Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and her municipal affairs minister, Dan Williams, announced yesterday that their United Conservative Party Government will overrule Edmonton City Council’s infill housing policy, a decade in the making including three years of public engagement.
At a back-yard news conference in northeast Edmonton’s Newton neighbourhood, Ms. Smith and Mr. Williams said they are instructing the city to repeal its housing bylaw and put rules about housing types, density and height back the way they were in 2024, when city council changed them to make it easier to build more high-density infill housing inside the city’s borders.
Minimum on-site parking regulations must return to the requirements that were in place in the plague year 2020. The city has three months to change policy. This isn’t a request. It’s an order.
Calgary will be getting new marching orders too, but they are somewhat less severe. “Calgary will maintain its current approach after recently repealing blanket rezoning and will be directed to create an overlay identifying lands restored to previous low-density residential zones,” said the government’s news release. “This ensures requirements for housing types, building heights and parking remain in place while its broader land-use review continues.”
Provincial meddling in municipal decisions is not unprecedented, but ordering a reversal of this nature and on this scale is extremely unusual.
Needless to say, the regional sprawl cabal of property developers close to the UCP will be delighted, as distant suburban suburbs are far more profitable to build and sell than inner-city infills intended to keep taxes down and address the housing crisis.
That said, some of the multi-unit infills that have been going up are pretty startling, and the UCP’s contempt for local democracy notwithstanding, this will be a popular decision for many residents who were concerned by the volume and quality of infill development in their communities.
There’s just enough truth to the government’s argument, in other words, to make it dangerous. So this could turn out to be an effective wedge for the UCP to wield against the NDP, led by a former mayor of Calgary, in the province’s big cities.
Edmonton Mayor Andrew Knack clapped back, calling the UCP decision uninformed, insulting and likely to result in higher taxes. “I am not entirely convinced the premier knows what she is doing, or what the consequences will be,” he said at a news conference of his own later in the day.
But, really, what can he or anyone on Edmonton City Council do? Few governments may be as sensitive about their own jurisdiction as Alberta’s separatist-dominated UCP government, but the Canadian constitution makes cities a provincial responsibility, and if Edmonton Council doesn’t knuckle under, the gruesome twosome at yesterday’s newser, both of whom represent rural ridings, have to legal power to fire them all.
Mind you, if Edmonton city councillors have the cojones to call their bluff, the results could be interesting for the UCP. After all, it’s one thing to order municipal governments around, it’s quite another to have to take the rap yourself for your own bad decisions. This isn’t France, so don’t expect this to happen, though.
The city will be ordered “to carry out comprehensive reviews of their land use bylaws, engage in public consultation and work with industry to pursue a more balanced approach to high-density infill,” the news release said – in other words, pretty much what Edmonton’s been doing for the past decade.
Premier Smith and Minister Williams – both talented gas-lighters – framed their decision as being one of concern for the rights of homeowners. “We can build more homes without asking people to give up the things that make their neighbourhood a place they want to call home,” said the premier.
“This announcement is about restoring the possibility for Alberta to grow in a thoughtful and balanced way,” Mr. Williams said in dulcet tones. “It’s about giving Albertans a voice before their neighborhoods are permanently changed.”
Mr. Williams also insisted that the province isn’t dictating to the city what it has to do. “This direction provides an opportunity for municipalities pause, reset and create stronger communities that grow responsibly without dividing neighbours.” In other words, do as we say, or else!
From the perspective of the UCP, this is also an effective distraction from the bitter division throughout the province caused by the premier’s irresponsible effort to placate the separatist minority that dominates her party by proceeding with a separation referendum on Oct. 19, its ongoing attack on public health care, corruption, and general administrative incompetence.
But say what you will about the UCP’s competence at governing, they sure know how to create a massive distraction!
Indeed, the announcement seems to have pushed an earlier news conference by Opposition Leader Naheed Nenshi, who attacked the government for letting ministers hit the road to exotic destinations in the lead-up to the separation referendum, right off the day’s news lineup.
“This is the time to be strengthening ties within our own country, rallying support for Canada, knocking on doors and getting people out to vote to stay in Canada,” Mr. Nenshi said at his morning news conference. “Instead, the UCP is jet-setting to Vegas to promote gambling and traveling to Sweden and Denmark to study health care privatization.”
Five UCP ministers have been on the road in recent days or still are, a feisty Mr. Nenshi pointed out. Service Alberta Minister Dale Nally was in Las Vegas from Sept. 27 to Oct. 1; Jobs, Economy, Trade and Immigration Minister Joseph Schow left for Mexico and Texas on Sept. 27 and returned on Wednesday; Tourism Minister Andrew Boitchenko left for Mexico City on Sept. 28 and is scheduled to return to Alberta today; Arts, Culture and Status of Women Minister Tanya Fir left for Scotland, Ireland and England on Oct. 4 and is scheduled to return next Tuesday; and Primary and Hospital and Surgical Health services Minister Adriana LaGrange left for Sweden and Denmark on Oct. 2 and is scheduled to return tomorrow.
All of them were conducting business at least some of the time obviously thought by the UCP to be more important than defending Canada.
CORRECTION: Adriana LaGrange is Hospital and Surgical Health Services Minister. Incorrect information appeared in an earlier version of this story. DJC
I must say, I have been a province away from Edmonton for better than two decades now, but is not the city’s planning department in full vigour even yet? They were founded in the early 1960’s and brought numerous wonders of modernity to a then sleepy Edmonton. Think project Uni, community plans, keyhole roads, underground utilities, Rapid Transit. The list is endless, and Surrey, BC, where I now reside has only just discovered city planning in the past 20 odd years by comparison. It does show.
I cannot imagine what this party of country yokels wish to accomplish by interfering in a plan fairly arrived at from a 3 year consultation with affected residents.
The only real conclusion I can see is, is this is to encourage the growth of ghettos in Alberta cities, and a lining of the pockets of real estate operators of various sorts. I find this utterly ironic, as the UCP claims a desire to preserve farm land, and this policy will encourage paving right over the finest Albert farm land. What a bunch of imbeciles! Oh, don’t forget affordable housing will increase in price too, so much for Melainia’s ham acting tears.
They want to preserve farm land for data farms.
Book bans, bike lanes, photo radar, codes of conduct, police services, LRT routes, and now land use bylaws and parking minimums. Is there no municipal area of jurisdiction the UCP isn’t tromping over with their jackpots?
And just on parking minimums, Edmonton Council got rid of these in 2020, leading to applause from almost everyone, even the Fraser Institute.
This is another very heavy handed and Trumpian move by Smith and crew. When one distraction (ie. the referendum) goes off the rails and is not working, create another one. It’s a good thing she can’t at least set tariffs or attack foreign countries.
Also, Smith who formerly claimed to be a libertarian, again continues to try micro manage everything: schools, libraries, municipalities and lest we forget part of the referendum questions are about her taking over federal powers. Of course you know her and her separatist pals would yell loudly about “staying in their lane” if anyone tried to take over health care, which she has mismanaged. Indeed it was wanting to bury her own scandals about cozy private health care deals that partly led to all the referendum distractions.
Like with her library book bans, Smith is also again trying to make others do her dirty work. She seems to have figured our this is a winning formula, along with finding a divisive issue where she can get the numbers to work in her favour politically. Perhaps this time our municipal leaders should tell Smith, when it comes to zoning, she should draft her own rules, so she at least has to take responsibility for the consequences which will be less affordable or available housing. Rather than be forced into a fake consultation process with a provincial government that seems to already know what it wants. Our municipal politicians can’t stop her because the province has the power to do what it wants here, but at least they can avoid being her fall guys or dupes.
Perhaps this latest diversion and division will be enough to bring back some wavering conservatives put off by Smith’s failing separatism referendum. However, it is odd that someone who couldn’t seem to stop talking about separatism for months and months now seems to want to desperately change the channel just as the referendum nears. I’m sure by now other Albertans have also noticed all her behaviour patterns too and it was said some time ago that Smith leaves chaos in her wake.
Danny girl’s shoulders have a devil on each one. One, Libertarian. The other, Fascist. Both yelling loudly and yet she seems so glib and composed, except when she is crying, as she faces her personal favorite diversion, the TV camera.
While I see Dingy Smith keeps complaining how the feds interfere in provincial matters, so rightfully she should be interfering in civic matters, I agree this city council has got the in-fill zoning thing completely wrong. Likewise, in spite of what the odd one claims, they are not listening to the outrage, protests and various horror stories. Funny how the city claims they did 3 years of consultations, yet I never heard of any of all those sessions, some of which were done during the COVID lockdown. Maybe people didn’t get involved because they didn’t realize what the extent of those changes would be? The point that is most upsetting is there once was a time zoning developments allowed for green space (only a 40% cover of a property) and a process where there could be appeals. With this new one, someone could build a monster next to you and you have no rights what-so-ever, even though you may have lived there for many decades. While I totally dislike the UCP in every possible way, it may very well be the correct move when we have a city council that is more stupid than the Provincial clowns.
I have to correct my own error this time, so Dingy Smith should not be interfering in civic matters! rather than what I put.
Three years ago was 2023, more than two years of any covid measures, which were never lockdowns. A well monied campaign by the sprawl cabal emboldening the NIMBY class does not represent consensus. In 2003, the year this bird moved to YEG, there were roughly 650k edmontonians, in 2026 we have nearly doubly that at just shy of 1.4 million inhabitants.
For the NIMBY crowd : where should All of those people live? Are they relegated to the edge of Leduc merely because they moved here later than you ? New inhabitants shouldn’t live in the city core ? Haven’t the same people been complaining about the core being a “ghost town” where do you expect the people to come from !? Ardrossan?
For the Premier and her “brainTrUsT” : You literally lobbied the government to increase immigration to alberta going as far as to advertise in Toronto subways that “alberta is calling” What did you idiots think was going to happen and again , WHERE ARE ALL THESE PEOPLE GOING TO LIVE !? This isn’t Levittown.
Sadly Edmonton has had a target on its back for these reactionary far right groups since the days of it being twin towns on either side of the North Saskatchewan. JJ Maloney, the head of the KKK who tried to establish it in alberta called Edmonton the “seat of the papacy” in alberta all the way back in the early days of this province. Being that the majority of French Catholics established themselves in what is now the capital region, Edmonton has been hated by the orange Tories who have wielded much of the power in this province since it’s founding.
It would appear they’ve found a wedge issue with some actual traction. They were threatening to do this with bike lanes, which have much broader a support among wealthy folks, single family homeowners and career types, as many of those people are avid cyclists. (They call high end bikes “dentist bikes” in the industry).
Whatever you want to call it it’s a bullying distraction from the UCP under Daniele smith being the worst, most corrupt, most hateful, and most incompetent government this province has ever seen.
Danielle Smith literally hates democracy. If you elect leaders to represent your views on how our society is run Danielle Smith believes that SHE ALONE shall intervene and tell the voters whom she DESPISES what the policy will be.
That’s fascism. Especially being that she seems to always be doing so in favour of moneyed interested and corporations. That’s literally the definition of fascism. As for what else I think of this cabal of thieves and liars, this is a family blog. Given the opportunity in person I will relish the chance to tell any of these grifters what we really think of them.
Distraction from the referendum, sure, but also from the developers pushing for expanding large-scale data infrastructure in the Northeast Energy Park. https://engaged.edmonton.ca/eetpdatacentre/tell-us-what-you-think
Bill 28 also allows city administration to refuse to report to Council if they don’t feel like it-because it’s too much work! https://docs.assembly.ab.ca/LADDAR_files/docs/bills/bill/legislature_31/session_2/20251023_bill-028.pdf So that report on big data Ashley Salvador is requesting? Bike lane updates? Never mind. The minister’ll step in for his buddies. Keith Gerein asked some pointed questions about the extensive planning and consultation and engagement work of successive Councils, good on him. Then there’s the inconvenient fact that pro-infill, pro-bike lane councillors keep getting re-elected. Rahim Jaffer hanging out like a dirty shirt at the announcement. Like Miles Berry and Justin Thomas and Mark Hillman and Jennifer Rice and Jesse Watson at all the wedge events. Allegedly. Remember that governing committee the UCP set up when they lost Edmonton? I think this is it. Nevermind disgraced former City managers and clerks lobbying for the American company pushing to ‘prepare’ the medium industrial precinct for large-scale data. Along with Draganfly. Allegedly. 8-plexes make you shake your fist at City Hall? Wait’ll you get Meta on your street!
Had to calm my nerves after the big announcement so I took a stroll around the block with the dog. A half hour walk in my lovely tree-lined neighbourhood on renewed sidewalks took us past: a quiet supportive living centre, several beautiful and stately two story SFHs, some ratty bungalows with damp illegal basement suites, many lovely restored bungalows with better insulation and solar panels, garden suites (that’s my neighbour with an independent Alberta flag- they’re moving out to the country- don’t like city zoning lol), lots of new infill fourplexes beside older affordable duplexes, a public school, two daycares, the senior’s drop-in centre, soccer fields, the spray park, three pocket parks, the community league skating rink and shared garden, an LRT stop, senior’s housing, a long-term care centre, three mid-rise multiple unit buildings, a new, well-designed 8-plex and the street that hopefully soon will accomodate active transport. Groceries, the library, the pool, a choice of cafes in walking distance. A home-based baking business and another home-grown vegetable stand a bike ride away. The kind of neighbourhood Ashley Thimot paints. https://www.ashleythimot.com/cityscapes-landscapes. A diversity of neighbours with a diversity of opinions. I know the names of their dogs and of the kids that stop to pet my cat on the way to school. Whoops, I may be trapped in a 15 minute city! This is what Council was planning all along, weren’t they- so devious!
Take head, Edmonton and Calgary (and maybe Lethbridge, but that depends on whether they have an NDP MLA) – this is what you’d be in for (times 100) in a sovereign Alberta. It would be complete political control, from the top on down.
Where’s a trucker convoy when you need them?
*heed
No… no, I think I’ll take the head, thankyouverymuch!
Smith loves to interfere in others affairs and other jurisdictions, but she gets all self-righteous, when other jurisdictions interfere with what she wants. Smith is a two-faced hypocrite.
As a side note, I’ve heard the Seppy ads on the radio, fear mongering about taking rights, freedoms and guns. These are very insecure people.
Danielle Smith, who literally could not get elected dog-catcher in Edmonton, and Dan Williams, the Hon. Member from the gravel industry, think they have the right to tell city councillors their job. Do we have to remind them that their UCP party won zero seats in Edmonton in the last provincial election? UCP candidates are currently leading in (checks notes) zero seats in Edmonton. And they choose an issue that was fully aired and soundly rejected in Edmonton’s last election. “Because we can, that’s why” is not a good way to start an argument about democracy.
The results of the October 2025 municipal election showed the squeaky wheels opposing infill were a small vocal minority. Incumbents representing mature neighbourhoods including Michael Janz, Ashley Salvador, Erin Rutherford and Anne Stevenson won by larger margins than in the previous election. The UCP is delusional if they think this can be used as a wedge issue. In fact, the UCP will own the negative consequences of this policy reversal.
OK, this one has me severely conflicted.
When I look at my front windows, I get a lovely view of a 7 unit 3 story infill built on what was 30 year old single family building. When I walk to get my mail, I get to see another one, same infill circumstances. They are 200 feet apart, on same avenue. Neither have on site parking.
My city councilor, Jo-Anne Wright, has received multiple emails & phone calls from multipleneighbours, yet continues to steadfastly support these massively intrusive infills, consistently voting in favour of developers and against her constituents.
I am NOT against infill; I am against the oversized monstrosities being foisted upon me and my neighbors with zero consultation by developers, with no consideration of parking and utility loading, and utterly lacking any accountability from municipal elected officials. In my neighborhood, a four unit infill would fit nicely, have room for parking and not overload utilities.
And therein lies my dilemma – Smith & the chaos party have inadvertently done something useful, in their usual ham fisted, condescending & inappropriate manner. I do know one thing though; they still aren’t getting my vote, on anything. Nor do I see this “lane departure” gaining them more support in Edmonton. The real change in political support will be on the municipal level. I didn’t vote for Wright, and now I regret voting for Knack.
Gerald: This is why I said this is a good wedge issue for the UCP. It appeals, for good reasons, to many voters in the NDP universe. I drive through some Edmonton neighbourhoods almost every weekday and I would say about 60 per cent of the new developments look nice, but that 40 per cent is far too high a percentage for the ones that turn out as monstrosities and will likely be slums in a decade or less. The feds also need to go back and look at their rules for affordable housing construction, as it’s quite clear some bad actors in the development industry are playing the system. DJC
I happen to know a very busy contractor in my neighborhood. We talked about this during the civic election and retroactively changing the infill laws destroys a lot of these infills as a business case. Because the cost of startup is so much higher, and there’s more to consider in a mature neighborhood to begin with, a lot of these projects are only viable at the scale which THE CITY APPROVED THEM. So if you’re worried about slums, pulling the bottom out from the developers who are trying to do infill properly doesn’t really improve your chances. Are these people all good actors ? Of course not, it’s capitalism, but that’s what regulation and enforcement is supposedly for.
As far as parking, I know a lot of older folks post on this blog but y’all are missing how many people do not have cars anymore. Especially younger folks who are … the ones much of this infill is pitched at. As every one who lives in an actual city knows, owning a car and owning a property is not a guarantee of owning a parking space, that’s impossible. How do we get out of having to drive everywhere , being that Edmonton has some of the highest per capita car ownership in North America and some of the lowest population density ?
We get there with infill. People who don’t want to live in a growing city are free to move to the many dying small towns in alberta where they can cosplay as 1965 all they want.
There is one vision of the world in which every household has a stand-alone dwelling, a motor vehicle for every adult, and a private “green space” of yard or garden. Roads and parking account for a large portion of land use and expenditure, and there are high costs for infrastructure such as water, sewage, electricity, and utilities. The population is too dispersed for efficient, affordable public transit, and other services such as policing, fire protection, ambulances, etc. The availability of agricultural land encouraged continual expansion of this model in Prairie cities long after they passed the optimal size for economic, social, and environmental sustainability. A rural-based provincial government should leave the cities alone as they attempt to address the real issues of 21st century management and development.
For an interesting read about one aspect of the modern urban dilemma, I recommend *Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World* by Henry Grabar (2023).
Don’t worry. Our capitalist masters have got that well in hand. In the Great Destruction of Standards of Living underway in the formerly industrialized world, most people won’t be able to afford cars or stand-alone dwellings. I mean, I don’t know if I would call them “people”, as they’re not hard-working billionaires, but you get my drift. As our vastly underreported homeless populations demonstrate, all one really needs is a tree, a tarp shoplifted from the dollar store and a couple of purloined garbage bags of donated clothing to construct a more than adequate dwelling. Shopping carts and cannibalized bicycles solve the transportation problem. Urban paradise on earth. An alternative would be to construct dwellings using the masses of human feces left along downtown fencelines and in the alleys. Waste not, want not.
“Now, class—,” Miss Doyle commanding her urban kindergarten’s attention,
“—what can’t we afford anymore?”
A chorus of five year-old voices dutifully answers in unison, “Cars!”
“—and what do cars use?”
Miss Doyle cups her hand behind her ear, leans forward and turns prompting.
“Gas!”
The housing scam is an immensely entertaining show resulting from the kookery of Prog-thought smashing into the kookery of Kon-thought. The old houses in both cities are purchased at insanely inflated prices by speculators and then blowed up real good so that expensive infills can be sold or multi-unit dwellings with renters are put up which can line the pockets of rentiers. Not much talk of housing co-operatives anywhere in there. The whole scheme is barely kept from boiling over by Canadian immigration. Canada has the highest proportion of immigrants at any time in modern Canadian history. This in a period when the economy consists of exporting tar, real estate and construction. It’s a superb colonial divide-and-rule strategy. Despite the Carny Banker’s Third Reich military build-up, middle-income salaried jobs will be few and far between. So the vast majority of immigrants can fill the low-paying jobs and keep them low-paying. This has been a great trick used for over one hundred years by which capital can pin the backlash on racists in the labour movement as they continue to plunder the brown and yellow folks abroad. In my little work unit of a dozen or so, the only landlords are two immigrants who both love the Drumpf, because business. Go Flames!
@Murphy:
You’re on the money, here.
I said for *decades* as I fought for housing, “Either build plenty of good quality housing for the unhoused or let them build their own.”
Entire warehouses, shops, industrial sites sit *empty* all over this country. All have plumbing, heat, electrical hookups.
Renovation scrap and some purchased two-by-fours can build a cabin and a woodstove insulated with old brick is a plausible heating source and beats dying in the cold.
People are unhoused because it serves the government and the purposes of Big Business. If all the empty housing and buildings that sit for a year could be legally squatted, watch how fast that would open up the rental market and cause housing speculation to drop. Why rent it out when it’s just another tax-write-off asset on the books? Meanwhile, many cities have tax write-offs so the financial incentives are to leave them empty rather than rent them cheaply.
I worked high risk security in an elite condo building and *half* the units were empty–in the middle of a housing crisis–bought for speculation or some board member to stay in for a few days every year to attend meetings or just as assets to increase real estate holdings and speculation.
Instead, we funnel billions into the Poverty Industrial Complex causing a huge transient population to ping pong between shelters, drop-ins rough sleeping, couch surfing and living in their cars and RVs, if they can get them.
There isn’t even a lack of housing. There’s a lack of *will* to do what is necessary to create a surplus of housing so no one need ever be unhoused, again.
As you pointed out just now we don’t have a shortage of housing. What we have is over valued housing. We could house everyone tomorrow the speculators would just howl and everyone knows that’s who the political class both works for and is hoping to become.
They’re all just power-mad dictators. They want to scoop up all the federal government’s constitutional authority, and at the same time usurp the authority of local governments whose electoral mandates are fresher than their own.
If the mother hen thinks she can reign over the hen house in my backyard, she had better be ready for a shot of rock salt in her broad backside!
Hello DJC,
I am puzzled about a part of the “comment” of Emily, especially the link to what appears to be a commercial site of someone selling their own art. I wonder if allowing that might have been an oversight. Here is a quote of that part of the “comment”. “The kind of neighbourhood Ashley Thimot paints. https://www.ashleythimot.com/cityscapes-landscapes.?\”
Christina: I can’t always explain the comments readers (and sometimes their bots) make. I normally delete comments that appear to be vectors for commercial advertising. In this case, though, I concluded that the comment is from a real person and the use of the images on that site was intended to illustrate a point the commenter was making. DJC
Thank you, David, for printing my original comment. I apologize if I appeared to be promoting commercial work. That was not my intention. I have no connection at all to the artist apart from chatting with her upon occasion. She is a much-beloved local artist who, in my opinion, is remarkably talented, capable of capturing the beauty of blandly familiar and unremarkable Edmonton neighbourhoods. Who knew that the splendour of a rutted, snow-covered back alley in the middle of an Edmonton January could make one catch one’s breath in delight and awe? I wanted others to see in pictures what I tried to put in words. She paints neighbourhoods that have been much transformed over the years- from busy fast-growing fifties suburbs- new malls, new pools, arenas, schools, freeways and so many kids!- to experimental seventies architecture- to undoing the mall and rethinking those freeways- to very recent neighbourhood renewal including such things as supportive living homes, the much needed practical drainage solutions of rain gardens, and yes, infill. Successive City councils carefully (for the most part) planned and budgeted and studied and engineered and consulted with citizens with the express goal of meeting the needs of the people living and working and playing there. When I took the occasion of meeting with Mayor Knack to sneer at Miles Berry and his disdain for bike lanes, the Mayor gently reprimanded me, reminding me that Miles lived there too, and had every right to fully participate. In fact, he told me, the City had taken into account his sensible and valuable advice about reworking those very freeways. The point I am trying to make is that I love this city, I benefit greatly from this city and thus feel beholden to it. I am committed to its well-being, as are my neighbours (no matter their stance on bike lanes and infill!). The city will go on, with or without the dreamers and the artists and the planners and the bean counters and the infill scrutineers, but it will be a much poorer, unhappier place to dwell in when the passion we hold for the space we inhabit and the autonomy to shape our surroundings are thwarted by overbearing, officious self-interested meddlers with no affinity for the land or the people living upon it .
This is starting to meander, so, in a further attempt to elucidate why Smith’s cold, dulcet-toned contract killing of local democracy, why her thick and blindly vicious tentacles fingering their way into that which is precious and good and ours cut so deeply, I will ask that you indulge me once again in considering Thimot’s point of view, in her words this time:
“In my pursuit of strengthening community, I’ve come to realize that my artistic practice is an act of investing in my community. My work celebrates the neighbourhoods I visit every day. It presents my immediate world as something beautiful and worthy of consideration. Each piece I create is an example of how I see these neighbourhoods and focuses on the beauty within them. They show the viewer how lovely home is and evoke a sense of pride to be part of them. They invite the viewer to feel what it is like to be a part of that neighbourhood and be, for that moment, my neighbour.”
Residents of Calgary-Lougheed have an advance polling station outside their constituency boundary for the referendum. It has no public transit.
Mayor Jeromy Farkas pointed out on social media this week that a special city bus route will take them to the advance polls at Spruce Meadows, at regular transit rates.
Make your own conclusions, but surely this is just a mayor and city council looking after the people they serve, ensuring that everyone who is eligible to vote gets the opportunity to do so. Democracy isn’t dead yet, despite attempts to end it.
To quote Timothy Snyder:
“Do not obey in advance.
Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.”
Vote in the referendum. Take the bus if you need to because now you can. The fact that your advance polling station is purposefully remote should motivate you even more. There are locations within the constituency with convenient public transit: schools and churches, that could have been chosen. There are closer locations outside the boundary with public transit. They were not chosen. This is intentional. Send a message that your vote counts, even though you have to cross Stoney Trail on a transit bus to do it.
https://www.calgarytransit.com/news/spruce-meadows-shuttle.html
Infill is better than sprawling gated communities that require gas-guzzling vehicles to get around in. But affordable and social housing plus PUBLIC green spaces are, in my opinion needed much more. And solar panels, and roof gardens on arenas and curling rinks… (I could go on forever, but, mercifully, I won’t).
I see Smith’s latest move as a muscle flexing attack on the fact that municipal politics exist OUTSIDE direct control of the party system, so the normal whips can’t be cracked. In fact, they are the closest level of governance to the real grass roots (vs. Drugstore Cowboy astro-turfers like the UCP).
Marlaina whines constantly about the federal government not staying in their lane, but has no problem meddling in Edmonton’s business. Her hypocrisy is only exceeded by her dishonesty.
As much as I have no use for Danielle Smith and her heavy handed approach to anything I have to agree with her on this one, the mayor and council have completely ignored what the people have been saying. When they met with the city officials to discuss their concerns they were convinced that they had their minds made up before they got there and weren’t interested in listening to them.
My daughter had a house she rented out and they built an 8 unit infill near it and created a nightmare in the neighbourhood. No parking provided for the infill unites and they had at least two cars for each unit and people could no longer invite friends and relatives over for Sunday dinner because there was no place for them to park, handicapped people had a real problem when they couldn’t park close to their relatives. My daughter saw a definite decline in value when she sold it.
I’m sorry but this anecdote about your daughter is entirely from the perspective of someone (a landlord) who has a vested interest in infill NOT happening. It’s also heavy on the emotional details, in short, a very common argument from the anti infill crowd, and why many people view those criticisms with a rather large grain of salt.
I’ll also ad, anecdotes and emotional appeals are exactly why the city needs to research and refine their approach on infill. Many developments have been a boondoggle, probably none worse than the former airport, but the fact is if we want vibrant dynamic neighborhoods in the core of the city we need people living there, we need spaces for business, we need transportation options. In my opinion, on street parking is quite likely the last of these considerations. But hey? What do the studies show ? What’s it like in other municipalities? Can we learn anything new or must everything be a return to the old norms ? Because that can never happen.
While I don’t have to worry about a bunch of multi-unit dwellings being built next door, I can relate to the potential negative impacts of increased traffic, reduced parking, reduced sunlight & greenery on the neighborhood.
Not to be pedantic, but Adriana LaGrange is the Minister of Hospital and Surgical Health Services, not the Minister of Primary and Preventive Health Services (which is Justin Wright)
That’s not being pedantic, Jeff. It’s an error fact and needs to be corrected, which it now has. Thanks. DJC