River City Writer

The following is the letter that I sent to Edmonton City Council (I emailed my councillors directly and CCed the general address):

Dear Councillors,

I am writing to you as a citizen who wishes to see the Edmonton City Centre Airport closed. While the ECCA has served the city well in the past, today it has become little more than a private airfield for a privileged minority and it limits Edmonton’s future growth.

Rather than maintain the status quo, I urge you to vote to close the airport.

Closing the City Centre Airport and redeveloping the airport lands is an incredible opportunity for Edmonton. It will help to revitalize the downtown core by removing height restrictions from the Outer Surface area. It will allow NAIT to expand the existing campus instead of building a new institution elsewhere, which will benefit NAIT students and also help to prevent urban sprawl (a problem that seems to plague our city).

The redevelopment of the airport lands must be well thought out, however. We cannot simply close the ECCA and hope that something wonderful will appear in its place.

Not only must the redevelopment plan honour the historical significance of the City Centre Airport—which can be done by maintaining and possibly even expanding the Alberta Aviation Museum—but it must also focus on building a sustainable and innovative community in our city core. If the airport remains open, the opportunity to build such a community will be lost, and Edmonton’s growth will continue to be defined by unsustainable urban sprawl.

If we truly want Edmonton to be a world class city, we must attract and maintain the type of young, creative professionals who define cities like Vancouver and Toronto. If we continue to grow the city via outward sprawl, rather than infill and urban redevelopment projects, these same young people will continue to ignore Edmonton as a potential home and those who currently live here will continue to view central Canada or the west coast as greener pastures.

With the points I have outlined in mind, I urge you to break from the status quo and vote in favour of closing the Edmonton City Centre Airport.

Sincerely,

Adam Snider

Edmonton City Council will be voting on the issue on July 8 or 10, so please email your City Councillor at councillors@edmonton.ca. For more information, visit notmyairport.ca.

Despite the fact that, just 2 days ago, the media was reporting that rodeo would be Alberta’s official sport, the news now is that it won’t be. Culture Minister Lindsay Blackett curtailed the motion, saying that there are other sports just as deserving, and that rodeo should not be given any special status.

Kevin Taft, of course, was upset that he won’t be able to leave this small legacy behind when he steps down as Liberal leader next month.

Read the full story…

I recently wrote a post about why I disagree with Kevin Taft’s proposal that rodeo be declared Alberta’s official provincial sport. It turns out that I’m not the only one who disagrees with the idea.

Fellow Edmonton-blogger Mack Male made his distaste for the idea very clear, with two simple words: “Um, no.”

St. Albert book-blogger Peter Bailey wasn’t quite as terse in expressing his opinion, saying that Kevin Taft has either:

lost his mind from the pressure of trying to convince Albertans to vote Liberal;

misjudged the effectiveness of political stunts (Sarah Palin?);

come up with an unusual way to get complimentary tickets to Canadian Finals Rodeo this weekend;

got the wrong idea from What Not to Wear when a man was told to “wear more hats – they look good”; or

grown tired of waiting for ice time at his local hockey rink.

Of course, these are just three voices opposed to the idea. Maybe Mack, Pete, and I are in the minority. Maybe most Albertan’s welcome the idea of rodeo becoming the province’s official sport. Where do you stand on this issue?

Alberta Liberal Party leader Kevin Taft has announced that he’ll be putting forward a private members bill this month to have rodeo declared Alberta’s official sport. While I have nothing against rodeo, and a part of me even enjoys certain events, I don’t like this idea, for a couple of reasons.

Rodeo & the Perception of Alberta as Hick Country

Despite the fact that Alberta is an urbanized province as much as any other (nearly 2/3 of the province’s population lives in the Edmonton and Calgary metro regions, let alone the province’s other major cities), we continue to be thought of as a province of rural rednecks by the rest of the country. Adopting rodeo as the official sport of the province will only help to reinforce this belief.

As I said, I have nothing against rodeo, nor do I have anything against rural people. I do, however, take issue with the rest of Canada viewing this province as some kind of inbred, backwater province that’s only worth keeping around because we’ve got all of this oil. Do we really need to give them more reasons to feel this way?

Rodeo is not a Sport

The other issue I have with Taft’s proposal is that rodeo is not a sport. Rodeo is a series of sporting events. Chuck wagon racing is a sport. Bull riding and bronco busting are sports. Rodeo is not a sport.

Calling rodeo a sport is like calling the Olympics a sport. Yes, it’s an exhibition of sporting prowess in a variety of areas, but it is not, in and of itself, a sport.

Of course, some sources will disagree with me on this point. Even Wikipedia says that “Rodeo is a sport which arose out of the working practices of cattle herding in Spain, Mexico, and later the United States, Canada, South America and Australia.[1]” And I understand that by declaring all of rodeo (rather than a particular event) as the official sport, the province would be highlighting Alberta’s rural heritage in a broad way.

Still, it seems to me that declaring rodeo as Alberta’s official sport is like saying that our provincial sport is track & field. While you may want to call it a sport, it’s closer to being an event that exhibits a number of different-but-related sports.

Ultimately, adopting rodeo as the province’s official sport will likely result in nothing other than another photo op for Kevin Taft—a photo op that won’t gain the Liberals any of the rural support that Taft is likely expecting to win as a result of this move—and another punchline for the rest of Canada to use against Albertans.

Congratulations Kevin Taft, you’ve successfully managed to continue to illusion that Alberta is a rural province; a province where urban centres are just places for the “liberal elite” (i.e.: you); and a province that’s still stuck in the 19th century. Maybe you’re not so different from Stelmach’s Tories after all.

Did you know you can’t vote if you have no fixed address? I suppose this is obvious, given that political ridings are based upon where you live. But, really, this sickens me.

The homeless in this province are those who are suffering the most as a result of the out-of-control economy, and they don’t even have the right to vote? Never mind that they’re Canadian citizens and residents of Alberta, if they don’t have a home, they don’t have a vote.

photo credit: Misserion

Now, I don’t know how this could be solved. Maybe they could use the address of a homeless shelter. But, that would require that they know the address of a shelter (which they may not, especially if they are newly homeless).But, no doubt, someone in the bureaucracy would decided that, in order for someone to list a shelter as their address, they’d have to actually have spent a few nights in the shelter and been issued some sort of documentation to prove it.

Considering that we don’t have nearly enough beds for homeless people as it is, such a requirement would mean that a lot of people would still not be able to vote.

I wish I had a solution to this problem. Unfortunately, all I can come up with is anger and disgust.

Change…that’s been the buzzword for this election campaign. Apparently, it’s not going to be the outcome, though. We’re in for a few more years of Tory rule. The Progressive Conservative will, as a result of this election, likely reach at least 40 years of power before we have another election.

I’m really pissed off by this. No party should be in power for 4 decades. Apparently, though, Alberta doesn’t agree, as the PCs have won a very large majority government. Not only have they won more seats that during the last election (at least according to the projected results that I’m currently seeing), they’ve also won more of the popular vote.

In my own riding of Edmonton-Centre, it looks as thought incumbent Laurie Blakeman has won again. I was hoping NDP candidate Deron Bilous would win the seat, but I’ll take Laurie if I have to. I’d much rather a Liberal represent my riding than a PC.

But…no change for Alberta.

It’s time to vote, Alberta. I don’t care who you vote for, or what you’re basing your vote on; just get out there and vote. Your vote does matter.

VOTE!

For the last several elections—federal, provincial, and civic—I have lived in various apartments around the city. I have always assumed that this was the reason that I never had political candidates coming to my home to speak to me.

Until this past Monday, I had always thought that the candidates were simply not able to gain access to apartment buildings, either because the landlords/managers wouldn’t buzz them in, or because of some weird bylaw prohibiting canvassing in multi-family dwellings.

Of course, there is also the possibility that I’ve just never been home when the candidates have come knocking. I don’t buy that excuse, though, because when I lived with my parents, the candidates would always leave a note on the door or in the mailbox saying something like, “I’m sorry I missed you. Here is an outline of my platform.”

Because I have never received a notice like this at any of my apartments, I assumed, as I said, that it was—for whatever reason—not possible for political candidates to visit voters who lived in apartment buildings. On Monday, I realized that I was wrong.

There was a knock on my door Monday night and, having not got a call from the front buzzer, I assumed that it was just the building manager coming to tell me something. Working on this assumption, I didn’t bother to check the peephole, and so I was quite surprised to find two strangers standing at my door.

They were volunteers from NDP candidate Deron Bilous‘ campaign. They greeted me politely, told me who they were, and talked a bit about Deron’s campaign. They talked about who he is as an individual, and asked me if I had decided who I was voting for, and if I had considered voting for Deron.

I answered their questions, chatted with them briefly, took the pamphlet they gave me, and closed the door.

I wondered, after that encounter, why haven’t any other candidates (or their representatives) ever come to my door? Where is Liberal incumbent Laurie Blakeman? Where is PC candidate Bill Donahue? Where are the candidates from the Green Party, the Wildrose Alliance, and any other parties that might have candidates nominated in Edmonton-Centre?

At the very least, I would have liked to have seen a note slipped under my door from the other candidates saying, “Sorry we missed you…” At least that would have indicated that they attempted to come and speak with me.

Through the simple act of knocking on my door and talking to me about my concerns, and about his platform (albeit by proxy, through his volunteers) Deron Bilous gained a huge amount of respect from me. I was already leaning toward voting for him (there, I finally came clean), and that simple act of having someone from his camp speak to me in person really helped sway my vote.

There are still a few days left in the campaign, so the other candidates’ camps may yet stop by, but I’m not holding my breath at this point. I’m still not certain who I’m going to vote for, so by actually stopping by and talking to me, the other candidates may yet be able to earn my vote. If they don’t, it’ll be a lot harder to convince me not to vote for Deron Bilous.

I watched the debate between the party leaders this evening, and couldn’t help but laugh at most of it. I mean, it was classic schoolyard bull-crap.

Admittedly, after the first portion of the debate, they (mostly) stopped trying to talk over top of one another. Perhaps Lynda Steele gave them a stern talking to during the break.

For many people, the leadership debate likely helped them decide who to vote for, if they hadn’t already decided. For me, the opposite is true.

Until tonight, I was about 99% sure of who I was going to vote for. After watching the debate, I’m not sure his party is the best choice for Alberta.

I still think the person in question (again, I won’t name him, because I’m trying to keep the blog semi-neutral) is the best candidate for my riding. But, I know that voting for the party, rather than the candidate, is often the more sensible and pragmatic thing to do.

The candidate is, in my opinion, the best one for the job. But, the party? I honestly don’t think so.

What about you? Did watching the debate help you make your decision, or are you still undecided who you’re going to vote for on March 3, 2008?

I’ve been talking to a number of friends about the upcoming Alberta election, and one thing that seems to always come up in discussion of Canadian politics—at both the provincial and federal levels—is whether to vote for the party, or for the candidate.

I believe that most people vote for the party. If you want the Liberals to form the government, for example, you’re probably going to vote for the Liberal candidate in your riding, even if you think that the PC candidate will actually be better at representing his or her constituents.

I will admit that I usually vote for the party I want to see win the election, rather than the individual candidate. Based on the way that our first past the post political system works, it seems to make more sense to vote for a party, rather than an individual.

However, this year, I think I will be voting for a specific candidate in my riding. While I don’t necessarily want his party to win the election, I think that he will do a great job representing Edmonton-Centre. Evidently, so do a few high-profile Edmonton political figures. Their testimonials hold a lot of sway for me, so I think I’ll probably vote for this individual (who I’m not naming, because I’m trying to avoid endorsing any one candidate or party).

My question to you is, do you vote for the candidate, or for the party? Bonus points if you share the reasoning behind your voting method.