This Guy Created a Petition to Rename Calgary’s Airport After Stephen Harper

Yesterday, a petition to have Calgary International Airport renamed to "Stephen J. Harper International Airport" cropped up on the internet after a Calgary man made the point that the outgoing prime minister deserves to have YYC—one of Canada's busiest places for flying machines to land at—named after him.

Although the main petition, which can be found here, has no exact signature count, a proxy petition on Change.org has garnered over 2,000 signatures since yesterday afternoon, thus putting it on track to go absolutely nowhere.

The man who created the petition, Ezra Levant, describes himself as a "lawyer" and "all-around troublemaker" on Twitter. In order to learn a little bit more about him and his reasoning behind proposing the sure-to-fail idea, we gave him a call while he was, believe it or not, about to board a plane.

VICE: Maybe you can tell me a little bit about why you made the petition? Just in your words, I guess.
Ezra Levant: Sure. Well, Stephen Harper is not a media hound. He is not a self-bent aggrandizer, he's not the selfie prime minister, he didn't spend $10 million [$7.5 million USD] renovating 24 Sussex Drive. He's probably the first middle-class prime minister we've had since Joe Clark. He's not a gazillionaire. I don't know if you know this, but he declined to take his full pension entitlements. I mean, he literally left a million dollars on the table, it's just not his style. So how do you mark a guy like that? Well, how about Calgary International Airport.

First off all, it's weird the airport doesn't have a name to begin with, and second of all, it's very normal to name it after PMs. Pearson Airport. Trudeau Airport. Diefenbaker Airport in Saskatoon.

The only thing I'm thinking here is that, with Trudeau and Pearson, I think it's understandable because they had [high public approval], but not the same for Stephen Harper, considering how he was ousted. What makes Stephen Harper…
I've gotta stop you right there. First of all, this is not a national airport, this is a Calgary airport. Stephen Harper has won every election he's ever run for in Calgary with huge majorities. Second of all, after nine years as prime minister, he still got 32 percent at the polls. Why the hell should Calgarians care about a few "Harper derangement syndrome" haters who would probably never fly to Calgary anyways? You're wrong to say it's a matter of popularity—it's a matter of marking a prime minister.

Do you think the petition will be successful? You guys only have around 2,000 signatures now.
No, we have 9,000 signatures as of about half an hour ago. When I went to bed last night, we were having someone sign the petition every two seconds. There are a couple petitions out there—ours is at harperairport.ca. I saw a little one on Facebook and another on Change.org, so there's a couple people out there with the same mindset. I thought, Well, let's add some muscle behind it. We've got a big online audience, we've got some video, so I thought, Let's just throw our effort behind it. I expect, by the end of today, it will be 15, maybe 20,000. What we're going to do is we're going to send it to Calgary Airport Authority and we're going to send it to the new transport minister when he's sworn in.

On Twitter, you describe yourself as a "lawyer" and a "troublemaker"? What do you think you're more of?
I'm an advocacy journalist. Sometimes I report on the news, sometimes I have opinions on the news, and sometimes I act on the news. It depends on the day. This is a little bit of opinion-commentary, and a little bit of activism. Sometimes we break hard news.

I'd say about 10 percent of the time I'm a news reporter. About 80 percent of the time I'm an opinion journalist, and about 10 percent of the time I'm an activist.

Do you think the Calgary airport will actually end up taking you on board for this?
I don't know. I think that if—I think it's probably the most suitable name suggested to them. I think there's other Alberta political leaders who have already seen their name marked. I mean, there's the Peter Lougheed Hospital, that was actually built when Peter Lougheed was alive… That's the thing in Alberta, we sometimes don't wait for the politician to pass on before we name things after them. I mean, the great Peter Lougheed lived to see the hospital named after him. So, we tend to have a bit of tradition in Alberta to name things after them while they're still there.

Now, if you asked Stephen Harper about this, and I have not, I am sure he would be appalled by this, because he is the anti-self-promoter. I mean, he is not a selfie-taking guy, he is not a, y'know, the kind of guy who poses with his best Zoolander pose like some other prime ministers. So he's appalled by the idea, but so what? He's a public person who brought prominence and importance to Calgary that it didn't have before.

So, in a way, are you leading the charge in spite of Stephen Harper?
There is no spite or "in spite of." I am just saying that Stephen Harper is a modest man who would not go around aggrandizing himself but I think Calgarians, who always supported him and still do, would probably find this an appropriate way to commemorate the man's achievements.

Let's say the petition was successful but the airport didn't take it on, what do you think the next best thing to name after Stephen Harper would be?
I don't know.

You said that you were at an airport earlier. Did you drive there?
Yeah.

Would you name your car after Stephen Harper?
OK, I'm going to get on a plane here and I know you're doing the VICE thing, so goodbye and enjoy, but send me an email if there's anything else you need.

OK. Take care, Ezra.

Follow Jake Kivanc on Twitter.