Speaking Municipally

Mack Male:
Back to the zoning board! This week, the provincial government is forcing Edmonton to amend its zoning bylaw and restore minimum on-site parking requirements in a bid to appease infill critics.

Stephanie Swensrude:
Plus, a study found that apartment and condo dwellers are only sorting about a third of their waste correctly.

Mack:
Hi, I'm Mack.

Stephanie:
I'm Stephanie.

Mack:
And we're...

Both:
Speaking Municipally.

Mack:
Welcome back to Speaking Municipally, episode 375. I wasn't thinking this was gonna be like a real groundbreaking episode here, Stephanie, but man, did some news land in our laps today? So you and I

Stephanie:
Yep.

Mack:
were both out at this press conference that the mayor had in response to the provincial announcement, and we're gonna get into all of that today, unfortunately. Whether we like to or not, this is what the news is of the week. But before we do that, we've got an ad for you.

Stephanie:
This episode is brought to you by the Citadel Theatre, which is bringing Our Little Secret to Edmonton. This is a new musical based on the true story of Noam Tomaschoff, who took a DNA test on a whim and discovered that he had dozens of siblings. Taproot's Karen Unland asked Noam why he was driven to write a musical about this earthshaking revelation.

Noam Tomaschoff:
Immediately when this started happening, and I took the test and learned the secret and started learning more and more information about my new family, shall we say, the variety and intensity of the emotions was so remarkable that song is a way to get the audience there quickly. When you hear the way a song is, the tone of it, the melody, the style, it immediately transports you to a place that would just be so much harder with just dialogue. Song is like a power-up and a shortcut toward building the experience for the audience.

Stephanie:
Our Little Secret has been a hit at the Toronto and Edinburgh fringes, and now we get to see it too. It's on the Maclab stage from Oct. 15 to 25. Get your tickets today at citadeltheatre.com. That's citadeltheatre.com.

Mack:
Okay, Stephanie, let's get into it. Provincial announcement earlier this morning, we're recording this on Thursday. The news kind of broke last night. Troy Pavlek, our podcast co-founder, had posted on Instagram and on Reddit that this announcement was coming. I think kind of if you followed the threads over the last couple of weeks, it was heading toward this announcement the province made. And they announced two things. So Edmonton will be required to adopt rules for high-density infill development that revert to the parameters in place before its 2024 zoning changes for housing types, density, and height. So that's the one thing, and to restore minimum on-site parking requirements in place before 2020. Edmonton will have three months from Oct. 8 to amend its bylaw. And then the province goes on to say these measures will be in place. They also announced similar measures in Calgary, although, as you may know, in Calgary in early August, they already repealed their blanket zoning bylaw. So they're a little bit closer to where the province wants them to be. But these regulations, these measures will be in place while the cities carry out comprehensive reviews of their land use bylaws, engage in public consultation, and work with industry to pursue a more balanced approach to high-density infill. This is from the provincial news release. Edmonton will have 18 months to review all of this. So there's a lot there, Stephanie. I'm not sure how much of it is true. I feel like we did do comprehensive review of our land use bylaw. We did engage in an awful lot of public engagement, and we did, as a city, work with industry to develop the zoning bylaw as it exists today. What's your initial take on this?

Stephanie:
I mean, I have a lot of thoughts, obviously. And you know, regardless of my — you know, I'm a reporter — regardless of my own personal thoughts on infill and all of these issues, either the province is ignorant and uninformed, or they're completely acting in bad faith. Clearly the city has done a lot of evaluation of heights, densities, infrastructure, parking, transit, on all of these things. I know, I've read all of them. They have done the studies. But then today Danielle Smith at the podium is like, you know, you just hear these crazy stories of, you know, eightplexes going up. Where are they gonna put their garbage? Where are they gonna park? It's like she takes Facebook comments and they go in her ear and then she just spits them out. I know Danielle Smith is a smart person. She's not dumb. She must know that the city of Edmonton has done these studies. So then it's just the other option there is bad faith, which I shouldn't assign any sort of motivation to the actions she's taking, but those are my thoughts, my initial thoughts.

Mack:
I had the same reaction when I heard her speaking and she started talking about things that felt like hearsay. You know, she's like,

Stephanie:
Yes.

Mack:
"I've heard of eight units, 16 units, 32 units," and she just goes on and on about the things that she's heard. And it's just like, was this grounded in some evidence, in some reality? I'm not so sure.

Stephanie:
Well, why don't we take a look at the data? Crazy, crazy thought to look at data before you make sweeping

Mack:
Who would do that? Who would do that?

Stephanie:
sweeping bylaw changes, but it's something. So this is some good data compiled by Jacob Dawang of Grow Together Edmonton. We'll put a link in the show notes. But since the RS zone took effect in January 2024, Edmonton has permitted 41,000 homes, and a third of those are in mature neighbourhoods. Five- to eightplexes, which are these behemoth humongous monsters of properties, five- to eightplexes, has added 5,000 of those homes. But they've only redeveloped less than one per cent of RS-zoned properties there. So less than one per cent of properties in mature neighbourhoods have turned into a five- to eightplex. One in every 100 mature homes has turned into a five, six, seven, or eightplex. That is what the province is targeting right now, and even Municipal Affairs Minister Dan Williams said something along the lines of like, 90 per cent of — these aren't the exact numbers, but I'm just remembering it — 90 per cent of infill is completely fine in Edmonton. It's just that other 10 per cent. I just don't know why the province is targeting such a small percentage of infill. In their own words, they said that it's such a small percentage of things that are being developed.

Mack:
Yeah, I mean, what do they stand to gain from this, right? It's not like they're going to appease this smaller group of people and all of a sudden they're gonna win seats in Edmonton in the next election. Like this is not a thing you would do if your goal is get more people in Edmonton to like you. We're gonna come on to who Edmontonians voted for in a minute, but I wanna go back just to what you said earlier about, you know, is this uninformed or is this bad faith? Probably this is a political choice, but here's what Mayor Andrew Knack said at the presser that you and I were both at. You'll hear that he took the route of uninformed in his comments.

Andrew Knack:
So today, the premier announced a directive that will take our city planning back to the 1960s. I'm pushing back not only on what was announced, but on what it could mean for Edmontonians. This kind of uninformed directive by the premier will make Edmonton less affordable, drive up property taxes, and create months of uncertainty for Edmontonians.

Mack:
So he hit on a number of things in his remarks, right? Obviously that this is gonna cost money. This is gonna cause property taxes to go up, but it's also gonna take staff time and, you know, time away from other things that are already on the table that are very important for council to be working on. And you know, the mayor suggested as others, lots of others, have, that these kinds of changes will result in higher costs for housing, rents and otherwise. The mayor talked about going back to the 1960s. In the provincial news release and in their remarks, you'll hear them talk about pre-2024. And one of the reporters at the presser asked the mayor about this. And his response was: the zoning bylaw as it existed before 2024 was written in the 1960s and continually amended. One of the reasons we undertook the zoning bylaw renewal is because it had gotten so big and unwieldy and did not reflect the Edmonton of the 2020s anymore because it had been first drafted so long ago. And so that's his response, and that's the clarification on the — when you hear, when you see other reporting, you hear the mayor talk about going back to the 1960s. That's kind of what he was referring to. The open-option parking was 2020. The city approved this, council approved this on June 23, 2020, and it took effect on July 2. I'll put in the show notes some reporting on this too, but similar to your data point on infill, the data after the first couple of years of open-option parking showed that like 20,000 parking stalls were still built in that time. It's not like people stopped building parking stalls, right? It just removed the requirement and made it possible for the market and for developers to decide what was appropriate. And there's lots of smaller, you know, affordable housing complexes and other supportive housing developments that don't need a lot of parking. And this reduces the cost of those things, which is really critical. So, you know, I think we'll hear more about both aspects of this in the weeks ahead, the infill part, but, you know, the parking one, which today at least it felt like didn't get as much of the attention.

Stephanie:
But trust Taproot will be covering that part of it because that is the kind of more nerdy part of things.

Mack:
Yeah. Okay, another thing I wanted to mention, Stephanie, it sounds like we both watched the provincial presser as well. So you had Premier Danielle Smith, you had Minister Dan Williams, municipal affairs minister, and then we had Jaclyn Soroka, who's the co-founder of Edmonton Neighbourhoods United. And if you look at the news release the city sent out, there's kind of a who's who of anti-infill people quoted in the news release. And you had some thoughts on that.

Stephanie:
You know, this provincial government is listening to losers. And I'm not saying that it's like a derogatory term necessarily. I'm talking about literal losers because anti-infill candidates lost handily in the 2025 election. You know, Jaclyn in the news conference kept talking about democratic process, democratic process. Well, there was a pretty significant democratic process on Oct. 20, 2025. That was called the municipal election, and all of the anti-infill candidates lost. Especially I wanted to point out the wards Métis, O-day'min, and papastew. Those are the wards that are seeing a lot of the infill. Those are three of the most pro-infill and pro, you know, active transportation, urbanism, transit, et cetera, councillors. And they all got, if not 50 per cent of the vote, very close to 50 per cent or even more. So Better Edmonton spent like a million and a half dollars running on a pretty heavily anti-infill platform. PACE ran candidates in those wards almost entirely based on anti-infill. And that was not enough because the issue of infill is not that important to people. Only 14 per cent of people ranked this as a top issue in the last election. And now, a year later, all of those people who lost in the election or whose issues that they were, like, whose platform positions they were going for, those positions were clearly not popular in Edmonton, and yet now the provincial government is coming in and plucking them up and saying, actually, no, even though you are all democratically elected on your platforms that were pro-infill, you actually cannot do that anymore.

Mack:
Hypocrisy is not a thing for this government, right? They'll talk about federal overreach and meddling in provincial affairs, but not the other way when the province does it to the municipalities.

Stephanie:
And another thing about hypocrisy is that I think a year or two ago the province launched an online portal for developers, municipal workers, and everything to report housing delays. Do you remember that? I think I have

Mack:
Right. Yeah, that's true.

Stephanie:
a good idea for something that could go into. Actually, maybe I should look up and see if it's still active.

Mack:
Somebody should go submit something to this portal. Well, you had the opportunity to ask the mayor about this mandate that council won in the last election, as you've just pointed out. And so here's what he had to say about that.

Andrew:
Yeah, you know, today I'm joined by Councillor Ashley Salvador, one of the councillors that was in those three busiest wards, Councillor Michael Janz and Councillor Anne Stevenson would represent probably three communities with the greatest amount, although there's some that experience in the other spaces. All three of those councillors came close, if not surpassing, more than 50 per cent of the vote. But again, I'm gonna come back to we still work with everyone. Every one of us on council works to engage voices, even those that don't vote for us. And we work to try to adjust, make adjustments. We have made adjustments on this topic, right? As of Aug. 1, there were changes that came into effect responding to a public meeting where many people came out to speak in February. So there is a responsiveness, but there's also an acknowledgement that our job here is to make sure we're providing housing choice to make this city affordable. And when it comes to affordability, housing costs are the number one contributor to overall affordability. So if we are not building out a city that provides that choice, that provides those affordable options, then we're going to lose our competitive advantage that we have right now. And make no mistake, this change makes property taxes go up. It increases housing costs and rent costs. Fewer people will now have opportunities to have a home in our city because of this change.

Mack:
Listening to the mayor speak, Stephanie, there and you know, at other parts of the news conference today, I really don't get the sense that this was thought through very well by the province. It does feel like it, like you said, there's some threads that I suppose you could have followed to maybe understand how we got here, but it does feel kind of rushed. And I think the case in point was actually the Alberta Municipalities Conference, which was just a couple of weeks ago. You were there, you did some reporting. You know, the mayor said he was there. He sat down with Minister Williams at the ABmunis conference. The minister told him he's working on this issue and the mayor said, "Great, let's work together." And then he got — the mayor says, quote, "I got a call yesterday at 1:15 telling me what decision they've already made." So not an opportunity to actually have a conversation or engage in any of this, right?

Stephanie:
Yeah, which counters what Minister Williams said at the press conference. He said he's listened to many people on every side of the issue, including councillors. And this is sort of a similar story to what Transportation Minister Devin Dreeshen is telling. He's saying that he's happy to meet with people on all sides of the active transportation debate. And from what I've learned from active transportation advocates, what they have shared with me is that they have not been able to secure meetings with the minister himself. Whereas if you're anti-bike lane, Dreeshen will come to your house. He'll knock on your door and be like, "Show me more."

Mack:
Another speaker at the news conference today was Dylan Bressey, who's the president of Alberta Municipalities. He spoke for several minutes and he used his time actually to talk about how this is not a one-off. So, like kind of what you're getting at with the bike lane stuff, this is a pattern. And the mayor also called it a pattern of behaviour on behalf of the province where they have started to overreach and step into municipal affairs. And, you know, Bressey went through a whole bunch of different examples not just in the cities, even in some of the smaller municipalities. And so it does feel like it's not a one-off, right? And that we shouldn't view this as a as a separate thing. This is part of a larger pattern of behaviour for sure. Stephanie, I have to say last night when I saw this news, I was like, Ugh. Ugh. I don't want to talk about this. Who wants to be talking about this? Like why

Stephanie:
I know.

Mack:
is this happening? What is the point of this? Is this a distraction from the referendum that's coming up in what, ten days or eleven days or something? It's like, what? Why? Why, Stephanie?

Stephanie:
Well, you know, this continued overreach into municipal issues that the province has no business having jurisdiction over, I honestly think that it is an attempt to bring culture war issues into communities to drive a wedge in and further divide people. They did this with bike lanes. They're coming in and like stoking the fire of bike lane opposition to drive people apart on this issue that's seen as like this woke progressive thing coming in with infill again, driving, like they're supporting a grassroots anti-infill group made up of Edmontonians and supporting them and having their individual political message amplified. Something tells me that they wouldn't do this with Grow Together YEG or Bike Edmonton or anything like that. I just think that and I think you're totally right that it's a distraction for the referendum because it's really easy to get mad about infill and bike lanes and to forget about a, like, existential question of if Alberta should continue to be a part of Canada as well as the other nine questions on the ballot. So I don't — part of me doesn't even want to talk about this, even though it's such big news, but it's like we're just giving them the validity of and we're giving validity to this attempt to distract and divide people. But I mean it is very big news and we do cover municipal news. But yeah, what do you think about that?

Mack:
I think people are already divided on this issue, and that's fine. I think that's part of a healthy debate and dialogue, and it's part of democracy. And the fact that you had some folks who are in favour of infill and can make, you know, cogent smart arguments about it, and then folks who are on the other side and could make counter arguments, and that those folks came together and that informed what the city ultimately put to paper and what council voted on, that's how it's supposed to work. And that we get to vote every four years for the people who vote on those documents that pass those bylaws that approve those plans. That's how it's supposed to work. It feels a lot at the moment. Like what is the point of all of that? What is the point of having a municipal election last year, if the decisions that council then makes are just all undone by a province who clearly has no qualms about stepping into a jurisdiction that they've admittedly created. Like as we know, cities are creatures of the province, and there's no protection for municipalities in, say, the federal constitution or anything like that. But as Dylan Bressey was talking about at the news conference today, you just can't be in all places at all times. Like an MLA who lives a couple hundred kilometres away from Edmonton, how can they understand what's happening in Edmonton? This is why we have local governments who can be responsive and accountable to the people who live there. It just feels like why are we moving away from that? It seems completely unnecessary.

Stephanie:
Yeah, it's really sad to see the erosion of municipal autonomy.

Mack:
All right, Stephanie. Probably this isn't just going to happen, although there was a little bit of that, I thought. You know, I thought the mayor, the way he talked about it, was a little bit like we have to do this. You know, what can we do? We have to do this. But I don't think it'll actually be that simple. Here's what his ask was for the premier in today's press conference.

Andrew:
My ask of the premier is simple. Pause this chaotic directive. Work with us to keep Edmonton the most affordable major city in Canada.

Mack:
And then we did get a little bit of a sense of what's coming up next, right? Although we didn't explicitly and nobody actually explicitly asked that. He kind of gave us some clues, right?

Stephanie:
Yeah, so he did say that there's gonna have to be a special city council meeting. Now, this week during one of the council meetings, they got out of a private session and then immediately called a special city council meeting. Maybe they were talking about this, we don't know. And that is set for the 16th. There's no agenda for it yet. Hopefully that'll be up. And if the agenda for that is up, in time, it'll be in Monday's On the Agenda. Subscribe to Taproot Edmonton. There's also a special city council meeting for the 23rd, which they are scheduled to discuss in private, quote, "government relations strategy." They use these like extremely vague terms. Sometimes it'll just be "project update," because it's in camera. It's private. Okay, so they'll need to do that. But as for some of the big decisions, okay, so they have three months to do this, to revert back, I'm thinking there are a ton of, like, rezoning applications take much longer than three months. So anything that was submitted in the past like two, three weeks, or even, I don't know, a couple months, is going to not have a zone anymore in three months. So all of those new housing projects are going to have to be redone to the old zoning bylaw, or — and then they won't be able to exist anymore because of the different zoning bylaw. And then there's gonna be some changes to the budget, which was supposed to come out on Nov. 2. And even that just this week, Eddie Robar, city manager Eddie Robar was kind of hinting that yeah, the budget is done at this point. You're too late to change the budget. But if we basically completely change how much housing we're allowed to be built, that's gonna change the forecasts for how much housing over the next four years is gonna come online, how many more people are gonna be able to move into neighbourhoods, it's also gonna change — all of that housing demand has to go somewhere. It's gonna have to push out to greenfield neighbourhoods. So that is gonna change the, you know, forecast of tax revenue and all that. And then also over the well

Mack:
And the cost of services, right? To service all of those far-flung areas. Yeah.

Stephanie:
Like, are we gonna have to open up the land south of 41 Avenue SW to deal with all this housing demand? That's a big question. We don't know that yet because boom, all of a sudden we have to make these big changes. Also, budgets take a lot of people to put them together. And the next three months, instead of working on the budget, which is due at the end of December, a lot of staff people are gonna have to start working on this zoning bylaw reversal. Maybe that's the new ZBR: zoning bylaw reversal. And then one last thing that Knack brought up for what's next. You know, councillors and mayors are supposed to go into public hearings with an open mind. They're always — so they cannot be told which way to vote. Kind of seems like Dan Williams has just told Edmonton City Council how to vote on changes to the bylaw.

Mack:
Indeed, I asked the mayor, do you have any legal recourse here? Like I know he's not a lawyer, but I'm sure he's getting advice. Here's what he had to say.

Andrew:
I think that's gonna be — I mean, the province, ultimately we are creatures of the province, they can do whatever they want, but I think there are certain things that I'm looking at legally about this. I'm going to look at, for example, the fact that if we're supposed to revert our bylaw back to the 1960s, am I being told how I have to vote going into a public hearing? For which, as per the rules in the Municipal Government Act, I'm supposed to go in with an open mind. So is the minister asking me to either not go through with this and violate his order, which could result in my removal from council, or is he asking me to vote for the changes that he has demanded, which in turn goes against the Municipal Government Act and potentially can result in my removal from council? I've raised this with him, and of course, I you know, when I heard that this conversation was happening two weeks ago, I did raise this. I suggested this point and mentioned that that's a concern. When I got the call yesterday, nothing like that was addressed.

Mack:
Stephanie, I feel like, had this announcement not happened today, we would have spent the next two months basically just talking about budget. And that's all council would have been thinking about too, right? Getting the budget on Nov. 2 and then, you know, this dead run to middle of December when everyone goes on the holiday break trying to finish it, get it approved. Now there's this whole wrench thrown into the plans here. It's gonna be an even more chaotic next couple of months than it was already gonna be.

Stephanie:
I mean it almost seems like like a humiliation to throw onto Edmonton City Council to be like, I know you're supposed to be working hard on your budget for the next four years. Obviously, the province knows that. You also have to redo your zoning bylaw. I don't know. Just, they just the UCP hates Edmonton so much. Yeah.

Mack:
That's what it feels like. Absolutely. Well, we'll keep an eye on this story. I'm sure we'll learn more about the implications in the days ahead here. And of course we're working hard on understanding the budget and so we'll try to bring this into that context as well. All right, Stephanie, we do have some council business to cover from this week. And I feel like we better cover it because we might not have a council anymore if this provincial pattern continues. I mean, honestly, somebody asked about this at the press conference too. Just three days ago on Oct. 5, they posted a job posting for municipal affairs seeking two permanent councillor accountability and recall advisors. These are positions that would in theory help bring this framework that was announced back in April as part of Bill 28 to life, but kind of interesting timing, wouldn't you say, to post this job posting. Okay. One of the things council did this week was talk about waste. So back to, you

Stephanie:
Trash.

Mack:
know, bread and butter issues for city council, municipal government. What was the story on waste this week?

Stephanie:
Yeah, so the city did a waste characterization study between April 2025 and April 2026. And it suggests that apartment and condo residents are adapting pretty slowly to sorting correctly and mostly sorting food scraps into the green bins. The city started rolling out food scraps and recycling collection to condos and apartment buildings in 2023. We're almost done rolling out to all the buildings in the city. So the study found that only 37 per cent of waste was properly sorted at apartment and condo buildings. So just a little over a third actually was in the right place. It's pretty bad for food scraps. 16 per cent of food scraps and yard waste materials are correctly sorted at the source. 80 per cent are still thrown into garbage and the remaining 4 per cent are thrown into the recycling stream. And then for recycling materials, about a third, 36 per cent of recycling materials are correctly sorted at the source, which is an improvement from the last time they did one of these studies. Last time in 2022, 2023, it was 30 per cent. But two-thirds still end up in garbage. Two-thirds of recycling materials still end up in garbage at condo and apartment buildings. So yeah, you were saying that you had thoughts about this as well, we're both condo dwellers. Mack, so what are your thoughts

Mack:
We are.

Stephanie:
on this?

Mack:
Well, it matches the reality, I think, in our building at least. When I take stuff down to the garbage room, especially if I go, you know, before the garbage has been picked up, we have two big garbage bins, one big recycle bin, and then a couple of small green bins. And the three big ones, the two garbage ones and the recycle are always overflowing. Like people fill those right up. I feel like our building must do a pretty decent job at the recycling one 'cause it's always pretty full. But the green bins, I put our little green bin, I go and empty the organics bag down into there. It's almost always empty. Like it doesn't seem like many of my neighbours are throwing stuff in the green bin, compared to the other two, which, you know, like I said, end up overflowing. What's your experience been like in your building?

Stephanie:
Well, first I wanna ask you, are your bins out in the alley accessible to anyone walking by? Do they have a lock on them? Are they behind a gate?

Mack:
So ours are inside the building. We have a garbage room inside. You have to go through the parkade to get to the bins. So it's all — and then through a locked door in there. So it's quite separate and locked and you, like, it's only gonna be residents who are throwing stuff into these bins.

Stephanie:
Okay, that's really interesting because I have a basically completely different experience because I live in the Strathcona area, very busy place, especially. I mean, I I look out onto the alley and see vulnerable folks walking through all the time. That's just the reality of living in that area. And my problem is that the green bin is every single time I go out there, it has been contaminated. And I put that in quotes because that's the technical word they use. If you even have like a chunk of non-compostable stuff in the entire bin, it's gone. They can't compost that entire bin. At least as far as I understand it. And every single time I go to throw my compost, there is something that someone has chucked in there while they were walking by. Sometimes it's like clothes that are ripped and tattered and clearly just someone needed to get rid of them. Sometimes it's just garbage from one of the buildings, but it's constantly — I've never seen it not contaminated. And a lot of times it's like overflowingly contaminated with just junk, because it's not locked behind anything. And also, my garbage bin and recycling bin had a lock on it for a while, no longer has a lock because, you know, reality of the area that I live in. I love it. I wouldn't change it for the world, but it's the reality. So it's interesting because you have a completely locked up one. I think these are two very separate problems, right, Mack? Your building is a little bit more teaching people how in apartment buildings, "Hey, you haven't had to do this for a long time, but now you have to," and people aren't really doing it. And then for me, it's like outside contamination to the bins. No matter what the residents are doing inside, doesn't really matter because our bins are accessible to the public.

Mack:
Yeah, yeah, no, that's true. And I think it just shows the variation between all the different kinds of condo and apartment buildings. They all have slightly different rules and systems and things for this, right? The other thing in our building that just makes me think about is like, you know, we have this garbage room that's interior and there's a garbage chute from the four parking levels. And it just feels like, you know, our building's not that old. I think it was built in 2004, but it's very much constructed with an older idea in mind, right? Which is that on your way out to your car, you're gonna pop the garbage bag down the chute and then you're gonna get in your car and drive away. Right. There's no chute access to the recycle. There's nothing for, you know, organics, or it hasn't been designed with any of that in mind. If you're not driving, you go through like four or five doors to get to the garbage room, which I know is partly for smell and things like that too, but it's just not as convenient, right? And so I think you're right. It's a kind of, people are used to just, "Well, we just throw everything in the garbage." And then it makes this source separation stuff so much more tricky.

Stephanie:
Yeah, I remember the last building I lived in had a garbage chute and I felt so cool just dropping it in there. I felt so chic and mature.

Mack:
This report did have some positive news though, it looks like.

Stephanie:
Yeah, well, it was also an update on the single-use item bylaw. So the big headline is that the waste study found a 30 per cent reduction in the disposal of the regulated items, which surpasses the goal that they set of a 20 per cent reduction by 2027.

Mack:
That's great.

Stephanie:
So if we're talking about the items that were regulated or banned under the bylaw, they saw a particularly large decrease. Plastic bags, which were banned, saw a reduction of 98 per cent. Foam takeout containers, which were also banned, also saw a 98 per cent reduction. And then paper bags, which now have a 25-cent fee, saw a 10 per cent reduction. So, you know, just the fee only put it down about 10 per cent. For me personally, I use the paper bags. My cats love to play with them. So they become toys. And then when they're tattered enough, I recycle them. However, disposal of items that are not regulated by the bylaw generally increased, which makes sense because if before you were — you're a restaurant, you're using foam containers, you have to switch to something else. So the plastic ones, plastic takeout containers, saw a 106 per cent increase. Unlined fibre-based, which are those like kind of papery, compostable, kind of squishy white ones, 130 per cent increase. Then the lined boxboard containers, which are those brown waxy ones that are kind of like you fold them on top of each other, 78 per cent increase.

Mack:
Okay. So mostly some good news, but some room still for improvement. Council recently voted against removing the fee on paper bags at drive-thrus, right? So sounds like full speed ahead. What did council say about this report?

Stephanie:
So there was a motion on the floor to remove the 25-cent fee for paper bags, for takeout and drive-thru. The idea there is, well, I think people don't like it. I mean, a lot

Mack:
People don't like fees.

Stephanie:
of the councillors have said like the number one thing they heard about during their campaign is that they don't like the bag fee. And it's paper bags. Yeah, the

Mack:
Right. Not infill, not parking.

Stephanie:
25 cents for a paper bag. Yeah, and then that, you know, people on lower incomes, which maybe they buy more fast food than the average person. We don't really know that. We don't know if they even are buying fast food because fast food is expensive. You go

Mack:
These days, yeah.

Stephanie:
you go to McDonald's, it is literally the same price as restaurant food.

Mack:
Gotta use the coupons.

Stephanie:
Yeah, true. Get the app. We should ask them to sponsor us. But basically, you know, I think Councillor Anne Stevenson summed it up pretty well. She was talking about how back when this was introduced, she was gonna wait for the results of the data from the waste characterization study to see if it's worked. And she said there is no ambiguity that this bylaw has worked to reduce waste. And then she ended what she said with saying the fee is completely avoidable and there is no Edmontonian who, if they are trying to make ends meet, must pay this fee. This is one of those things where it's hard for me to understand the issue because it is genuinely so easy. They ask me if I want a bag, and like I look around and I think, I'm just gonna eat this while driving with my knees to my next appointment. Kidding, but I'm gonna eat this in the car. I don't need a bag. And yeah, it's completely avoidable. And it's just a quarter. Like honestly, if you have money for 10 chicken McNuggets, you probably can afford a quarter for a bag if you really need it.

Mack:
And the longer we have these rules in place, the less likely you are to need a bag because people get used to it, right? People adjust, they get used to the idea that they need to carry a bag with them or container, as we've talked about on the show before. So

Stephanie:
Yeah. So still paying for the bags for now. That's what's new. Nothing else really came out of this.

Mack:
Okay, well there were a few other things that happened this week that we wanted to touch on just quickly. So we got an update on the budget process. So you mentioned Stephanie, the budgets are gonna be released on Nov. 2.

Stephanie:
I will be anxiously refreshing the pages so that I can dive deep into it. Then also that day you can register to speak at the council meetings. There will likely be several days of meetings about this. And also, sorry, this is just a little bit of a side note. There was a motion discussed this week from Michael Janz to potentially reduce speaker time from five minutes to three minutes. Now I'm not 100 per cent sure. This wasn't decided on. It's gonna go to a future meeting. And I wasn't 100 per cent sure if it would also apply to the budget meeting, but just interesting because yeah, you'd have to just a little bit less time to talk.

Mack:
Yeah, a little less time to grandstand. On Nov. 23, so several weeks after the budgets come out, that's when administration will make its presentation to city council. Councillors will get a round of questions each on each of the capital and operating budgets. And then there will be the non-statutory public hearings that begin. Nov. 26, they'll do utilities budget. And then this week they made some decisions about the process for how they're going to do this. And so just really quickly, they're gonna vote on and debate decreases to the budget first, and then they'll do increases. Councillor Thu Parmar put forward an amendment to try to do these things at the same time. You know, her argument basically is the essence of the budget is we add some things, we take some things away, like why do we separate these? But that was defeated. Only five councillors voted in favour of that. And most of the opposition that I saw, Councillor Principe, Mayor Knack, they were talking about time management and how this could be really tricky if they did adopt that, right? Like it might — it might make the time way longer than it needs to be.

Stephanie:
Yeah, sorry, I'm just thinking about how I'm gonna have to watch all these meetings now.

Mack:
So they're not doing that. They'll do decreases, then they'll do increases, and then they'll vote on the main budget. So that's pretty much in line with the way they've done this in the past. And they also decided they will waive some of these normal council procedures. So we'll find out about the three minutes. But, you know, for example, things don't have to be discussed in the order in which they're on the agenda. They don't have to put a motion on the floor. They can amend their own motions. You know, some of the rules around question limits will be different just to try to make the budget process go a lot more smoothly. This is something they've done in the past too, where they sort of relax some of the meeting rules. So Nov. 2 is the first date to watch out for. Two other quick things to mention. Councillor Salvador made her motion that you had talked about before on bike lane funding.

Stephanie:
Yeah, so she finally got to introduce her notice of motion. It's been pushed over and laid over a bunch of times, but the motion reads that administration prepare an unfunded capital profile to continue the implementation of the bike plan informed by the forthcoming active transportation implementation guide for consideration during the 2027-2030 budget deliberations. Okay, what does that mean? An unfunded capital profile, I've used the analogy of an Amazon shopping cart. So all through this year they've been adding things to cart and then come deliberations, they're gonna go through and say, okay, do we actually need this unfunded capital profile? Should we make it a funded capital profile? Or should we just get rid of it? So voting yes or no in favour of this motion does not necessarily mean boom, we're getting the funding, we're good to go. It just means should we talk about it at budget? And now the forthcoming active transportation implementation guide. Essentially, a few — like, before the last budget cycle, administration kind of drew up a menu. It was like, do you want the two-course meal, do you want the three-course meal, or do you want appetizer three-course meal and dessert? From my recollection, it was more of the middle option of like three-course meal, whatever, because they didn't go all the way out, but they also didn't do nothing. So they're making a new menu, which is going — should be released in the next couple of weeks. And then we'll see what options are on the table for building more active transportation infrastructure. So this motion did pass, but it was very close. It was 6-5, and then two were absent. Those opposed are councillors Mike Elliott, Thu Parmar, Karen Principe, Erin Rutherford, and Keren Tang. I was so surprised that this was even an issue because it's an unfunded capital profile. Like just talk about it at budget once you have the whole entire budget in front of you.

Mack:
I think that's what Councillor Paquette said, actually, right? It's like I think he said it's rare that I'm gonna say no to having better information. And I think we've criticized them in the past sometimes for just asking for too much information. I think the counter-argument to why not just see what this is and then vote on it at budget is that shopping cart that you described is gonna be overflowing with unfunded service packages. Like it's gonna take a long time to go through all of those. But this one feels pretty critical and I'm glad that it passed even though it was pretty narrow.

Stephanie:
It seems — so when I was listening to all the I was doing the tally in my head as everyone was doing their closing arguments, and for a second I was like, my God, is this not gonna pass? Zero bike plan funding, even like nothing, because I as far as I understand, that's what it would have been. And that was like really surprising coming from — I mean, Elliott, Parmar, Principe, man, I don't know, Rutherford and Tang. I was really surprised like zero funding. But I don't know if that's actually 100 per cent true. that it'd be zero. Yeah.

Mack:
I think, yeah, like we learned there's probably some stuff already in the budget that isn't considered unfunded that they might debate. Like there might be amendments put forward to increase or decrease those things. But yeah, like you say, we're not approving funding, we're just getting some information here to have a conversation about funding. So we'll see that come at budget. And then one other update from last week, we talked about the public spaces bylaw. So that bylaw did receive all three readings this week. But we did get a subsequent motion as well from Councillor Jon Morgan, which was carried 13-0.

Stephanie:
Yeah, it was to create a safety-based exception to the sidewalk riding prohibition when no reasonably safe cycling option is available or a route is obstructed or unusable, subject to yielding to pedestrians and travelling safely at low speed.

Mack:
Okay, so I want to ask about this one because I feel like this applies to me literally every day downtown these days. From my house on 104 Street to, you know, over to toward Churchill Square to the library, that area. It's a different route every day. They close the sidewalk for construction over here, they move it over there, a path to cross over here, like often. You know, there is no bike lane anymore. And so when I'm with the kids, we ride on the sidewalk. Cause it's just not safe with all the cars to be on the road, right? I'm a little more inclined to do it myself. But for the kids, like it's pretty dicey because you got these drivers who are very impatient. They've been delayed by two whole minutes at the end of their day. So I am a fan of this idea of a safety-based exception to riding on the sidewalk.

Stephanie:
I only listened to part of the council discussion about this, but I think that administration and some of the councillors brought up a really good point. What is a reasonably safe cycling option? For you and your gorgeous daughters, it might be different than for me, a young woman, and it might be different for a seasoned cyclist that's been doing it for 25 years. What I thought about is okay, say you're cycling along 83 Avenue and you're going to a store on Whyte Avenue itself. What I usually do is I get off the 83 Avenue bike lane and I ride on the sidewalk for that one block, turn, get onto a — get to a parking spot, a place to lock my bike. But would that little part count? Sure, it's convenient. It's the convenient cycling option. Is it reasonably safe to ride in the road? For some people it is, especially on like a side road, there's a bit of ambiguity and I know that enforce — like, the the bylaw officers, police officers, they do not like having to like argue with people about what is a reasonably safe thing. So yeah, it's a little bit interesting.

Mack:
I think that's a really good point. Like I said, if I'm with the girls, I'm way more likely to use the sidewalk with them. If I'm by myself, I usually feel pretty confident that I'll just ride on the road and it's often faster anyway to ride on the road. And so I'll do that. The girls and I have ridden on the sidewalk right past police officers and no one cares. They don't bat an eye. So you know, there's

Stephanie:
Yeah, that's the thing, yeah.

Mack:
there's gonna be a judgment call, right? For whoever is tasked with enforcing, you know, these rules about what's safe and what's not. So that was a subsequent motion. It's not going to be in this updated bylaw that did receive three readings. It's something that will come back again in the future. And then there was a note also I saw that potentially the province has some micromobility rules coming forward that might change the way this rolls out. So we'll have to wait and see the implications of that.

Stephanie:
Mm. Yeah, it was a resolution passed at Alberta Municipalities Convention to kind of advocate to the province to introduce some more rules around, you know, e-scooters and e-bikes. And I'm pretty sure it's both private ones that people own, as well as, you know, Limes and Birds and all that. And that is forthcoming.

Mack:
Okay, well we got some council business done this week, Stephanie, even though who knows, what's the point? But we did we did have one other thing that caught your eye while you were paying attention to council.

Stephanie:
Yeah, I mean, this is just something that no other media's gonna care about at all. And I don't really know where to talk about this as a reporter, but I just thought it was so interesting because I don't remember exactly what they were talking about, but Mayor Andrew Knack brought up A Week Without Driving, which ends today when we're recording it. And he kind of said something like, "And every week is now a week without driving for me, because I just sold my car." You know, just kind of chit-chat among colleagues. But I was like, do you think there's any other city period, let alone major city in Canada where the mayor does not have a car. I think that's pretty notable because I remember during when he was first elected, I kind of was focusing on a story I wrote about him being a cyclist mayor, you know, Canada's first cyclist mayor, but now it's a car-free mayor.

Mack:
Yeah, I think this probably will make him very happy. I remember talking to him during the election campaign and he was kind of annoyed, I guess, that running an election campaign meant he had to be all across the city, you know, without a lot of time and he had to drive in order to do that, right? Because as we know, he likes to walk, he likes to cycle. So I imagine selling the car for him was such a thing of joy.

Stephanie:
Yeah, I remember during the election too, like we would be at several events together at the same time because I was doing panels and whatnot. And I'd see him like come up in his little blue Kia Soul matching his blue colour scheme, jump out, come in, do the thing, run out to the car and drive away. So yeah, that iconic blue Kia Soul is no more.

Mack:
Now you just see him on the blue bike all the time. So Well, for as long as we're allowed to have bike lanes anyway, you'll see the mayor on those bike lanes.

Stephanie:
Hopefully he gets — he can expense a blue Ford F-150 or something.

Mack:
Well, we'll keep an eye on all of this and we'll have more to bring you in On the Agenda, as Stephanie mentioned, which comes out every Monday. Although next week, because of the Thanksgiving long weekend, it'll be on Tuesday. So enjoy some time off this weekend with your family. And we'll be back again next week with another episode. Until then, I'm Mack.

Stephanie:
Stephanie.

Mack:
And we're...

Both:
Speaking Municipally.