Calgarypuck Forums - The Unofficial Calgary Flames Fan Community - View Single Post - October 6 - So it Begins

the-rasta-masta · 10-07-2025, 12:42 PM

I saw the statement that Demetrios Nicolaides posted on his socials, it was wild going through the comments and seeing the scope of the support for the teachers, not that I'm surprised. The propaganda from the UCP is in full force with commercials being played on TV and popping up on my phone, it's really quite amazing how much they seem to be spending on other things rather than just making a good deal for the educators which seems to what the majority of their constituents are wanting. Seems completely tone deaf.

I was actually surprised to see Nicolaides had become a minister. I had the displeasure of meeting him a few years back when I live it Valley Ridge and he was my MLA. This was during COVID after the "Open for Summer" UCP blunder. I owned a business that had 5 locations across Alberta and was a fitness business, so was one of the harder hit sectors. As cases soared into September, we were getting numberous phone calls and emails from the vast majority of people who were vaccinated telling us they wouldn't feel safe unless their were some sort of vaccine program within our business. I was a part of some entrepreneur groups and quite a large subsection of business owners were feeling the same pressure. I wrote a letter to Demetrios as my MLA sharing the thoughts of myself and fellow business owners that the government needed to step in and make the decision, as it was unfair to businesses to be put in these positions to need to make these controversial decisions that was likely to spur backlash as a way of saving their business and livelihoods of their employees. He invited me to a meeting with him at his office up off west 85th in the SW.

This was on September 10th, and we talked back and forth for close to an hour and he kept expressing to me that their was no way the UCP was ever going to be introducing a vaccine mandate within businesses, it was just something that had been talked about and had been agreed upon that would never happen in any circumstance under this government, no matter how many cases of Covid the province was experiencing, despite the fact that other provinces had already instituted it. I went back to my business partner and we discussed the meeting and the communication that there was no way the government was ever going to do this, and so we made the decision to announce an implementation of our own mandate (not something we wanted to do, but something we felt was the only way we'd survive) with it taking effect on September 15th. As one of the first businesses do do this willingly over the next few days we received over 200 1 star google reviews, phone calls of death threats, etc... it wasn't much fun to be put in a position to make that decision.

Sure enough, within 5 days the government announced the vaccine mandate province wide. This government. and MLA in particular, had no foresight then, so I'm not surprised they don't have it now and seem just as out of touch.

10-07-2025, 12:42 PM	#118
the-rasta-masta First Line Centre Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Turner Valley Exp:	I saw the statement that Demetrios Nicolaides posted on his socials, it was wild going through the comments and seeing the scope of the support for the teachers, not that I'm surprised. The propaganda from the UCP is in full force with commercials being played on TV and popping up on my phone, it's really quite amazing how much they seem to be spending on other things rather than just making a good deal for the educators which seems to what the majority of their constituents are wanting. Seems completely tone deaf. I was actually surprised to see Nicolaides had become a minister. I had the displeasure of meeting him a few years back when I live it Valley Ridge and he was my MLA. This was during COVID after the "Open for Summer" UCP blunder. I owned a business that had 5 locations across Alberta and was a fitness business, so was one of the harder hit sectors. As cases soared into September, we were getting numberous phone calls and emails from the vast majority of people who were vaccinated telling us they wouldn't feel safe unless their were some sort of vaccine program within our business. I was a part of some entrepreneur groups and quite a large subsection of business owners were feeling the same pressure. I wrote a letter to Demetrios as my MLA sharing the thoughts of myself and fellow business owners that the government needed to step in and make the decision, as it was unfair to businesses to be put in these positions to need to make these controversial decisions that was likely to spur backlash as a way of saving their business and livelihoods of their employees. He invited me to a meeting with him at his office up off west 85th in the SW. This was on September 10th, and we talked back and forth for close to an hour and he kept expressing to me that their was no way the UCP was ever going to be introducing a vaccine mandate within businesses, it was just something that had been talked about and had been agreed upon that would never happen in any circumstance under this government, no matter how many cases of Covid the province was experiencing, despite the fact that other provinces had already instituted it. I went back to my business partner and we discussed the meeting and the communication that there was no way the government was ever going to do this, and so we made the decision to announce an implementation of our own mandate (not something we wanted to do, but something we felt was the only way we'd survive) with it taking effect on September 15th. As one of the first businesses do do this willingly over the next few days we received over 200 1 star google reviews, phone calls of death threats, etc... it wasn't much fun to be put in a position to make that decision. Sure enough, within 5 days the government announced the vaccine mandate province wide. This government. and MLA in particular, had no foresight then, so I'm not surprised they don't have it now and seem just as out of touch.