Reading the histories of Edmonton in the 1930's where pro business councillors repeatedly used local police to beat down on people in poverty under the same pretenses, it really hammers home how little that narrative has changed over the last century.

"I never thought the leopards would ban Atlas Shrugged"
🥺👉👈

It is always amusing to see these kinds of governments, which deliberately use vague language to get around laws prohibiting discrimination, and then get shocked when that vague language is implemented (by them) and causes pandemonium because they've left it so badly undefined.

There are already numerous systems in place to let parents decide if they want their child to be educated in certain subjects, which is the correct obligation the public system (emphasis on public) should have, not prohibiting everything related to those subjects for all students.

If I was still working as a cook and a parent came up to me at the buffet where you can choose your food options, and demanded that I remove an option for everybody because their child didn't like it, I'd tell them no. Because that's absurd.

With recent reports that the American government has illegally detained hundreds of Canadians since Trump was re-elected, I'm surprised that we're seemingly rewarding that behaviour by capitulating to them for no reason. Really inspiring stuff.

You bet 😂 the public spaces bylaw "renewal", the encampment clearing framework, bridge funding for Bissel East and BSCS, police funding, police commission, I've been at odds with the current council most times I've spoken there over the last 4 years lolol.

But at the end of the day, population decline in rural Alberta doesn't seem to be stopping anytime soon, and as long as that continues then redistricting is going to continue to reflect those changes.

Another would be proportional representation, but something tells me the UCP wouldn't be keen on that even though it would mean ensuring some degree of representation for their voters in larger urban areas, and could accommodate a larger number of representatives more generally.

One answer, despite the complaints of some at these preliminary hearings, is actually meaningfully increasing the number of MLA's, population disparity is only going to grow, and the less that representation keeps up with that, the larger rural ridings will inevitably become.

The issues presented by some of the submissions around rural riding inflation are absolutely real, but @daniellelarivee.bsky.social really nailed it with her commentary about hybrid ridings, forcing together such different needs often fails both rural and urban communities and then nobody is happy.

We aren't a colony of Britain or France anymore; we don't need to be kissing the bruised egos of the countries that kicked this whole shitshow off in the first place by making stupid recognition conditions to match theirs.

"activation", every time I hear it being used as a stand-in for something like a festival or gathering, I puke a little bit, it's so corporatised it's become gross.

So congrats. We're "staying in our lane", using what powers the city does have to punish people experiencing visible poverty, and then washing our hands of any kind of responsibility for anything else. If that's your solution, I'm not voting for you.