people from any walk of life. More questions have come up for my blog, because the Federal Election was held yesterday, and the Conservatives have been knocked out of leading Canada, taken over by a Liberal. My first question is geared towards this:

1.      “It is now Tuesday October 20th, the first day after the Federal Election of 2015, how do you feel Councillor Pincott?”

• “I have mixed emotions, and I knew I was going to have mixed emotions. It is good that we got rid of the conservatives. They were a horribly destructive government, destroying things about this country that I love. So that's a good thing. I have mixed emotions because I am a New Democrat, my party did not do well. I look at the MP's that lost and they're really, really good people; Paul Dewar, Megan Leslie, Andrew Cash, Peggy Nash, Jack Harris, Elaine Michaud, just to name a few, and their staff are really good people, and now they're unemployed. That bothers me.”

2.      “Do you find politics an effective way to bring about change?”

 

·        “Not in and of itself. You need politicians working to bring about change at the same time as citizens are pushing to bring about change, because we each have to work, and do work in different ways and on different sides of the system. One can't be successful without having both politicians and citizens working for change at the same time.”

3.      “So what are your challenges?”

·        “Trying to find the leverage points you can actually push at as a politician that will bring about the change, and trying to find the ways to get there. I mean, I always look at where is the point I want to get to, what does the end game look like? Then backing it up and going ok, what are the steps, and what’s the right order, to start making change, to get to, where you want to get to. Trying to figure that out is a challenge. Trying to be effective at that, is a really big challenge.”

4.      “What are the benefits?”

·        “Making a better community, making a better society for everyone. That to me is what it’s all about. If we can make somebody’s life better, if we can make a community better, that’s the benefit.”

I ask, “so before you got into politics you were a?”

Brian jumps in immediately here,

“Theatre lighting designer, I was a theatre guy for 20 years in the arts.

So I ask him, if you were to go back, would there have been a different path that you would have chosen?

With absolute certainty, and without hesitation, his reply was “Never!”

“I went to University as pre-med, I was going to be a doctor, and then I discovered theatre and did a whole bunch of different things in theatre, I wouldn’t change a thing.”

“What are some similarities between politics and theatre?”

He laughs at this question, He jokingly says but not so much jokingly, he used to do all kinds of theatre, drama, comedy, musicals, opera, etc.… But now he only does one kind of theatre, the theatre of the absurd. "You know, the similarities is that….politics is about human interaction, human relations, politics is about….how we interact with each other and how we want to interact with each other; and that’s the same thing theatre is about, the exact same thing theatre is about.”

This blog will be a part of a 3 part series, along with a Twitter feed. Please follow #Briantalks on Twitter for more.