Speaking Municipally

Mack Male: The scaring in ceremony. This week, we take you inside city hall for the swearing in ceremony, and inaugural city council meeting of the 2025 to 2029 term.
Stephanie Swensrude: Plus, we look at possible changes to provincial electoral boundaries in Edmonton, and hear from some municipal election scrutineers.

Mack: Hi, I'm Mack.

Stephanie: I'm Stephanie.

Mack: And we're...

Both: Speaking Municipally.

Mack: Welcome back to Speaking Municipally, episode 330. We are recording this, Stephanie, in the- the time where Jays fans, which I am totally on the bandwagon for, have all this optimism about a potential series-clinching win in game six.

Stephanie: You know, I do not follow baseball that much, where I was saying this before we started recording, I believe that baseball should be only watched in person when it's 28 degrees and sunny out, and you have a beer and a hot dog, and you get a sunburn. It should not be when it's this cold out. It just doesn't feel right.

Mack: I agree with that. I love sitting out in the summer, having a beer, watching some baseball in our beautiful river valley. But it's kind of like saying hockey shouldn't be played when it's 30 degrees in June. And yet-

Stephanie: No.

Mack: ... if you're fans of hockey or baseball, you want June hockey and you want October baseball, right? So.

Stephanie: Very true. (laughs)

Mack: It is what it is.

Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. We're also... We'll- we'll be releasing this on Halloween, which is, explains the title, the scaring in ceremony.

Mack: And you're a big Halloween fan, right?

Stephanie: I am. Mack do you have a costume picked out?

Mack: Yeah, I'm going as a dad who's a Blue Jays fan.

Stephanie: Oh.

Mack: So we'll be, you know, watching the Blue Jays in game six while we're walking, because it's at the same time as trick-or-treating. I- I I said to my poor daughter, I'm like, "You got to choose. You got to choose between game six or trick-or-treating." And she was not happy about that joke, so.

Stephanie: Oh. (laughs)

Mack: We are, we are going trick-or-treating, but we'll be trying to follow the Jays as we go. Uh, no, I'm not-

Stephanie: Yeah, you'll be able to hear like the s- the cheers coming from the houses as you go along.

Mack: That's right, yeah.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Mack: Or like, you know, if it gets down to the wire, like, "Can we come in for a minute and look at your TV?" Like... (laughs)

Stephanie: (laughs) Can you imagine?

Mack: That'd be crazy. Uh, are you-

Stephanie: Yeah.

Mack: Do you have a costume? You dressing up?

Stephanie: Um, I am being Pearl from the A24 movie, Pearl, um, a few years ago, 'cause it's... So there's like a trilogy of those horror movies. It's, um, X, Pearl, and Maxxxine. And a few years ago, I was a character from the first movie, and I'm gonna be a character from the second movie. And then maybe in a few years, I'll be a character from the third movie. It's great.

Mack: Nice. That's awesome.

Stephanie: Yep.

Mack: All right. Well, hopefully we'll get a picture of your costume afterwards.

Stephanie: Mm-hmm.

Mack: Uh, let's talk about the swearing in ceremony. We went to city hall. I- I kind of feel this is my transition. I kind of feel like it was, you know, people that we know cosplaying other roles.

Stephanie: (laughs)

Mack: It's just 'cause it's so new, right? Like Andrew Knack up there as the mayor, it's like-

Stephanie: Yeah.

Mack: ... he doesn't... He's the mayor, but he doesn't feel like the mayor yet. You know, it hasn't sunk in. And if that's how I feel, I wonder how they all feel, right?

Stephanie: Mm-hmm.

Mack: But we were at city hall, it was full. There was friends and family and lots of other, you know, leaders and officials from the city and other organizations there. There was a bit of ceremony to the whole thing. They have to-

Stephanie: Definitely.

Mack: ... you know, do, do the oath verbally, they have to raise their hand, if they want. They can choose to say "So help me God" or not.

Stephanie: (laughs)

Mack: They get pictures. They... You know, there, there's a whole bit of pomp around it.

Stephanie: Definitely.

Mack: And then after that, they get into into the council chambers for the inaugural meeting. So, I thought we could talk just a little bit about some of our observations. And one of the things I wanted to start with was Andrew Knack's speech. So the mayor usually gets a chance to give a speech after all of the ceremony stuff is done. Um, and I don't know what you thought about his speech, but to me, it hit all the right notes. It was about the right length. It had the right kind of passion to it, I guess, or, or grav- gravitas to it.

Stephanie: Mm-hmm.

Mack: Um, but, and maybe it's just the lens that I look through, but I felt like he was channeling Taproot in his speech because he hit all of our three core values that we talk about. Curiosity, courage, and care. Uh, and he had a little bit of humor in there, too. So, right near the beginning he says, "To our returning incumbents, may your email inboxes always be marked read and resolved. And to our incoming council, welcome," which I thought was funny.

Stephanie: (laughs)

Mack: It's a bit of an acknowledgement with the, you know, incumbents like, "We're all in this together." And almost like a warning sign to the incoming councillors, like, "Get ready-"

Stephanie: Yeah.

Mack: "... your inbox is about to fill up." (laughs)

Stephanie: Yeah. It probably already is.

Mack: Yeah. Probably already is, right?

Stephanie: Yeah.

Mack: Uh, later in the speech he said, "No one moves to a city they think is in decline." And he was talking about, you know, the 200,000 people that have recently moved here. He didn't have many points in the speech where I felt like there was a direct callback to stuff that we heard during the election. This one felt like that to me. You know, some of the rhetoric from other candidates was like, "Edmonton's on the wrong path. Edmonton's not attracting the right investment," all those kinds of things. And he's saying, "No, like hundreds of thousands of people have moved here, and they wouldn't do that if they thought-"

Stephanie: Mm-hmm.

Mack: "... we were on the wrong path." And then he followed it up by saying, quote, "Our job is to match that hope with action." So you know, a lot of talk about action. I guess it'll remain to be seen how much action they actually put into place here.

Stephanie: Yeah. So, a few things about moving to a city that think is, they think is in decline. In an article with, I think, CBC, they kind of profiled his like journey to the mayor's chair. And one of his first quotes is him saying, "Edmonton is not broken. I'm so sick of hearing that." And I think we talked about this in a past episode, where he was one of the only main candidates that had, was more optimistic, and it, voting for him felt like you're actually voting for something rather than just like against, like a, like a peed off kind of vote, a grumpy vote, which I don't think anyone thinks is fun ever. But also, um, I think people move to cities that are, they think are in decline sometimes because they don't have a choice, like, "We're the...... cheapest, most affordable large city in Canada. Um, I don't think people feel like they have much of a choice when they move to Edmonton sometimes.

Mack: Oh, interesting. Hmm. Like if you wanna buy a house, where are you gonna move? You're not gonna move to Toronto.

Stephanie: Like, respectfully, I don't think people are like, "Edmonton, the new hottest city in A- in Canada." Like, no. They're moving here because we have cheap housing. Like, I th- uh, and now now I think that Edmonton is the best city in the world. Uh, but I don't think that people are moving to Edmonton because it's like, "Woo, the, the regional collaboration." It's it's... You know what I mean? It's... I don't think that's why people are moving here. (laughs)

Mack: I think that's a-

Stephanie: It's pretty obvious.

Mack: ... really interesting point. Yeah, I think that's true. I mean, I guess another way to say that, though, is people move to Edmonton because they see opportunity.

Stephanie: Exactly.

Mack: Whether it's the opportunity to buy a house or the opportunity for employment or any of those things where they... You might, you might phrase it as they feel like they have no choice, but it could be seen as an opportunity perhaps? I don't know.

Stephanie: Yeah, maybe that's the more optimistic, um, way to think about it. (laughs)

Mack: Yeah, but I, but I think what you're getting at is like, circumstances have conspired to make Edmonton and Calgary, you know, very attractive places for migration, in-migration, and it's not necessarily because we have Connor McDavid or you know, any of the other things that you might think of as attracting people.

Stephanie: A thriving food scene. (laughs)

Mack: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, interesting. Uh, okay, and then he continued on in the speech. Another point that stood out to me. He said, "I know leadership is not about having every answer. It is about creating the conditions for good answers to emerge," which, you know, to me, was getting at curiosity, right?

Stephanie: Mm-hmm.

Mack: And I think speaks to something that is very true about Andrew Knack, which is that he is unfailingly willing to listen and engage with people and hear what they have to say, and this was, I think, him basically saying, "You know, my approach to leadership is I'm gonna listen, and I encourage all of you to listen. And from those, you know, opportunities, we'll find the path forward," right?

Stephanie: Mm-hmm.

Mack: He had a section toward the end about thanking city employees, and we were sitting up or standing up on the mezzanine, Stephanie, with the other media folks, and we were right next to the sort of tech people, right? Who were involved in making all the ceremony sound good, and they live-streamed it on YouTube, and they had all that kinda work to do, and they were very busy turning knobs-

Stephanie: Mm-hmm.

Mack: ... and pressing buttons the whole time.

Stephanie: (laughs)

Mack: Uh, but when Andrew Knack got into this section thanking city employees and basically acknowledging like, you know, "Councilors are the ones that make the policies, but you folks are the ones that actually get out there and enact it. Like, you clear the streets. You operate the rec centers. You are staffing the libraries," like all that kind of stuff, you know, the guys next to us were like raising their fists in the air.

Stephanie: Oh, yeah.

Mack: They were quite happy, right? About that.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Mack: So smart of the mayor to include that shout-out to staff, especially given all the recent, in this past term, discussion about union contracts and everything. And then he closed the speech with a little bit about kindness, and he said, "And know this. Kindness is not weakness. Kindness is courage." And I thought that was a really nice way for him to end the speech.

Stephanie: Well, I thought that was interesting that you wrote that down, 'cause I also wrote that down as a note, because I thought that maybe it was a reference to all the people that say that he's too nice to be mayor.

Mack: Hmm. That's interesting.

Stephanie: And I thought, you know, kindness is not weakness. The fact that he is... And we talked about this on the podcast before. Like maybe being nice as a top elected official is a good thing. (laughs)

Mack: Right. Yeah. No, you're right. I think that's a really interesting point. I think he is true to him to say something like this, and you're right. Maybe it's a nice little clap back at people who think that he's not strong enough. Yeah.

Stephanie: Yeah, and like, again, the nicest possible way, like... (laughs)

Mack: Right. In a speech, like, it is mostly positive and hopeful and everything, but still.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Mack: Yeah.

Stephanie: (laughs)

Mack: All right. Well, after the speech, we got to go into the council chamber for the inaugural meeting. It was fast. Uh, although there was a couple of funny things that stood out to you, right, from that first meeting, Stephanie?

Stephanie: Yeah, it was just... Uh, so this was my first time experiencing something like this, and I kind of expected the, the pomp to be carried on into it, but... Into the meeting. It was not.

Mack: Yeah.

Stephanie: It was a lot of like IT guy running around setting up two-factor authentication. Like, even the city of Edmonton, you have to sign in to Outlook 25 times for it to actually stick. And it was kind of adorable, 'cause I noticed that all of the... I don't know if they did this on purpose, but the incumbent councillors were like surrounding each of the new ones. Like the new councillors had one incumbent on either side and there was a couple times where I think Karen Tang was like leaning over to help Reid Clark with something, and, and then during the v- the coupl- they had to do a couple of votes, and Andrew Knack was like, "Yeah, you just have to press that little... No, no. That button. Uh, yeah. Yeah, that button over there." And then after they voted on their first bylaw, he went, "You guys just approved your first bylaw. Do-do-do." Like it was just... It was very... It was p- fairly wholesome.

Mack: Yeah, and, you know, he had a bit of humor in there too. He cracked a joke about security at the city of Edmonton-

Stephanie: Yeah.

Mack: ... 'cause they're all struggling with the two-factor authentication, and we were talking like, "Shouldn't they have done that beforehand?" But I suppose they really only had two days, right? Monday and Tuesday before this, and there's still a lot of orientation and training for these councillors to go. And so it is all new to all of them, and uh, and I think it is pretty intentional. So what, a couple of things they approved in this first meeting. One of them is that seating chart.

Stephanie: Mm-hmm.

Mack: And the order in which everyone sits, and so I think it probably was intentional that they put incumbents around the newcomers so they can do that little bit of assistance and everything. So, um, yeah. Kind of an interesting first meeting, and then after that, it was very fast. They were ahead of schedule, actually. They had a little reception like they always do for the new councillors and their families and supporters and things like that, and us media folk hang around, and we got to scrum with some of them. So we got to talk to Andrew Knack, and you asked him kind of about working with his colleagues and hitting the ground running, and uh, here's what he said about that.

Andrew Knack: Yeah. And, and that's part of why, you know, even before the swearing in ceremony, I had met with every one of the other members of council to talk about what their priorities are, what they would like to, us to work on, and how we're going to do that together. I talked about it in the speech as well, is starting work on our strategic vision. Uh, this is something that really hasn't been done in my 12 years on council. Mayor Iverson did a version of that, but not a public-facing strategic document. Uh, Mayor Sohi came on during the middle of a pandemic. It was a very challenging time. So I want to start off early on to make sure that this council sets a clear strategic vision, something that we can make sure we're holding our city manager accountable to, something that I know city staff want to get behind and work together on, and then something that we can, the public can also hold us accountable to. And so that's, that's going to be one of our best actions in the very near term, because once we have that, we know where we're headed and even when something different comes up, because there's always going to be an issue that comes up where we need to sort of divert our attention. But once we deal with that, then we can pivot back to our guiding star, which will be our strategic plan.

Stephanie: Yeah, so he mentioned that clear strategic vision which they're going to develop, and he said that that will be a public document, which is good. I was under the impression that they did this every council. So it's a little bit concerning that this will be the, according to Andrew Knack, this will be the first council to do it, but better late than never, I guess. (laughs)

Mack: I, I think it's interesting because we do have a strategic vision for the city.

Stephanie: Right.

Mack: Like, the City of Edmonton as a corporation has this, and councils approved that strategy. Like, I feel like what he's talking about here is something that hasn't really been done before, which is like the guiding North Star principles for council. It's almost like putting into, like codifying-

Stephanie: Yeah.

Mack: ... some values that they're all going to agree to about how they approach things. I'm very curious to see it. I'm really glad that he has committed to making this a public document. I think it could be pretty interesting, but I don't know exactly what it'll look like, and I do think it is a bit different than things that have come before. Uh, so that should be good. In that clip, you heard him mention that he's been meeting with the councillors. And, and I noticed this too earlier in the week and, and there was a post on LinkedIn from Mayor Don Iverson that I will put, former Mayor Don Iverson, that I'll put in the show notes. And he said, "I appreciate that our mayor elect is making a point of meeting his incoming councillors out in their wards. It's a subtle but important shift from being summoned for an audience at City Hall." And then he's, he goes on to say he's not surprised because that's very much the Andrew Knack that he came to know when they served on council together. But I had also noticed that, that like he was posting pictures out in the community talking to councillors, and it did seem like he was going out into every individual ward. So that is a, a sign to me that he takes this job of mayor and the responsibility to try to make the team work together effectively and collaborate really seriously, and he's already starting, right, to do that. And, and is treating councillors as teammates rather than, you know, people that need to be herded and, and managed, which some mayors in the past have done. That has been their approach, right, to almost look down on the councillors in some ways or to see them more as a problem rather than as collaborators. So early good signs from the mayor on that.

Stephanie: So one thing that I noticed about the first meeting is that there was no first motion introduced. Now, um, sometimes mayors will kind of use the first meeting, introduce a first motion to kind of set a symbolic tone or to like... it's, I don't want to say it's symbolic because it is related to real work, but like the fact that it's, that, that the first motion is X, like it's a big deal, right?

Mack: Mm-hmm.

Stephanie: Notably at Mayor Amarjeet Sohi introduced a motion calling for admin to create a anti-racism strategy. Like that was like his big thing, was like my very first motion. And Andrew Knack did not do that on Wednesday, but he did hint to us that he is going to craft a motion for November 3rd, something around day shelter spaces, which is something that kind of an issue that was arisen in the last couple weeks of the campaign where, um, all of a sudden pe- everyone was talking about how we don't have day shelter spaces. So expect something like that coming out next week.

Mack: And so a signal from him that homelessness and housing are going to be pretty key topics for his term, at least at the beginning here.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Mack: All right. Well, we did get to scrum with a few other folks as well, and just let's get into a few of those. So we did talk to Michael Elliott, um, so the new councillor in Pahesewin, which is Tim Carmel's old ward. We noticed during the swearing in ceremony, he was seated next to Michael Janz.

Stephanie: Mm-hmm.

Mack: And you nudged me at some point and you're like, "Look at them. They're chatting, they're laughing." And I grabbed a couple of photos and everything.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Mack: And that was kind of interesting. And we asked him about that after. And then you noticed some other things too.

Stephanie: Yeah. One thing that when Michael Janz was up doing his oath, so like the space between Mike Elliott and Anne Stevenson was empty. Anne Stevenson was struggling with her water bottle and she like hands it to Mike Elliott and he opens it for her. So I don't know, it seems like any possible bad blood between Mike Elliott and the incumbent councillors is potentially, you know, water under the bridge to, to mix my metaphors.

Mack: Yeah, yeah.

Stephanie: For now at least.

Mack: And for now. And, and we asked him about this, right? So in the scrum afterwards we were talking to him a little bit. He was talking about his family who was there, who, the sergeant who first hired him was there. Like he had, you know, some history and, and he talked about how he was quite a different man than he was. And so here's the clip that we got talking to Mike Elliott.

Michael Elliott: Yes, there's a bit of history like between Mr. Janz and I, but as soon as I came, first time I saw Michael, I came up to him and I said, "You know, this Mike," because he refers to himself as Michael and I'm Mike. And I said, "The Mike of a couple years ago is not the Mike of today." Um, through like mental health training I went through PTSD. I went, sent away for six months for an in-house, um, six-month program, saved my life.... absolutely saved my life, and it's given me a- an absolute- a new outlook on life, um, because I think the road I was going on, I don't think I would- would have been here. So having an- enough opportunity at life, and having gratitude, and learning to work with people, not against people is very important to me. And... 'cause that's what I'm hoping, that people don't judge me on my past and accept me for who I am, and that we can actually, you know, mend bridges and build together. 'Cause it's no different in, if you're having conflict with family, you have to learn to work through things, and that's what I want to bring to, this time, the city council. And so I, I really do wanna work well with others.

Stephanie: Yeah, so he, you know, got a little bit choked up there, and, um, I'm feeling optimistic for the decorum of- of city council. I know that there was- I think last week we talked about how the two of them, Mike and Michael, should kind of put what happened between them behind them, and I thought, "I don't know if that'll happen," but I've changed my mind on that.

Mack: So far, at least.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Mack: Yeah.

Stephanie: So far. And also it i- it's Mike Elliott and Michael Janz. They have decided one will be Mike and one will be Michael. Mike Elliott, Michael Janz. (laughs)

Mack: Okay, good to know.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Mack: Another person we talked to, or sorry, another person you talked to, John Morgan in Ipiihkoohkanipiaohtsi.

Stephanie: Yeah, so, um, we got to talk to him. We talked a bit about how it felt to win and how it felt to win against two very well financed campaigns, and he just said that his ground game was really good. Like, they had enough money to run it, and they had lots of volunteers and, you know, that's what you need. You don't necessarily need a ton of cash to win an election, as you said before, Mack.

Mack: Yeah, and- and his campaign manager was standing right there, and-

Stephanie: (laughs)

Mack: ... you know, it was just like, "You guys clearly did a good job here 'cause an incumbent outspent by a couple of your other competitors." Like, lots of- lots of things against him but they- they did a great job with that, and you- you also, when you were asking him questions, kind of noted that he was able to build on 2021, which he also talked about, right? Having done that campaign the first time around. Uh, you asked him about priorities. What's his priority for the ward?

Stephanie: Yeah, so his main thing that he mentioned was twinning 41st Avenue Southwest. It's effectively the most southern boundary because, as we've talked about, they do not want development south of 41st Ave Southwest yet. I don't venture down to that part of town very often, but I guess it's a very underbuilt road. It's um, it's, well, obviously there's tons of development down there, um, tons of new neighborhoods, lots of new people moving there, so makes sense that he'd want to twin that.

Mack: Yeah, and something he said he heard quite a bit from people when he was out door-knocking in the ward. Okay, we also talked to Thu Parmar, who's the new councillor in sipiwiyiniwak.

Stephanie: Yeah. So we didn't get to talk to her too much, we didn't get to have a one-on-one conversation. She was scrummed with all the rest of the media, and she seemed a little bit nervous just because it's the first day and there's like 10 cameras in her face. But, um, she just was very... She seemed very happy to be there. She seems like, just my first impression is of very much so someone who wants to serve, someone who wants to do this job, which is exciting. Um, you wouldn't really wanna have someone in the role that didn't wanna be there, obviously. And she just talked a bit about her experience working as a pharmacist, working with the Canadian Red Cross, and I think she was the president of the Cameron Heights Community League. So lots of good experience kind of serving communities. Nothing- nothing too crazy to say.

Mack: Yeah, eager to hit the ground running, I guess.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Mack: That's sort of the sense I got from her, like she's a little bit deer in the headlights at the moment, but ready just to kind of get down to business, right?

Stephanie: Yeah, and I can imagine having the- the- the plot twist of, um, losing and then winning. I can imagine that being even more surreal, feeling like she went to sleep on Monday, October 20th and hasn't yet woken up. (laughs)

Mack: Totally.

Stephanie: You know what I mean?

Mack: Yeah, totally. And then the final new councillor, Reed Clarke in Nakota Isga. We talked to him as well.

Stephanie: Yeah, he, um, kinda, it's, in the interview has the same cadence as like a sports guy in a- in like a post-game interview (laughs). He's lots of like, "Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. Uh-huh."

Mack: (laughs)

Stephanie: So it was- it was funny. But no, we talked about how he has like some big shoes to fill in Natoda Isga 'cause obviously that was Andrew Knack's ward, and he was councillor there for 12 years, very well known, very- pretty well liked, I would say, and he acknowledged that. That, and then obviously like having the mayor be the former councillor for your ward is I think a little bit of pressure.

Mack: Yeah.

Stephanie: We also asked him some questions about sports, and we asked him if his sports background will help him, give him a special advantage, and he said, "You know, it's just about like building, um, building a team and working together," and I thought that was nice. And then you asked him if he ha- is gonna install a basketball hoop in his office. (laughs)

Mack: Yeah.

Stephanie: And he said he has.

Mack: And he said he's got a basketball in there, and he hasn't got the hoop in. But he did say that he's replaced the nets and the- and the hoops outside of city hall already, which is sort of interesting, and like I'm- I'm imagining that was before, you know, he started as councillor. Um, I also love that he essentially promised you that he will try to work sports puns and things into his speaking time at council, so look forward to that in future meetings.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Mack: Uh, all right, after that, I took off, but I think you stuck around for a little bit, you talked to-

Stephanie: Yeah.

Mack: ... some of the incumbents. Did you get anything interesting from them?

Stephanie: Yeah, I spoke to... So one interesting thing was I spoke to Erin Rutherford, and the energy between c- like comparing the new councillors to the incumbent councillors was quite different because the new ones were all just, "Eee, I'm so excited this is gonna be so great." And then meanwhile, Erin Rutherford was like lighting a cigarette, she's like, "God-"

Mack: (laughs)

Stephanie: "... we have so much more work to do." (laughs) Obviously I'm exaggerating a little bit. She said that she was excited, but again, it's very like daunting to have all this work. There's lots of stuff that they didn't finish. Um, but she also seemed...... like, grateful to have the opportunity to keep working on these issues for another four years. And then I spoke to Michael Janz. Um, I wanted to talk to him about this whole incumbency advantage/disadvantage thing, and I wanted to get his perspective on the very loud voices who were saying because of infill and bike lanes, the incumbent councillors are gone, and then in Papasdeo, Metis, and Odamin where a lot of those loud voices were coming from, those councillors were reelected with a large margin, like 50- 45% to 60% of the vote, I think.

Mack: Yeah.

Stephanie: So I asked him about that and he said that these issues, like, these culture war, quote unquote, "culture war issues" like bike lanes and infill, um, they're not culture war issues, they're affordability issues. Uh, so he said that if you can give a family a chance to live near transit and then become a one-car family instead of a two-car family, then that's that's a huge deal and that could save them a lot of money. Yeah, it goes back to what we were saying how potentially it's a lot of... It's a small number of really loud voices that, um, are opposing these things.

Mack: Interesting. Yeah. So not downplaying it necessarily, but kind of shifting it to be more about affordability than culture war stuff, which is maybe a better str- strategy on the part of Council Janz?

Stephanie: Y- yeah, for sure.

Mack: Excellent. All right, well, one election's done. Another election's coming up eventually, sometime in this term as we mentioned, and that's the provincial one, and one of the things that has to happen before that election comes up is some potential changes to the electoral boundaries, provincially. So this report has come out from this commission that has been appointed, so every eight to 10 years, they have to decide to update the boundaries 'cause, you know, the province continues growing, population changes, um, and we gotta make sure that representation is, is balanced. So they've got this 214-page report that's come out. What did you note from the report for Edmonton, Stephanie?

Stephanie: Well, so the number of Edmonton seats is proposed to grow to 21 from 20, so we... The city, in general, would get one new constituency. There's going to be redrawing of other ones, and there's gonna be consolidation of some of the central ones, and that's because, um, several of the inner city, central core neighborhoods are not growing as fast as the ones on the outside of Edmonton, so they're saying, um, "We need to consolidate the core seats in Edmonton." And that was really surprising to me.

Mack: And specifically the south, right, is where the growth is happening.

Stephanie: Mm-hmm.

Mack: So I think the large- largely the ones in the north don't look like they'll change too much, but sort of the center south ones would, would change, so one of those new constituencies would be Edmonton Southeast, and another one would be Edmonton West Enoch, which is interesting 'cause it's a little bit of a hybrid one, which the report talks a bit about, I noticed. You know, this idea of urban-rural together, this one's urban-rural-and-indigenous all together into one, so if, if those changes are approved, that one would go ahead. So I think that's kind of interesting, but this is really about trying to account for growth, and obviously we know that between 2021 and 2024, so 2021 was the last federal census. Since that time Alberta has grown significantly, but three-quarters of it has been in Edmonton and Calgary, so the boundary report talks a lot about Edmonton and Calgary and sort of this urban-rural thing, and I saw Nahed Nenshi leader of the NDP talk about this, and his take is that commission members have been quite fair in thinking about some very real constraints about population growth. So not super critical of, of the report, though I did see, I don't know if you saw this, Stephanie, but I did see some of the comments were from more rural folks in the province feeling like there's too much consolidation toward the cities, but, I mean, that's where the population growth is happening, right?

Stephanie: Mm-hmm. Yeah, a- it's really tough because you look up in Northern Alberta where I believe the size of the ridings are humongous and then they're going to be consolidating even more. I was speaking with Jack Farrell, who is a Canadian Press reporter, the day that he was working on this story, I ran into him on the bus, and he said that one of the ridings in Northern Alberta will be larger than the Netherlands, I think.

Mack: Wow.

Stephanie: I- imagine being an MLA for that and it's like, "Oh, I have an event that I've been invited to as an MLA. I have to drive for nine hours to get there." But at the same time, not many people live up there.

Mack: Yeah.

Stephanie: So I, I... But it's, it's really tough and we should be striving obviously to make them as equal as possible, but it's really tough to do that in a, in a place like Alberta that has such an uneven distribution of population.

Mack: Yeah, and then there's this discussion about these potential hybrid ones where you've got some urban, some rural in there, and kind of, like, in a way you think about our wards in the city, how they have a little bit of hybrid, too-

Stephanie: Yeah.

Mack: ... between core and suburban in a lot of areas and most folks, according to the report, were opposed to those sort of hybrid wards simply because the constituent concerns are so different from one area to the other, right? Um, I haven't read the whole report yet, but I was scanning through it and I noticed another thing that's really interesting. They talk a lot about distance from the Alberta legislature, like you're talking about. You know, it's like an actual consideration, like, how long does it take to drive from the Alberta Legislature in Edmonton to, you know, these other parts of the province which i- uh, intuitively I guess makes sense. You, you know, you're gonna be in the legislature a lot if you're an MLA, but you do have to be out in your constituency and, and at events and things like that, but it's so interesting to see that actually written down in the report.

Stephanie: Yeah, especially when it comes to the Edmonton ridings because it's like, "Okay, seriously, like, that's a difference of 20 minutes. Come on." (laughs)

Mack: Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Ah, well, the next step on this commission report is that there will be public hearings on these recommendations, and then they will submit a final report in about five months, so well in advance of when the next provincial election is scheduled to take place. I guess it could happen earlier, but the boundaries should be updated before that takes place.

Stephanie: ... and then the next provincial election is 2027, right?

Mack: Currently, yeah.

Stephanie: Sorry, currently. Cool.

Mack: All right, well one more election thing we wanted to talk about. Uh, back to the municipal elections. So Taproot did an interesting story this week about election scrutineers.

Stephanie: Yeah, so managing editor Tim Quarengreser kind of took this one on. It's a really good story. What I thought was interesting is that, like, the actual election workers themselves who, you know, had to be there so late counting ballots by hand, I don't think they're allowed to talk to media about this, but scrutineers certainly were, were allowed, and they certainly did. So in case you haven't heard of them before, scrutineers are, like, typically volunteers for campaigns that will go to stations around the city and scrutinize the ballot counters to make sure that everything is good, and they also are able to kind of report on how things are looking for different candidates, um, which is how, like, some people kind of knew before the rest of, um, Edmonton knew, that they were like, "Yeah, I, I lost." So they, they go over how the vote counters were counting the votes, which was this kind of complicated way of you sort all of the ballots into, like, four, four candidates each, and then after that you have to then sort them into each candidate. It was kind of confusing and, um, it, it resulted in the same ballot being sorted, like, two or three times, and then the quote here was, "It was agonizingly slow to watch because you had people just circling the same ballot potentially three times."

Mack: Yeah, super interesting, right? That you had... I guess what is an important process because they clearly define this in- for a reason, but then you hear from the scrutineers who were watching that, like, not only was it slow, but some of them had to say, "You guys, that's the wrong pile," or, "You missed a box over there." And I don't want... I wonder how much of that is just, you know, humans are fallible, especially when you're working late at night and you've been at this for a long time, and you're counting that all- things that all look the same and, you know, that's kind of interesting. So the word that we heard to some- in some cases where there was chaos, right? With this counting. One of the scrutineers I saw in the story was Max Amarajan and, and he said, he's worked like 10 elections or something like that as a scrutineer. He said it was normal, which I thought was interesting, right? Like it's not all bad. Counting ballots is generally chaos. (laughs) Uh, he said, "I've scrutineered a lot of other races and there's always a bit of chaos. The count procedures break down a little, and there's usually some, 'Oh, you missed a pile over there,' or, 'There's a ballot stuck in the box," or, or whatever." So he said, you know, for folks who are new to it, it probably looked really bad, really chaotic, but for anyone else, like, eh, kind of par for the course. Though he did say definitely less organized than a federal or provincial election that has established procedures 'cause it's the first time that they had to do this by hand thing with that process that you described, right?

Stephanie: Yeah. Again though, I'm wondering what was it like in Calgary? What would a Calgary scrutineer say? Probably noth- like we won't get that story because it was relatively normal down in Calgary.

Mack: And there's no Taproot down in Calgary.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Mack: So lead with curiosity and say, "Well what can we learn from these folks," right?

Stephanie: Yeah.

Mack: Uh, that's-

Stephanie: If anyone, if anyone wants to start up a Calgary bureau for Taproot, let us know. (laughs)

Mack: (laughs) So we'll put the story in the show notes. I think it's worth taking a look at and just reading what those scrutineers had to say. And I don't think anyone's saying that Edmonton elections did anything nefarious or anything like that, it's just this was a difficult process, and it's interesting to get some insight from folks who were in the room.

Stephanie: Mm-hmm.

Mack: All right, one more thing that I thought we should talk about, Stephanie. Have you been paying attention to this? The end of the school board strike?

Stephanie: Uh, not really. (laughs) I've been mostly focusing on municipal stuff.

Mack: Makes sense. Uh, as you all know, probably kids are back in school, so that's great. They went back on Wednesday. The province on Monday passed this legislation to require teachers, order them back to work, and to introduce fines so that they couldn't use the courts to fight this. And so kids went back on Wednesday, and you know, it's like mixed emotions I think, right? Like yes, happy the kids are back in school. It's important that they're gonna get back into regular, you know, routine, can get back to learning. We've seen some reporting about the economic impacts of the strike. It's better to have kids in school for lots of different reasons. But it's feeling a bit conflicted because teachers didn't get what they were looking for and they got ordered back to work. Like this is not something they agreed to. And so I, I... You know, lots of parents that I ran into were kind of feeling that tension, right? Like yes, we're happy the kids are back, but we st- stand with the teachers and we feel like this is not the most ideal way for this to, to come about. Fall break is also coming up right away. Like it's surprising we're already at Halloween, but you know, there's this fall break planned and, and Edmonton Public Schools said that that's gonna continue as planned for them. And that's just important because the province has basically said it's up to each school district to figure out how to make up for those lost hours, and there's not g- they're not gonna dictate that. The school boards themselves will have to figure that out. And so Edmonton Public doesn't know how they're going to do this yet, but they've decided it won't be by canceling fall break, which makes a lot of sense 'cause people already have plans and you know, they've already, you know, booked travel or whatever else they're, whatever else they're doing. So I'm sure we'll learn more about that. The other thing that's happened, of course around this whole strike is just the labor movement. And we've heard from Gil McGowan and the Alberta Federation of Labor and this Common Front coalition that has been set up. They had a press conference earlier this week. They're talking about the potential for a general strike. Talking about how what this province has done is an attack on labor here, but also potentially across Canada, because of the use of the notwithstanding clause. And just so rich that Premier Danielle Smith is not even here. She's been in Saudi Arabia all week while this bill was being passed and while this conversation is taking place. But as of recording time, which is late afternoon here on Thursday, no word about any action on this. It's a little bit of like the, the labor folks saying...We're seriously considering doing something here. We're not gonna do it quite yet, and-

Stephanie: We're thinking about it. (laughs)

Mack: ... we're thinking about it. You know, Finance Minister Nate Horner said, "Well, it sounds like a plan to make a plan," which is pretty cutting criticism, and I think, you know, is fair-

Stephanie: (whistles)

Mack: ... characterization of this, but I also can kind of see the other, you know, the, the Labour's point of view here, which is like, that's a pretty disruptive thing. We should be sure that the province isn't gonna back down, that there isn't room to negotiate, that something else might not happen here, right? And so in some of the reporting that we'll link to in the show notes here, you know, there's been, um, political commentators basically saying, you know, it makes sense to sort of give them a few days and see, like, are they gonna change course here before taking such a dramatic dramatic step. The one thing they did say they're gonna do, um, and they're pretty upfront about this McGowan said, quote, "If they won't shrink the size of their classroom, we will shrink the size of their caucus," and encouraged people to get involved with the recall initiatives that are taking place around the province, which is interesting, maybe not quite as dramatic as a general strike, but is certainly a step, right? And, you know the province sort of shrugged it off and didn't say too much about that. One more thing I wanted to mention about this that caught my eye as a, as a data nerd, Stephanie. Uh, the province put out a news release saying that they're now going to work with school boards to gather yearly data on class sizes and composition, and so they will require all the school boards to submit data to the province by November 24th, and then by January, they're gonna make that publicly available, and then they plan to do this annually. And, ugh, again, I go back to that word conflicted. On the one hand, this is great. I like having data. I think we should be transparent about this stuff. It should be in the data catalog. There should be stuff that anybody can go and look up. But on the other hand, it feels a little like, don't trust what the teachers are telling you. We're gonna get the actual data and then we're gonna put it out there. It's like a little bit of a dig back at teachers who are on the ground experiencing firsthand the impact of class sizes and, and the province basically saying, "Well, just wait till we have the data," right? So ugh, a little bit conflicted.

Stephanie: In a couple of months when they release a media statement about how they responded to this, this is just another bullet point that they can add is that they have started to work with school boards to gather yearly data. It's like, okay, cool. You have the data.

Mack: Yeah.

Stephanie: What are you gonna do with that?

Mack: Fund the teachers. Yeah. (laughs)

Stephanie: Yeah. Like, why are you, like, how much money will you spend on gathering this data that you could instead use better?

Mack: Or it's like, do you need more data? I think we-

Stephanie: Yeah. It's pretty clear.

Mack: ... have heard lots of information about what is needed. Let's go and make that happen.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Mack: All right. Well, enough about school boards for, for now, um, and actually enough about other topics.

Stephanie: Everything. (laughs)

Mack: Yeah. We've, we've only got one thing left to do in this episode, and that is the rapid fire.

Stephanie: On Wednesday, while the new city council was sworn in, mayoral runner up Tim Cartmel was spotted eating lunch with Katy Perry. It looks like the pop star has a thing for recently unemployed Canadian politicians.

Mack: The North Glenora Homeowners Association issued a statement ahead of Halloween saying, quote, "Please remember that we are a family-friendly neighborhood and any decorations deemed too scary will be reported." That means no eight-plexes.

Stephanie: The Toronto Blue Jays announced they've added a late roster change ahead of a potential World Series winning game on Halloween. Oilers forward Connor McDavid will be joining the team until the end of the series. The Jays manager told sports media, "We just want to give him the chance to win something." Anything.

Mack: Oh, it's been a rough start to the season for the Oilers.

Stephanie: (laughs) Yeah.

Mack: Uh, but the Jays have a chance to win it all.

Stephanie: Whoo.

Mack: So when you listen to this, I will be trick-or-treating, watching the Jays on my phone, hoping they win. If not, there's still one more chance. That's-

Stephanie: Yeah.

Mack: ... the great thing about taking the lead in a seven-game series.

Stephanie: Mm-hmm.

Mack: Uh, you'll be, I'm sure, not really watching baseball 'cause it's not your thing you said at this time of year.

Stephanie: Yep.

Mack: But you'll be watching council and we'll be back to talk more about what they're up to next week.

Stephanie: (laughs)

Mack: Until then, I'm Mack.

Stephanie: I'm Stephanie.

Mack: And we're...

Both: Speaking Municipally.