Speaking Municipally

Mack:
Return to office, but not on your bike. This week, business organizations called again for municipal employees to return to the office full time.

Stephanie:
Plus, the province's planning legislation that would let it review or remove bike lanes.

Mack:
Hi. I'm Mack.

Stephanie:
I'm Stephanie.

Mack:
And we're…

Stephanie:
Speaking.

Mack:
Municipally. Welcome back to Speaking Municipally, Episode 356. We have a big episode to get to today, and it kinda reflects the fact that our team, Stephanie, has been out in the real world a lot in the last, well, couple of weeks. I feel like spring is here, and people are emerging from their winter hibernation. And there's just a lot of stuff happening. So, I was at the Real Estate Forum this week. We're gonna talk about that. Karen, moderated something at the Housing Summit that took place. I know Colin was at the Health Cities Innovation Networking Event that did happen and you've been out and about at the State of the City. We're gonna talk about that.

Stephanie:
Yeah, and I was at a luncheon with the Federal Transport Minister, Steve McKinnon, yesterday. I love getting…

Mack:
Very interesting.

Stephanie:
Out of getting out into the world. It'it's great. Sometimes, like, when you work from home, you get a little bit, like, too inside of the computer and you forget that you're a human being, but, like, being out and about is so fun.

Mack:
It is good to interact with other humans, that is a fact.

Stephanie:
So true.

Mack:
Yeah. Okay, well, we're gonna tell you about some of those real world interactions that we've had this week, but first, we have an ad for you.

Stephanie:
This episode is brought to you by the Bosco Neighborhood Podcast from the Bosco Foundation. The podcast explores community connection, indigenous leadership, and the future of the Balwin and Belvidere neighborhoods. Here's Bosco Foundation CEO Shelley Sabo talking about why the podcast was created.

Shelley Sabo:
This podcast was created to share positive stories in this diverse corner of Northeast Edmonton. We really want to encourage belonging, possibility, and hope. You know, it'it's like a fractal of our city, this part, this neighborhood. I grew up here. I walked to school, I hung out at the hockey rink, our dad was very active in our community league, and I've seen this neighborhood evolve over the past 50 years, and I want people to get to know each other better through our stories.

Stephanie:
Join hosts Soni Deshmopatra and Doreen MacIver as I sit down with community leaders, elders, and visionaries to discuss what it means to live well together in this diverse corner of Northeast Edmonton. All three episodes are now live on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You will find a link at boscofoundation.com.

Mack:
All right, our first item this week is the State of the City, the mayor's annual speech to the community, hosted by the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce. We're not in the playoffs this year, the Edmonton Oilers, so I imagine there was no Hunter appearance like last year.

Stephanie:
There was no Hunter appearance, but they definitely did still find multiple times to mention the Oilers.

Mack:
Ugh. I mean, I just did it right here on the show.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
It's unavoidable in Edmonton.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Okay. What happened at the State of the City?

Stephanie:
Well, nothing too crazy. I'm not coming away going, "Whoa! So many changes are happening." there were speeches from the, CEO of the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce, Doug Griffiths, the head of EPCOR, and then, of course, Mayor Andrew Knack gave his speech, and it was a lot of very, "Hurrah," nothing too crazy mentioned, no big announcement. He touched on, and, you know, this is to the business community, right, so he touched on a lot of the different industries that we are known for, or trying to become more known for; tech, life sciences. He talked about our work in housing policy to encourage more housing growth. But the real juicy part was when they went to the Q&A Fireside Chat, which was moderated by Ryan Jespersen, and it was between Doug Griffiths and Andrew Knack. And, one of the main things that they ended up talking about towards the end was this letter from business organizations that is calling for municipal employees to return to office full time.

Mack:
Yeah, so this letter was sent by the Chamber, but it was cosigned by, as you mentioned, a bunch of organizations; BOMA Edmonton, BILD Edmonton, NAIOP Edmonton, the Realtors Association, Edmonton Construction Association, and also, interestingly, the Minister of Municipal Affairs, Dan Williams cosigned this. And, you know, this letter was sent on Monday this week, May 11th, specifically timed for a couple of things. Obviously, the State of the City is happening and they wanted to get this out into the public, into the news cycle, maybe steal a little bit of thunder or focus from the mayor. But the other thing that happened, of course, was the Edmonton Real Estate Forum, and both Doug Griffiths and Dan Williams hosted the Fireside Keynote at the morning and they talked about the letter there. So, you know, they timed it really intentionally. I must admit, though, when I saw the letter, Stephanie, I feel like I had deja vu. Like Hasn't the Business Committee asked about this already and why send a letter again? So, what did they get into in the Q&A with the mayor at the State of the City?

Stephanie:
Well, you're right, like, they've been asking for this for such a long time. It was kind of floated up again, in January when the provincial government mandated return to office for the public servants, and it's just a lot of the same.

Mack:
The mayor in the past has said this is the wrong tool for downtown revitalization, right? I don't know if he reiterated that this week, but that was his position before, that if you're trying to get vibrancy back downtown, there's better ways to do it than just forcing people back to the office.

Stephanie:
Yeah, basically. So, he brought up, like, three main, kind of-… rebuttals or deflections for this call. First of all, he, they're already at three days a week, and so he wondered if the money spent on bringing those people back five days a week, would that be worth it? Because you know how you need like office space and all that, and all that.

Mack:
And that's not insignificant. The federal government has mandated, at least four days back to work and there's been a bunch of reporting that there just might not be the office space across Canada for all these federal employees to go back to the office, right?

Stephanie:
Yeah, I heard the same…

Mack:
That they haven't kept all those leases.

Stephanie:
Exactly, and I heard the same thing about the provincial government too, is that people are like on top of each other. And then of course, in, for the municipality, like they're selling that Century Place in Chancery Hall, they're selling all of those office space off, so they're, yeah, they, that would be a challenge to fit all the people. The second thing is that in the collective agreement with CSU52, there is a letter of understanding that the intent of, the collective agreement is that, you know, if there is going to be a return to an office, it needs to be done in a, in a particular way. This is reading from Bryce Jowett, the president of CSU52, the letter, "Recognizes a process for hybrid work. The LOU, Letter of Understanding, leaves considerable discretion to the city in administering hybrid work to accommodate different business areas and operational needs, yet a broad return to office mandate would be against the spirit of the collective agreement. In that scenario, we would pursue all avenues available to us to protect the rights freely negotiated in bargaining."

Mack:
So a union challenge, for sure. If such a mandate were to come down on, from on high.

Stephanie:
Yeah. And I mean, like when I first saw this letter from like the Chamber, I just thought, yeah, I mean, the mayor doesn't really have anything to do with it. It's between the union and like the employer and the employees. That's…

Mack:
I mean, ultimately it's the city manager's decision, right?

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
I guess council can offer their direction and guidance, but, you know, it's, at the end of the day it's gonna be the city manager that makes the call. Okay, what was the third item he brought up?

Stephanie:
And he mentioned building a culture, of wanting to be together, and what he means by this is he mentioned in the mayor's office, there was no mandate that people have to be in office five days a week, but people choose to be there because like it makes sense for their work, it makes sense for their relationships when within the office, and people choose to do it. So he questioned, you know, how we're going to be building a culture where people want to be in office five days a week. And kind of like a re-rebuttal to that, is that Doug Griffith said, you know, "What comes first, the culture or the being together?" Because he said, "If the people who are managing the city, building the city, if they're not right in the center of things," he questioned if they can do their job properly, essentially.

Mack:
I can understand that point of view. I'm not sure that I entirely agree that, you know, you need to be working in the office. Like not all of those city employees are responsible for downtown anyway. There's this really small number of them that are. And the argument isn't really about understand this better, it is come downtown and make sure you're spending money downtown. That has been the Chamber's argument, right? Where did they leave the conversation then? How did the Q&A wrap up on this topic? Agree to disagree basically?

Stephanie:
Well basically, Knack kinda continued to dig his heels in a little, and Doug Griffith said, "Well, I know we can't do it immediately because of the collective agreement, we agreed on that. However, there needs to be a signal of, you know, we are going to commit to this in the future." And I looked it up and it seems like the collective agreement with CSU52 is going to expire in 2027, which is, feels crazy 'cause it feels like there was just like the strike and everything…

Mack:
Right.

Stephanie:
Yesterday. But apparently 2027, so could be, I mean, they could start signaling this year for next year, but also I don't know if, I think that it would be a really unpopular move to, among the employees to mandate full-time in-office work. If you go and I know like who cares about Reddit, but if you go on the Edmonton subreddit, you can even breathe a mention of full-time return to office. Immediately like 200 comments will come being like, "I hate working in-office. Don't make me do it." Which is like I get it for if that's not your thing, that's not your thing. But yeah, I think it'd be a really unpopular call for mayor and council to make.

Mack:
And also probably unjustified. Like what is the evidence that this actually has the impact that proponents say that it does, right?

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
We had the province mandate their full return to office in February. The only thing I've seen that has any kind of evidence to suggest that there was an impact is the Cushman & Wakefield report, the office report for Q1, which it says, the return to office for the province did have a somewhat noticeable increase in vibrancy in certain parts of downtown, and they mentioned like Commerce Place and that sort of thing. But that's it. Like I haven't seen that anywhere else. What you see much more is what you're talking about, people on Reddit really upset about it, the brown bag lunches that people organized You know, in opposition to it. And we've anecdotally talked about on the show before how you spend time downtown and it doesn't feel like there's another 20,000 people here every day 'cause there's not, right? They're not here every day. I think the jury's out on whether or not it's gonna have the kind of impact that proponents say that it will. Now having said that, I think the other thing the Chamber is going for here is a little bit of solidarity. Like if the province, the feds, the city, and businesses are all in agreement that people should be back in the office, that's what we can do in the short term to try to impact positively what's happening downtown, then we should do that. We should all be on the same page. I think that's kind of what they were trying to position that letter to be about, and I think that is why probably Municipal Affairs Minister Dan Williams signed it. Although there could be other reasons for him to be on there too. What did you make of that? Did that come up at all?

Stephanie:
It only came up in the State of the City address to be like, "Thank you Dan Williams for supporting our letter." I think it, as far as I know it's pretty unprecedented for like a-… governing minister to join a group of business organizations calling for a municipal decision. Isn't that same…

Mack:
I think certainly the province gives all kinds of pressure.

Stephanie:
For sure.

Mack:
We've seen this in past years with, like, policing and stuff. But yeah, to sign the letter alongside the chamber, I don't, I can't think of another time when that has happened. Yeah.

Stephanie:
Yeah. It's not like he just alone was saying, "Hey, me as legislator minister, I'm making you do this." It was, he's, like, with, on the same level of all of his business buddies going, "Hey, we all think you should do this." I just thought it was very strange.

Mack:
Yeah. All right. Well, anything else you took away from the State of the City?

Stephanie:
I mean, the last thing that I would say about this whole letter is that, Mayor Knack was saying, "Yes, we'd like to have more people working downtown, but it would be better to invest in more people living downtown." Which we all know, like, on the TapRoot survey, almost everyone that, almost everyone candidate-wise and citizen-wise they all pretty much said, "We want more people to live downtown." And, there are a ton of initiatives aimed at that, right? If you check The Pulse on the Friday that this is published, I have a bit of a story about a downtown policy update, which is basically the city wants to smoosh together the area redevelopment plan for downtown and the corridors. And in that story, I go into, like, talking about all of the different housing incentives and everything that's happening downtown. So, there's lots of incentives for that. If that is something that interests you, check out The Pulse for Friday, May 15th.

Mack:
I definitely agree with that there is a better way to go about this, and that is to get more people living downtown. I'm glad the mayor got that in there. Okay. Well, thanks for bringing us that report on the State of the City.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
I think the takeaway then is that the chamber got what it wanted, which is it kinda took over this news cycle with this letter.

Stephanie:
Yeah, totally. All right. So Mack, you said that you were at the Edmonton Real Estate Forum and that this letter also came up there too, is that right?

Mack:
Yeah. I mean, like I said, Doug Griffiths and Dan Williams were the two that did this fireside keynote at the beginning, moderated by Corey Wozniak of, Avison Young. And I first wanna say Dan Williams made a shockingly inappropriate joke to me right off the top. Corey asked him, you know, "You've been the municipal affairs minister for a little while now. Like, how's it been? What have you, what's your takeaway so far from being in the job?" And Williams said, "Well, I used to be a minister of mental health and addiction. After a year of municipal affairs, I kinda prefer stakeholders on, of health and addiction. They were a bit more straight shooting than some of these municipal leaders. I'm kidding," he says. And the room was, like, silent. Like, there was, there was not laughter, right? And then he kept going about how he made this joke at some other event with rural and, municipal leaders. And anyway, it just seemed in really poor taste to me to start talking about cities and in Edmonton with all of these, you know, community leaders and make a joke like that. Just really inappropriate. But the letter was a topic of discussion. And of course, you know, Doug Griffiths talked about some of the things we hear all the time, "So goes your downtown, so goes your city." It was essentially, you know, what he said. And his argument at the Real Estate Forum, at least, was that the call for municipal office workers to come back full-time into the office is about taxes. And, you know, he talked about how, as we know, in the past, about 10% of our tax base came from that 1% of its land base downtown. Like, downtown provided a disproportionate amount of taxes, and now it's much smaller. It's maybe 5.2%. And so, that tax base has to get made up elsewhere is the thinking. And, you know, having more people downtown is part of that rejuvenation that, Griffiths thinks needs to happen in order for that, you know, percentage to go back up in the, in the tax base. And then Heather Thompson, who's a vice president with the chamber, she also spoke at the forum. And, you know, she said that the letter has been received with mixed emotions. And then she did acknowledge, you know, what I think some of us were thinking, which is she said, quote, "You don't want to mandate consumer behavior to solve an economic problem." Right? And then she goes on to say, "That being said, we need to kickstart this." And so they were looking at, you know, this return to office, not as the eventual be-all-end-all solution for downtown revitalization, but as a way to kinda get things going in the meantime, you know, back to what we were saying about that coordination between the different orders of government. You know, Heather talked about that as well. So, she also said, you know, "We can't, we don't wanna mandate this, and ideally the conversation is, 'I can't wait to get back to the office because there's all these amenities and great things happening.'" Kinda, you know, touching on what you said, you know, Doug was bringing up, right, that do you, do you force people back or do you make the culture good first? And kind of what I read from Heather's comments or took away from that is, you know, if downtown is an attractive place to be, people want to be there, it should be easier for these mandates to roll out.

Stephanie:
And you know what? That makes me think of something. I don't think people actually dislike working in office. I think people dislike driving to the office, and if people lived within, a walk or bike or short transit trip of the office, they would not be as opposed. Because, like, on a lot of these Reddit posts, going back to the Reddit posts, the main complaint isn't necessarily being around people. It's, "I don't wanna sit in traffic for an hour." So, speaking of real estate, if we start building some housing that's a little bit closer to downtown rather than out in, like, 58 Avenue Southwest where people have to drive for an hour and a half to get downtown, maybe that will help with that. You know, you kinda have to do both at the same time.

Mack:
I think you're right. If-We're talking about return to office, what is the number one thing we could do to make it appealing for people to get there? It would be eliminate the commute, right? So, can they go on the train or is there some other Can we, you know, fly them in on drones or something? Maybe that would make it more appealing? I don't know.

Stephanie:
Carry them along. Okay, so what else did you hear at the forum? What was the general vibe?

Mack:
Well, I think overall it was pretty optimistic. Corey Wozniak, who I mentioned was, ah, one of the moderators, you know, basically said he was done with being cautiously optimistic. He's just all about the pure optimism now, right?

Stephanie:
Great.

Mack:
That message came up, I think, a bit. Like I mentioned, some of the things we've heard before, another one was about humility. Doug Griffiths talked about how Edmonton is too humble, and he said it's a big challenge…

Stephanie:
He brought that up at Yeah.

Mack:
Yeah, he brought it up at the State of the City too?

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Yeah. You know, I can't think of a time where we haven't heard that in the last 10 years. The leaders, whoever it is in that chair, always say some version of that. The other one is, "We can't become complacent." It's kind of like a drinking game, right? If you hear Edmonton is humble and we can't become complacent, it's like, drink. But he did say some interesting things. Griffiths said he thinks Edmonton's time has come. He says, quote, "In the next, I would say, the next 20 years, Edmonton is going to achieve the international city stature it deserves." It's like another way of saying world-class city or global city, or whatever. But this is that kind of optimism that I was talking about. I mean, he went on to say that he thinks we're gonna surpass Calgary in terms of growth because of all of the assets and things that Edmonton has.

Stephanie:
Like, he thinks it's gonna be a bigger city than Calgary?

Mack:
It'll be a place that attracts more investment…

Stephanie:
Oh, okay.

Mack:
More jobs, potentially, you know, as a result, more people wanting to come and live here, right? So, I mean, it He's the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce president and CEO, you expect him to say something along those lines, right?

Stephanie:
Right.

Mack:
But both Edmonton and Calgary are obviously, you know, outpacing most other cities in Canada in terms of growth and economic opportunity, and it seems like that's here to stay, is the general vibe that we got from the forum.

Stephanie:
Yeah, I'll do a little callback to the State of the City. He brought up this map of the, of the world, which, you know, the one that you typically see that has Canada over to the left. And he's like, "This map, you know, Edmonton is all the way on the fringe here. Canada's all the way over here, Alberta's all the way over here, but we wanna look at this map." And then he did, like, a globe version, looking at kind of the North Pole, and he was mapping out how Edmonton is really at the center of a lot of, like, flight lines, if that makes sense. And he's like, "Really, Edmonton should be at the center of the map." And I'm like, "So true." 'Cause it's at the center of my map.

Mack:
Absolutely.

Stephanie:
So at the Real Estate Forum, I imagine you would've heard some interesting things about the infill versus sprawl debate. Is that right?

Mack:
Yeah, there was a really interesting session about this. I wasn't sure, you know, it was a little bit like, one of these things is not like the others, and I wasn't sure what the debate was gonna be, but actually it was super interesting. So, I thought I'd just share a few things that stood out to me from that conversation. Adil Kodian, who is an executive vice president with Rohit, he was one of the panelists, and he said, "Sometimes it's okay to take the win." And he was talking about things are relatively working well, and we've gotta stop changing the construction rules every season. It just made me think of some conversations…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
That we've had recently on the show, Stephanie, about this. He was talking about, you know, all things, infill and greenfield, like, we don't need to change the rules every time.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Like, let's just build. Things are working relatively well. Take the win. Don't keep tweaking. Another thing I thought was interesting was Otto Hedges, another panelist, he's a vice president of development at NAC Management, and he talked about how having both greenfield and infill is a really unique strategic advantage for Edmonton. So, he was talking about a place like Vancouver, where they just don't have a flexible land supply. They really can't build out anymore. They have to build up. Whereas here in Edmonton, and it's unspoken, but also in Calgary, is sort of the takeaway, right, is we have this flexible land supply. We can choose to both grow out and grow up, and, that's, an advantage that other cities don't have. So, he said, "Cities that focus just on infill or just on greenfield, they're leaving housing opportunity on the table, and that's gonna have a direct impact on affordability." So, a lot of talk about, you know, our relative housing affordability advantages. We've heard a lot about it in the last year. You can afford to buy a house here that, you know, you can't in other places. We heard a lot about that at the forum as well. But the other panelist, that is maybe a little bit more applicable to this podcast was Coun. Aaron Paquette, and I thought some of the things he said were super interesting. So, he said, "We've got these massive infrastructure needs and the money's gotta come from somewhere." And he basically said, you know, people moving to the surrounding municipalities are costing Edmonton taxpayers money. Right? He said, "Edmonton is very unique now because we have so many surrounding municipalities who will be growing, so every person who moves to a municipality outside of Edmonton is being undertaxed. They are subsidized simply because of that relationship." And he suggested that something like, about 30% or whatever is what it works out to be in terms of, what Edmonton spends on infrastructure and things that service these people who live, you know, in the surrounding municipalities. And so there was some talk about, how do we deal with that? Well, we've gotta keep up the pace of growth in Edmonton, was one of the arguments, right? Like, if we stop building greenfield and just let all of the surrounding municipalities do that, then people are gonna move there. We're not gonna be able to capture those people. And then the other two things were either you grow the workforce, you attract more workers here, this is the idea that cities are labor markets first, and that will mean that people wanna live here. Or the second thing is if you gotta pay for it, then you're gonna have to increase taxes, right? And there was a lot of discussion about the cost of greenfield. 'cause that's where my head started to go as I was listening to this conversation, right? It's like, sure, we have this advantage, we can build out, but shouldn't we be building up? And the panelists all talked about some research that the city's done, that Build has published recently, that suggests that, you know, greenfield neighborhoods do pay for themselves. And I think we gotta take the source of this statement with a big grain of salt, right? Like, that when the development community is telling you that it pays for itself, it's like, okay. But of course you're gonna say that. You would want that to be the case. But Adeel Kodhi, and again from Rohid, he said something pretty interesting. He said, "If you build subdivisions today like we built them in the '80s, yeah, that'd be a problem. But the reality is, we don't." He said, "They're much more dense today." And I think that's true, right? It's sort of making me almost, revisit something that's part of my identity, Stephanie, which is like, I feel like infill and growing up is what Edmonton needs to do, and I've been thinking about that for so long. It's probably a good idea to lead with curiosity and take a step back and say, "But is that the only way?" And, you know, all of the work that has been done over the last couple of decades with the municipal, or with the region board that no longer exists now, and the Capital Region Growth Plan and all of those kinds of things that did cause density to go up, maybe that made a real difference. And maybe those out of date ideas about how expensive growth sprawl can be need to be updated a bit. Now, I'm not fully convinced, but it was thought provoking. I thought it was pretty thought provoking.

Stephanie:
Yeah, we've heard that before, and like, I'll take my older sister. She lives outside of the Henday, so you know, very much so on the edge of the city. But she lives within walking distance of her, you know, her neighborhood bar. There's a brand new FreshCo that just went up also within walking distance, and if she so choose, she should, could probably get by bike in, within about 10, 20 minutes to the nearest library. So yes, we are building, like, these neighborhoods that are complete communities and that you can access everything. But the only thing is, she also lives in a neighborhood where there have been some, like, pedestrian fatalities because these neighborhoods are not built to be nice to walk around. It's possible to walk around, but I'm sure lots of the people just end up driving the two blocks to get to their local bar, which is crazy. But just because it's like, it's horrible to walk there.

Mack:
Or because you gotta go anywhere else in the city, you're basically gonna have to drive, right?

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Unless you live along an LRT line or you have a rapid bus route or something like that, you're probably still gonna be reliant on the car. Like, it always kinda comes back to that, and that is, you know, some of the other maintenance costs that need to be accounted for when we think about how much does it cost us to build a new neighborhood, right? It's like, the upkeep of all of the amenities and facilities, but it's the infrastructure too, the roads that need to be paved every year because of the horrible potholes, and you know, all the pipes that need to get replaced after a couple of decades and all that kinda stuff, right? It does add up, right? And I'm not sure that we always have a good accounting of that. But it was really interesting to hear Paquette basically say, you know, developers aren't evil is kind of what he was saying, right?

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Like, they're a partner and we need them in order to keep growing the way that we've been growing.

Stephanie:
Mm-hmm. Did anything else happen at the Real Estate Forum that you wanna talk about?

Mack:
There was one other thing that made me think of you, Stephanie. There was a session about kinda shaping Edmonton's tomorrow, and one of the panelists was Richie Lamb, who's the co-CEO of Westrich Pacific. And he directly addressed the student housing incentive and the impact on downtown. Like you were saying earlier, there's all these incentives. He said, quote, "Our company provided close to 500 residential units that we were not going to, and it's only for the fact that the city came up with a student housing incentive." And he, you know, talked a bit about it and he went on to say like, you know, slowly but surely, they think downtown's changing for the better. Somebody asked, the moderator asked if Westrich would be investing along Valley Line West, as it goes out towards the mall, and he said, "No, not really. It's not really their strategy to do that. But downtown is." And he said, "So we feel like the worst of downtown is maybe a year, a year and a half, we're calling it. We're heavily invested into it and we picked up three other downtown sites, either because we're crazy or we'll see," which got a big laugh from folks in the room.

Stephanie:
Interesting.

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
Yeah. Well, so I did a story, like, late last year about, it was at the time it was Warehouse Park, but O'Demon Park, how that investment from the city, as well as other, like, you know, real financial incentives have led to a lot of the empty lots around that park being turned into housing.

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
And you know, there's like, at least 1800, but I think at this point there's even more than like, 2000 units that are coming to that little area. And when you think about it, especially Okay, think about like five years ago when it was all parking lots and no LRT, NorQuest wasn't as built up, MacEwan wasn't as built up, and then when you think about it in the next five years when all of those housing units are gonna be built up, the LRT's gonna hopefully be running by then.

Mack:
Right.

Stephanie:
And you know, NorQuest, MacEwan, the new MacEwan building will hopefully be done by then. That area is going to look night and day. That area, you know how like on Twitter or Blue Sky it'll be like, Amsterdam in the '70s, Amsterdam today?

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
We're gonna be that example of like…

Mack:
Oh sh…

Stephanie:
Look what happens when you get rid of like, these eyesore surface parking lots. Like, downtown Edmonton is going to look so different, especially that area, in like, five years.

Mack:
It's gonna be great. Yeah. It'll put us at the center of the map, like you said.

Stephanie:
Exactly.

Mack:
All right, well, it was good to be at the Real Estate Forum. It's always nice to get just a vibe of how developers and political leaders and business leaders are thinking about how the city is going. Would've been maybe nice to not have it at the same time essentially as the State of the City. Like, there's just a lot going on. We got some more to talk about, but first, we have another ad for you.

Stephanie:
This episode is brought to you by the Edmonton Coalition on Housing and Homelessness, which is marking 40 years of housing advocacy with a community event on June 13th. Here's Jim Gurnett, a longtime member of ECOHH, with more.

Karen Unland:
This event on June 13th, it's also, it's a party, it's a celebration. So, what will people experience at the event? Why will it be a good thing to come to?

Jim Gurnett:
Well, you know, we're going to have some great, music, some good entertainment there. We're going to have a chance for people to remember some of the remarkable things that ECOHH has done over the years. We're hoping to get a lot of folks back that are now, like me, getting on in years and not around as much, but that were part of things like the HomeFest event and, the original development of the Homeless Memorial, Plaza, things like that. We need each other's company to boost our spirits to, you know, the memories of successes and the memories of good things that have happened, give us a kind of a, an energy, I think, a kind of a strength to take the next steps and to remind ourselves that it's, it really is worth it, and that a city where nobody is struggling for decent housing is a city where we'll all be happier with our lives.

Stephanie:
Yeah. Again, the event is at Alberta Avenue Hall on June 13th. There will be live music, inspiring speakers, and meaningful connections, plus complimentary bannock and beverages. Get your tickets today at E-C-O-H-H. CA.

Mack:
Okay. Well, if you're going back to the office, you might wanna ride your bike there. That would, help you avoid the commute, but the province is dead set on making that impossible, it feels like.

Stephanie:
Yeah. So we got a, I think it was a bit of a leak or a bit of a preview at some legislation that is expected, in the fall, but of course, we all kind of knew this was coming because last year, Transportation Minister Dreeshan came up to Edmonton and said, "No more bike lanes." But anyways, we learned this week that the Alberta government plans to introduce legislation this fall that would let it review and potentially remove bike lanes.

Mack:
And this is similar, I think, to what they have in Ontario, right?

Stephanie:
Yeah. Well, they tried to do in Ontario.

Mack:
Okay.

Stephanie:
So it was, it was actually very similar, except, it was more like specifically Premier Ford calling it out, but, the cycling community successfully did a court challenge. An Ontario court deemed the province's plan to remove three major Toronto bike lanes unconstitutional. The judge ruled that Cycle Toronto and others, quote, "have established that removal of the target bike lanes will put people at increased risk of harm and death, which engages the right to life and security of the person." End quote. The lawyers for these groups and other cyclists asked the Ontario Superior Court of Justice to strike down parts of a law requiring the province to remove 19 kilometers of protected bike lanes on Yonge Street, Bloor Street, and University Avenue and replace them with vehicle lanes. So, they successfully kinda did a court challenge to stop the removal of the bike lanes.

Mack:
So hopefully, we can follow in their example here in Alberta if this legislation goes forward because obviously, they're not gonna put the legislation into place if they don't intend to try to exercise it, right?

Stephanie:
Yeah. Well, in the press conference, Minister Dreeshan said something along the lines of like, "Yeah, we're looking at what happened in Ontario so we can learn from it," as in like, "so we can get around the courts to do this."

Mack:
Hmm, interesting.

Stephanie:
And it's not like the province is scared to use the notwithstanding clause. They've used it many times…

Mack:
That's true. That's true. I do feel like here in Alberta, we should have a perhaps different advantage, which is like that the two big mayors, Mayor Andrew Knack is a cyclist. I saw him on the bike lane this week. And down in Calgary, Mayor, Jeromy Farkas is also a cyclist. They are both pretty aggressively responding to this potential legislation. What did you hear from Mayor Knack this week?

Stephanie:
Yeah. So he used a word, a word that is often called, it's a very strong word. He said, "This whole dynamic of car drivers versus cyclists versus pedestrians, I hate it. I will not subscribe to that." Obviously, he wouldn't support this. He says that Edmonton has been methodical in where it places bike lanes and said all transportation methods can co-exist.

Mack:
And down in Calgary, Mayor Farkas called it symbolic virtue signaling.

Stephanie:
Mm-hmm.

Mack:
And really said what I think what a lot of us are thinking, which is that this is another example of change the channel, flood the zone, you know, distract from the other scandals that are, that are going on. But I feel like he, in his comments, also really laid the groundwork on, you know, what happened in Ontario that you mentioned, right? He said, "Anything the province wants to do that could potentially make roads less safe for kids right now, I'll strongly be pushing back." You know, really already making the case that the removal of any bike lanes would be a bad thing for safety, and that's, as you've, pointed out how, you know, the courts ruled against the province in Ontario.

Stephanie:
If you take this proposed legislation or what the province is saying, if you give them the benefit of the doubt, what they're saying is when it takes away a vehicle lane on a major road, that's what we have a problem with. We don't really have that in Edmonton. You know, the ones on 132nd or 137th Ave, I can never remember which one it is, but you know, those like the kind of most contentious ones up on the north side there, that one did take away a vehicle lane, but you know, you look at a lot of them, 102 Ave and 83rd Ave, probably the most used, protected bike lanes.

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
It's taking Yeah. It's, it is taking away one direction of traffic on residential streets, quiet residential streets. A lot of them are built off to the side. We're not building them down Jasper Ave, we're not building them down Whyte Avenue.

Mack:
That's right. These are, these are roads that should not have another lane of traffic. You know, it's better for the pedestrians if there's less traffic. It's better for the residents who live there and have to deal with traffic noise to have less traffic. So yeah, I don't think we're talking about the kinds of roads that the province is suggesting they have an issue with.

Stephanie:
But, that is again, taking them if you, if you take them right at their word and that they aren't just targeting bike lanes because they're some symbol of wokeness, right?

Mack:
Right. Or again, it's just a distraction and…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
We'll see when we're done with all this talk about separation and other nonsense If they follow through on bike lane threats.

Stephanie:
How about we separate bike traffic and vehicle traffic? Am I right? Sorry, that was terrible.

Mack:
That is separation I can support.

Stephanie:
We need to start, circulating a pro-separatist petition, but for different forms of traffic.

Mack:
Traffic, absolutely.

Stephanie:
Oh.

Mack:
All right, a little bit of a longer episode already, but we do have one other thing to get to, which is some stuff actually happened at City Hall. It wasn't just, you know, forums and States of the Cities and other things. Stephanie, what did councillors actually decide upon this week?

Stephanie:
Okay, so I wanted to talk about two things that happened. One of them was at the Urban Planning Committee, and one of them was at Community and Public Services Committee. So, we probably talked about this at some point, but basically, in case you didn't know, Edmonton's buses are really old and they're falling apart and we need to buy more, or else we'd see some major, service disruptions for the M2 transit service. So, at a report that went to Council this week, or to Council Committee this week, the administration laid out three options to renew the city's bus fleet. If they chose not to replace any buses and they only spent $42 million to refurbish the fleet, there could be a reduction of up to 331,000 annual service hours. Second option, spend 190-ish million dollars to replace 100 buses over the next four years, which it's, that's the minimum amount if we don't wanna see a service reduction. The third option, they would spend 386, million, to replace 300 buses over four years, which then they wouldn't need to be refurbishing the buses in the middle of their life. So, they passed a motion at the Urban Planning Committee to bring forward an unfunded service package, for the, for that third scenario, so the most, the highest level of investment, which, I was actually kind of surprised. I thought they were gonna go for the middle option.

Mack:
Hmm. Well, it's good to get the package at least…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
To know what the funding would look like in a little bit more detail and be able to vote on that. But yeah, you would think that the safe option from a financial point of view would be just maintain. But I think a lot of these councillors we've heard over the last few years, they agree that there needs to be a change here, and they, I think they hear from constituents, right, about the lack of service hours that the, you know, bus users already experience. And so, (clears throat) that middle option, the city says it's minimum investment to avoid service reductions, but I feel like that is, in effect, accepting somewhat of a service reduction, right, over…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
That four-year period.

Stephanie:
Yeah, exactly. Because, I mean, we're already not meeting minimum service standards.

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
So…

Mack:
And growth is gonna continue to happen. You know, more people are gonna come. Like, it's gonna continue to put pressure on transit. If only we could find a way to designate buses as, like, critical for national defense We might be able to tap into some federal funding, right? Like That could really help us pay for these buses.

Stephanie:
Just give all the bus drivers guns. No, I'm just joking.

Mack:
No.

Stephanie:
Do not do that.

Mack:
Okay, what was the second item you wanted to talk to us about?

Stephanie:
Okay, so this was at Community and Public Services Committee. They were reviewing an updated policy on supporting vulnerable people during extreme weather conditions. So, during the summer and during the winter, the city has these different, like, levels of support that they offer, no matter how hot or how cold it is. So, in the summer, from mid-May to September, they offer water stations, cooling centers, N95 masks for if it's smoky. And then in, from November to March, they do cold weather shuttles and warming stations. So, during those times, you can always access them. However, they were, there's also extra supports that the city adds when, it's forecast to reach minus 20 degrees Celsius with windchill for three consecutive days, and that is that the city deploys an additional shuttle to bring people around, and they also activate 50 more shelter beds at Al-Rashid Mosque. Obviously, you can get frostbite before it gets to minus 20, and well before three consecutive days, and that was sort of the reason why Council wants administration to revisit that temperature threshold. So, they supported a motion from Coun. Erin Rutherford asking for funding options to increase the extreme weather supports and adjusting the temperature thresholds. They threw around the number minus 15 degrees Celsius.

Mack:
So, five degrees warmer would be the potential threshold. But also, it sounds like increased supports could maybe mean support sooner than what we currently do?

Stephanie:
Yeah. The, it was, it was a little bit, unclear in the, in the meeting. It seemed as though, you know, before lunch, they were trying to formulate this motion, and then after lunch, they said something like, "Okay, well, due to our discussions over lunch, this is what the motion is gonna be." You know, a little bit of…

Mack:
Right.

Stephanie:
Inside baseball.

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
But again, this is going to go to budget deliberations in the fall. There are so many things that are going to be going to budget deliberations. So, we'll see. There might be some changes to the extreme weather response in, starting maybe next winter.

Mack:
Okay, and then I think there was also something about, frontline staff interacting with vulnerable people, right?

Stephanie:
Yeah, so of course, when these, city-owned facilities like recreation centers and libraries are used as warming centers or cooling centers, that means that librarians and rec center employees are interacting with vulnerable people, some of whom may be using opioids or other drugs. And, speakers from the community that came to speak at committee raised some concerns about, hey, are we training these people adequately to make sure that they're equipped to interact with these people, both in a way of, like, showing respect and trauma-informed care. But they also brought up that, city employees are not allowed to administer Naloxone to people while they're on the job, except if they're, like, specifically trained for it, like, if there's any city, like, social workers or police officers or fire, et cetera. But if it's just like, you know, a regular front desk employee at, -… the, at the Mill Woods Rec Center or whatever, they're not allowed to do that. And this has been a long-standing thing, I remember writing a story about this, like, four years ago. Coun. Jon Morgan, who used to be a transit driver, said he was having trouble accepting that, you know, that employees can't administer naloxone. He said, quote, "All I'm hearing is that it's a training issue, and there's a little bit of a worry about liability. I think these are solvable problems." He also mentioned that when, you know yes, like, he gets that there's issues with potentially, like, bodily fluids or people coming up swinging from, a overdose, which happens. But then he said, "You know, when I was a bus driver, I definitely got, bodily fluids, I definitely faced violence, and I never got training for that." Not saying that people deserve to be facing violence or whatever, but, yeah. He, is, ended up putting forward a motion calling for a report about expanding naloxone training opportunities to staff members who want it.

Mack:
I'm very glad to hear this. I also don't really understand the opposition to this. I mean, we actually tell people, regular citizens…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Walk around and carry a naloxone kit in case you see somebody who needs help. We're not concerned about training or liability in those instances, right? Why should city staff, who are probably more likely to interact with folks who need that help, why are we worried about it there? So I'm glad to see this motion from Coun. Morgan.

Stephanie:
Yeah. And, like, some of the other councillors that spoke to it, I think it was Coun. Anne Stevenson that said we need to have a bit of a, almost a culture change, right? Because, yes, I understand, liability, training. Like, that's how the system has been for a long time. But she was saying it's like people want to be saving their fellow Edmontonians that are suffering from overdoses, and if we are saying, "No, you are, like, not allowed to do this while you're working," that can be, like, morally injurious to the person.

Mack:
Absolutely.

Stephanie:
Not to mention, not to mention the person who literally could die.

Mack:
Right.

Stephanie:
Of course.

Mack:
Yep.

Stephanie:
That's very important too. So, yes, those were a couple of the things that happened at council this week. We had such a busy episode that, like, we didn't have time to get to everything. But every, at the beginning of every week, we put out a list of what did happen at council the last week, so check out On the Agenda. This next week, it'll come out on the Tuesday because of the holiday, so Monday or Tuesday, so check it out.

Mack:
And of course, we do in The Pulse headlines throughout the week, and one of the things I saw just going back to, warm temperatures in the summer, the news release from the City of Edmonton about spray parks reopening and outdoor pools And things, and I just thought, "Wow, they're kind of more on the ball this year than in past years." I feel like in past years, we've been complaining about, like, "Why isn't the water turned on yet?" it's not gonna be on for, a couple of weeks still, some of them starting next week, others a little bit later. But all of them should be open by June 5th, all 78 city spray parks. So that is a win for all of us who spend time outside in the sunshine.

Stephanie:
You know what's not a win for all of us? This last little bit that I wanted to bring up. Starting on May 19th, construction work will begin on the Whyte Avenue transit priority measures, which you know what that means, Mack?

Mack:
No more scrambles.

Stephanie:
Yeah. So technically, what's starting next week is the EPCOR part of the work. The actual scramble removal won't be for a bit, well they haven't confirmed when it's gonna be. But, starting on Tuesday, like, lots of construction on Whyte Avenue. It's gonna be so sad.

Mack:
We're gonna have to have that party for the scrambles.

Stephanie:
I know, seriously. I literally need to start planning it. I'll put it out on Eventbrite or something. I'm so serious.

Mack:
Okay. Wow, that was a busy one, lots of ground covered in this episode. We will put all of the links to the different things we talked about in the show notes, and I just wanted to mention that there's a few ways you can get our show notes. So obviously, in your podcatcher of choice, you should be able to see all the links in there, if you're on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. We also put a link to them in the YouTube, description, so if you're watching us right now on YouTube, just down below there's a link. That's the first way. The second way is you can go to just speakingmunicipally.taprootedmonton.ca or click the Speaking Municipally link on our main website. That'll take you over to the site where all the episodes are with all the notes. And then the third way that you might not be aware of is you can subscribe by email to the show notes. So, if you already get The Pulse or any of our roundups, you can just click update preferences, you can go in there, and you can check off, Speaking Municipally. And we send that out every Saturday morning, so, if you're, like us, somebody who spends a lot of time in email and it's helpful to get the links in that way, you can subscribe to our Speaking Municipally newsletter. Okay, that's it for this week. We'll be back with, much more next week. Until then, I'm Mack.

Stephanie:
I'm Stephanie.

Mack:
And we're…

Stephanie:
Speaking…

Mack:
Municipally.