Naheed Nenshi announces plans to seek third term as Calgary's mayor

Todd Korol/ Toronto Star

Mayor Naheed Nenshi at city hall in Calgary, Alberta, June 24, 2014. Calgary's popular mayor has made it official and announced he will seek a third term when municipal elections are held next year.

CALGARY — The man who guided Calgary through record-breaking floods that devastated the city and parts of southern Alberta is seeking a third term as the city's mayor.

Naheed Nenshi was first elected in 2010 and re-elected again in 2013. He announced he is running again in next year's municipal elections in a video released on social media Friday.

Standing on a city street with cars roaring behind him, Nenshi said Calgary has achieved a lot since he was elected.

"We've made unprecedented investments in roads and in transit to keep Calgarians moving."

But Nenshi said there is a lot more work to do as the city, corporate headquarters for Canada's energy industry, faces an economic downtown due to low oil prices.

"The times are tough. Far too many of our neighbours are feeling the pain of unemployment and the uncertainty of not knowing what the future holds," he said.

"At the same time, around the world and here in Calgary, we're seeing increased forces of hatred and of xenophobia and people who would rather drag us apart than bring us together.

"That's not the Calgary way."

In 2013, 26 neighbourhoods near the Bow and Elbow rivers were put under a mandatory evacuation order as water spilled over their banks and washed through communities.

The flood affected almost 75,000 people and was the largest evacuation order in the city's history.

Nenshi's calm and cool leadership during the disaster earned him the 2014 World Mayor Prize from an international urban research institute which dubbed him the "most admired mayor" of any large city.

"We have a lot of work to do. We have to build a more resilient economy that can weather the storms and the ups and downs better than we've been," he said in the video.

"We have to build a more resilient city that gets us through natural and man-made disasters. We have to build an even better place to live."

— Follow @BillGraveland on Twitter