Municipal Round-Up — May 21: You Can't Have A Voter List That Doesn't Exist!
All The News That's Fit To Tweet
What a week! Both mayoral races sparked big discussions this week, the Province and the pandemic have both continued to rage on, and we have municipal drainage to thank for not having to build an Ark.
No Voter Lists for Calgary Candidates
Last week, we covered the dangerous case of Kevin J Johnston who threatened to dox — make private information like home addresses public — Alberta Health Services employees, police, and others, partially in retaliation to his friend, Artur Pawloski, who police arrested recently for breaking public-health orders. The piece covers some of the nuances in the discussion about what can be done in situations where the candidate has actually threatened members of his constituency.
Others, like Stephen Carter, who is running Jyoti Gondek’s campaign, had a different angle.
The Court of Queen’s Bench granted AHS a restraining order against Johnston on May 14. On Tuesday, the City of Calgary found a way to just … not have voter lists. The priorities and finance committee held a closed discussion about the Local Authorities Election Act with their lawyer, Jill Floen following concerns raised about Johnston getting his hands on the list.
When they emerged from in-camera, Floen explained things in the most lawyerly way possible: “In order to prepare a list, direction is needed from council by bylaw, and that direction does not exist. So there is no authority at this time to create a list.”
So basically: if Council doesn’t ask for a list to be created, then there won’t be a list, and they won’t have to worry about who gets their hands on the list.
The Town of Banff Says: Stay Home
Following the direction from Dr. Deena Hinshaw, the Chief Medical Officer of Health the town sent out a message this week saying that they would appreciate it if we didn’t come for a visit just now, thank you.
The Provincial is the Political
This week, we wrote about the way that, in Alberta, the politics at the provincial level so often have an effect on the municipal world.
And Jared Wesley, an associate professor of political science at the University of Alberta, says that there are still ‘sleeper’ issues that will show themselves at the ballot box. We can confirm that some school board trustees have slid into our DMs and told us that this year, trustees are going to be a race to watch.
Sohi Enters Mayor Race
This week, former city councillor and federal infrastructure minister, Amarjeet Sohi, entered the Edmonton mayoral race.
We summarized his political life so far in a few tweets:
You can watch his campaign video here:
The response online was a mixture of excitement and the typical record scrutiny that you can expect on the bird site.
Plus … Uh, This Happened
After Sohi’s announcement, Coun. Mike Nickel, who’s also running for mayor, created a caption contest as a way to remind people of Sohi’s ties to the federal Liberals.
And the enfant terrible of #yegcc tweets replied:
Troy Pavlek is referencing an old Gateway article about whether or not students’ union funds (Nickel was the former president at this time, but authorized the cheque) were used to pay for adult entertainment:
Meanwhile Coun. Andrew Knack kept it classy:
Edmonton Drain Campaign
A few candidates get nerdy about drainage as we suffered both an epic downpour and snowstorm over a 24-hour span. That’s life in Alberta, folks. If you don’t like the weather wait five minutes.
Edmonton has done a lot for flood preparedness, such as providing free home flood assessments through EPCOR. Edmonton received a B+ in flood preparedness, while Calgary received a B- from the University of Waterloo’s Intact Centre on Climate Adaption.
Still some room for improvement though:
Electoral Decisions
We released an additional free article this week about how to learn about what candidates believe in before you get to the ballot box.
If you’re interested in more information like this, or how municipal government works generally, we have a sale on right now for yearly subscribers!
How Will Cities Lead Us Out Of the Pandemic
Finally, we leave you with this point about cities and resilience:
Correction: An earlier post announced it was 153 days until the election. The correct number of days is actually 150.