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Episode 1 "Cruel Summer"
59 Plays5 years ago
Shama Rangwala guest co-hosts the first episode of the Progress Report with Duncan Kinney. We discuss the Summer of Repeal/Springtime of Renewal and all of the damage done by the Kenney regime in their short few months in office. We also talk about the twin debacles that are Safe City YEG and Slum Town. Also, why does Licia Corbella hate horses so much?
Further reading and listening:
Bell: Drug sites no answer, says Alberta addictions boss
Corbella: Rodeo animals love what they do and wouldn't exist otherwise
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to The Progress Report
00:00:05
Speaker
Friends and enemies, welcome to The Progress Report. I'm Duncan Kinney, and I am your host for our first ever episode. Think of this podcast as a mix of the Alberta Advantage, Chapo Trap House, and Canada Land. We want to do it every week, and we want to keep it around under 45 minutes. There'll be jokes, but it'll also be an informed roundup and analysis of the politics of the week with the occasional scoop.
00:00:26
Speaker
We'll be focusing mostly on Alberta and Western Canada, but that doesn't mean we won't be talking about broader Canadian or international issues. The plan right now is to have a rotating cast of guest co-hosts with the occasional feature interview. But let's get into it and tease out what this week's show is about.
Jason Kenney's Campaign Promises: Reality Check
00:00:41
Speaker
One of the shitty things about my job is that I have to listen to campaign speeches of my political enemies over and over again.
00:00:47
Speaker
During the last provincial campaign here in Alberta, Jason Kenney had a stump speech about how once he won, he was going to lock all the MLAs in the legislature, turn off the air conditioning, start cracking whips, and wipe clean all of the damage that the Alberta had done in their past four years in office. And he called this the summer of repeal. And that's like, you know, a nice catchy turn of phrase when you're giving a speech to your Hooting Jackal supporters.
00:01:11
Speaker
But when you start governing, reality sets in, and Kenny's summer of repeal quickly morphed into a much kinder, a much gentler, a much more hilarious spring of renewal.
00:01:22
Speaker
And I'm not kidding, that's what he actually called it in his press release.
Guest Introduction: Dr. Shama Rangwala
00:01:25
Speaker
So to help me sort through the real harm that Jason Kenney and the UCP have caused just in their short time in office and kind of tearing, teasing apart the empty calories of press release puffery and the stuff that they're bragging about that doesn't actually do shit, I have Dr. Shama Rangwala with me here in the studio. Shama, hello. Hey, how's it going? So Shama, you're a lecturer at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Alberta.
00:01:49
Speaker
in the women's and gender studies department, right? Yeah, I just started there. I moved over from English and film. You're a frequent panelist on Alberta Primetime and a founding editor of Periscence, an online culture and politics magazine. She is also an excellent racist sign noticer and a Progress Alberta monthly supporter. Shama, thank you for being our very first guest co-host.
00:02:10
Speaker
Great to be here. Thanks for having me. So, okay.
Debating the Carbon Tax Repeal
00:02:14
Speaker
This, this starting point off here for this, you know, this springtime for Jason stuff is this press release that we kind of both have. And we both kind of talked about, and I realized dunking on like press releases might be, you know, shooting fish in a barrel, but this is our first podcast. We want to kind of keep it easy. Um, why don't we kind of go over the, like the top brags?
00:02:34
Speaker
of their first legislative session and then kind of tease them apart here. So obviously first one thing, one that they talk about, axing the carbon tax. This was a big surprise to you, right? Well, that's basically their campaign. But what I really hate about this is that I don't care that much about a carbon tax. This is not like my politics aren't like, let's just do a carbon tax. And that's going to solve climate crisis. A market. We put a market on everything.
00:03:00
Speaker
This is not going to be the solution to something that's so deep and structural, but because this government is pulling everything so far to the right, you have all these people who, you know, the carbon tax was a compromise now saying like, oh my God, they got rid of the carbon tax. Oh, horror.
00:03:16
Speaker
I mean, putting a price on carbon is like a fundamentally conservative solution to climate change, right? Like to think that putting a price on something will fix it is not a leftist, not a socialist, not even broadly speaking. Well, it is kind of liberal, but it's not anything that you or I could look at as a real solution to the problem of climate change. And now we're in this position of having to defend this policy that we only think is kind of good and would only be really be good if it was an order of magnitude larger.
00:03:45
Speaker
The other thing about the carbon tax that I really, really hate and kind of doesn't get talked about enough is, this was some tweet from like one of the Twitter economists that's online, Andrew Leach or Trevor Toome, but it's like, we went from a carbon tax that covered 75% of emissions to a carbon tax that covers 50% of emissions. You know, we still have a carbon tax on large emitters in this province. And it's like, we fought all of this political, we expended all this political capital, we, the Alberta NDP, expended all this political capital for that.
00:04:14
Speaker
And it's like, Oh my God, it is, it is so, so deflating.
Corporate Tax Cuts: Effective or Not?
00:04:19
Speaker
Um, next up, I think it is something that I think we're going to keep coming back to over and over and over again, over the next four years is this corporate tax cut. They want to chop the corporate tax from 12% to 8% giving us the lowest corporate tax in Canada by a wide, wide margin. Um, you know, thoughts on this.
00:04:35
Speaker
Well, the actual policy, like just what you're saying with a carbon tax, doesn't really matter as much as the rhetoric. And so, you know, press release is, first of all, a rhetorical document. So this corporate tax cut enacting the job creation tax cut, this like shift in rhetoric really tell, like, what does it, what does it mean? Like what kind of jobs? Like it's really like an empty kind of,
00:04:58
Speaker
Term it's jobs for some people. We know other people are gonna be losing their jobs in certain sectors that the government doesn't like like education So I mean it's a tax cut for job creators Which is a which is a term that they've kind of revived kind of from like Bush era. I feel Republican politics like job creators I mean it's a tax for them. It's not a I mean a job creation tax cut it was this like shoot me in the head Orwellian language, but like
00:05:27
Speaker
It's an excuse to commit austerity at the end of the day, right? It's like, oh, we don't have any money in the bank, I guess. Post-secondary education, disabled people, education, healthcare, I guess you're all going to have to live with less. Sorry, shrug emoji. And so, you know, that's where I am in the corporate tax code. And it's just going to keep bubbling back over and over again.
00:05:46
Speaker
This is a strategy that has happened in so many different places all over the world, but also in Alberta, if you remember the Klein years. And it's been proven not to work, but what it really does well is make people lose their trust in public institutions. They're like, why should we fund health care? Like, when I went to the hospital, I had to wait so long, like, we should just like give me more money so I can go pay for, you know, private clinic or something like that.
00:06:11
Speaker
And your family left Alberta during the Klein years, right? Absolutely. So my dad worked for the Alberta Research Council. He's a researcher. And we moved to Saudi Arabia in the middle because all of those research positions were cut. And this is the kind of research that really should have been done in the 90s of how to think about energy in a way that's going to be sustainable.
Labor Policy Rollbacks and Worker Challenges
00:06:33
Speaker
One of the final kind of big brags from the session from the UCP side is rolling back labor stuff. I think they called bringing balance back to labor relations. This is a long running trope of conservatives whenever they get into power. I mean, it would have been bill one if they hadn't campaigned so heavily on cutting the carbon tax, but you look at any conservative government when they come in, one of their first orders of business is to go after labor because they realize that labor is a bulwark against their power.
00:07:00
Speaker
and realizes that their class interests of the working class and working people is directly counter to the people who fund and support conservative politicians. And so Karchak is now gone. The UCP have made it easier for
00:07:18
Speaker
your boss to not pay you for holiday pay. They've rolled back the minimum wage for youth. They've essentially made it easier for your boss to not pay you overtime. We won't get into the arcane details of the overtime stuff, but any thoughts on the labor stuff that's been rolled back?
00:07:36
Speaker
Yeah, well, you know, the term class warfare is bandied about a lot sometimes. But I really think that it's accurate here because it's all about turning people into individuals, you know, this attack on organized labor, of course, so people don't bargain collectively. So it's class warfare designed as this kind of like frontier individualism. And even all of their like iconography is like cowboys and things like that. You know, you saw what the premiers meeting and they're flipping pancakes with their
00:08:04
Speaker
tiny sheriff badge and cowboy hats. And it's all about like, you know, we're in the wild West, like we're all rugged individuals, don't you? See how a union would stifle your freedom or something like that. I mean, I just want to know who let Jason Kenney out with a fucking sheriff badge on his jacket.
00:08:24
Speaker
I mean, that's just me. Okay. He loves cops, right? He does. Okay. So I think those are the kind of things that the UCP would want to talk about. I mean, let's dive a little deeper into what's actually causing the most damage. Like in two months, they have already done tremendous damage. And I think kind of the first thing that we've got to bring up is supervised consumption sites.
Supervised Consumption Sites: Policy Concerns
00:08:45
Speaker
Um, you know, they've talked about forming a panel to conduct an evidence based analysis of supervised consumption sites. And just in the news today, we had Jason Kenny's point man on this file on the mental health and addictions file.
00:08:57
Speaker
talk about, oh my God, like I can pull up this rec bell article. It's, it's like, it's actually atrocious, but it is just kind of Luan taking a very aggressive muscular stance against like some of our most vulnerable and some of our most downtrodden people in Alberta. And this is really a trend. I think we're going to continue to see like anyone who was outside of Jason Kenny's electoral base, Jason Kenny is going to fuck you. And he's going to use the power of the state to take away anything that might have anything that might be good for you. And he's going to make you worse off.
00:09:27
Speaker
Yeah, so a fundamental question here is do you believe that we live in a society and that we should take care of each other? Or do you believe that the only people you have to look out for are people who are like you or like immediately related to you like your family?
00:09:44
Speaker
And it's a very, very upsetting issue because we know that there are all kinds of reasons why people fall victim to addiction or there are all kinds of reasons based on housing. It's related to austerity for sure. There are all kinds of structural reasons why people have these problems.
00:10:06
Speaker
And we should be taking care of them. And Rick Bell's article is so, you know, fuck them. Like, I don't want to see them. They can go ahead and die. And it's all through this moralizing lens because it's really easy to moralize people who you don't have to interact with. And they're just like not part of what you consider to be society.
00:10:27
Speaker
And I'm not sure who's gonna be advocating for these people when the rhetoric is so strong around them. Who in power, who has power to be helping these people? There's on the ground organizing, I think would be probably the best. Really just go and help these people where they are.
00:10:45
Speaker
It's a question of, yes, do we want to live in a society that takes care of people? Rick Bell does not live in that society. Here's some quotes from Kenny. Instead of just telling people where to go and shoot up with poison, how about we open up more detox beds and more treatment centers to show real compassion?
00:11:02
Speaker
And it's like, you're literally going to be cutting healthcare funding in the fall when the budget comes out. There's no way you're opening more detox beds and more treatment centers. You're just taking away their supervised consumption sites and giving the healthcare system less resources. This is also an extremely illustrative quote. We will not allow neighborhoods to be destroyed, says Kenny.
00:11:21
Speaker
Um, you know, again, kind of like centering the homeowner in, in this discussion of like these people who are facing unbelievable amounts of like trauma and stress and who are homeless and unhoused and who are dealing with mental health problems and addiction problems. And it's like, Oh my God, this is the issue that,
00:11:40
Speaker
I mean, I hope and pray that like, normie centrist Albertans can kind of see this and like, you see some kind of media figures who are able to step up and say nice things. Like, I know Ryan Jespersons brother works at like insight or something, and he has been really good on this issue. But this, what is it like two people a day, I think are dying from the opioid crisis in Alberta. It's like the, and, and the recent stuff that came out was like, these are typically like middle-class, like white guys who are on their own in the suburbs, right?
00:12:10
Speaker
Yeah, so the opioid crisis we know has its root in the pharmaceutical industry, its root in capitalism, right? And so the Sacklers at least are being shunned from art galleries and stuff like that. Now, after being kind of one of the main people who brought this crisis about,
00:12:27
Speaker
So if we think about like why, you know, why this crisis has happened, the sort of social reasons, there's all kinds of ways that it takes us back to this idea of individualism and alienation and that there isn't, you know, and austerity, that people are losing their jobs, they don't have the social supports.
00:12:43
Speaker
And then you have this capitalist industry that's like, here are some medications. And then they're like, OK, now we have to go to the street to get it. And it proliferates in this way. And so you can't just, I mean, of course, you're absolutely right. Kenny is not, he's bullshitting when he says that they're going to open more beds. But even if they open more beds, what does that do? What does that do to this whole chain that is beyond Alberta, this whole chain of problems?
00:13:09
Speaker
Safe injection sites is harm reduction. So what we want to do, this is like the very most basic, reducing harm on the ground. And then think about like, how do we get people the social supports that they need? We're not going to solve capitalism and, you know, the opioid crisis in Alberta itself, but we can just like have people, you know, have social supports, fund like, like communities to take care of each other. These people can detox, they can't get treatment if they're dead.
00:13:34
Speaker
And like if there's one thing that supervised consumption sites have shown is that they save the lives of people. And when you get rid of supervised consumption sites, which they've stopped the planning, they've stopped three planned ones that were supposed to come out in this review. Who knows what's going to happen? Like people will die and that's not hyperbole. Okay. Let's, let's move on here. Cause I think there's one other kind of like super damaging issue that we got to get
Impact of GSA Protections Rollback
00:13:54
Speaker
to. And that is essentially rolling back protections for gay straight alliances. And what they call it is a proclaiming the education act, which is kind of a bit of arcane.
00:14:02
Speaker
legislative bullshit that we're not going to get into, but at the end of the day, uh, uh, legislative protections that were brought in by the Alberta NDP to protect, uh, gay straight alliances and similar clubs and schools have now essentially been rolled back to like Tory era level protections. And again, like totally unnecessary, totally cruel. And, and really puts like, again, our most vulnerable people at risk, right?
00:14:26
Speaker
Yeah, so Adam Serber had that article in the Atlantic saying the cruelty is the point. And we see this also globally, that there are these governments who are doing policies that don't actually seem to make a lot of sense on the surface. And you said that this is unnecessary. It is cruel. It was unnecessary to their electoral chances in this election. So we can ask ourselves, what is actually necessary? What is the goal of this?
00:14:50
Speaker
And I really think that these conservative, you know, right wing, they're going farther and farther to the right, are all about creating a sense of community and solidarity, the kind of words that we use on the left to organize, you know, across differences. But they want to create their own kind of community and solidarity and to have him, you know, Jason Kenney,
00:15:12
Speaker
do you know he's a social conservative like he is one of them right Adriana Lagrange like showing that video you know her organization in Red Deer showed that video that was like abortion is the Holocaust and she's like you know I just I just listened to her give some speech about how what inclusion means to me is basically this really
00:15:35
Speaker
a historical kind of erasure of any kind of difference. Born and unborn. Including born and unborn, right? And so when you have this education act that's kind of anti-education, what is the purpose of it? It is to tell those people that I'm on your side. This is your community. This is where you belong. And we keep saying it, but fuck them to everybody else.
00:16:01
Speaker
The data is there on safe injection sites. The data is there on gay straight alliances or institutionalized support in their schools and stuff for kids. So they actually do save lives too. It's also not hyperbole to say that inclusion in these kinds of clubs where they don't have to tell their parents, do you want Mark Smith? Do you want him to be the teacher who is up to tell these kids parents, right?
00:16:29
Speaker
And when you come back to the GSAs, like the literature and the research on this is that not only does it reduce suicide rates for queer and trans youth, but it also reduces suicide rates for straight youth, reduces suicide rates across the board. And so in what world, how do you look at this at the available science, at the available
00:16:47
Speaker
literature and you're like, you know what? I want to make it harder for people. I want them to have less protections. Like the cruelty is the point. It still doesn't make me any less mad or any less kind of world weary, but it is, it is just, it just makes me so fucking, I don't know. Well, kids aren't voters and they don't have any money to, you know, donate to political campaigns. Um, and they're not organizing in the same way that like, you know, social conservatives, like, you know, anti-choice movements are organizing.
00:17:16
Speaker
But we did see a lot of kids coming out all over Alberta. I was in Banff in Canmore that weekend that the kids were marching against. This was during the election. And there were like 25 kids just walking down the main street of Canmore.
00:17:37
Speaker
Again, the government is not on any one side. The government's on the side of capital and it's convenient for them to mobilize people through these social conservative issues. But if we can organize, I mean this is what I think a podcast like this and In Progress Alberta can be at the forefront of this. Like actually educating people, bringing people together on issues based in facts and research.
00:18:05
Speaker
what we know about what's happened in the in the past with austerity during recessions and stuff like we have to take care of each other and and and as far as what this podcast is going to become and how we want to approach it like this is part of an ongoing thing too so please like reach out to us when you do hear this okay well there's one last thing as far as like most damage that i don't know if you have a riff on this if you want to comment it is like an area former area of expertise of mine which is like renewable energy
Renewable Energy Program Termination
00:18:30
Speaker
And the Kennedy government kind of very quietly got rid of the renewable energy procurement program, which had gone through two cycles and which had procured some of the cheapest renewable energy in North America. They framed it as ending costly subsidies after the renewable energy programs round three.
00:18:49
Speaker
There's no consultation with the renewable energy on this as far as I know, and this was just kind of quietly done as a matter of course. But this is essentially strangling the renewable energy in its crib.
00:19:02
Speaker
You know, we have incredible wind and solar resources in this province. We have the ability and the know-how and the land base to do this. One of the, one of the rounds of the renewable energy program was actually like had to have indigenous co-ownership. Like there was a lot to like about this NDP program and it's just like gone and we're never going to think about it again. And so I just kind of wanted to take a minute to like rest in peace, renewable energy program.
00:19:26
Speaker
Well, there hasn't been consultation for anything, really. They're like, we won the election, so we're just going to do whatever we want, and people will suffer. What is in the ground in Alberta is going to contribute to all kinds of horrible things. I just finished reading.
00:19:46
Speaker
David Wells was the uninhabitable earth. So it's kind of weighing on me what the future, what the future will look like. Um, but this, you know, renewable energy sector does it is not funding their campaigns. So, no, exactly not. Um, okay.
Senate Elections: Meaningful or Distracting?
00:20:00
Speaker
So there's one kind of final bit of the last of the summer of repeal, you know, springtime for Jason stuff that I do want to talk about. And that is the bullshit stuff that they, uh, the most kind of like puffy useless things that they brought forward. And the first one I do want to bring forward is, um,
00:20:16
Speaker
the senate elections um they brought this back kind of seemingly i mean maybe the timing was just good but seemingly in a fit of peak that the senate hadn't done something for jason kenny that he wanted them to do on one of the bills that that the oil industry hates and uh and it was like yo jokes on you man like you expected the senate to like do something and then he framed the senate election act as this act that would somehow make the senate accountable um
00:20:43
Speaker
Just as a brief aside about the Senate, the Senate is anti-democratic trash. It was literally an institution created so that rich people would have oversight of the democratically elected people in Canada, abolish the Senate, abolish it now. However, I am somewhat considering a joke Senate run in 2021, so you heard it here first on the progress report. I'm strictly on a abolish the Senate ticket, but that could be fun.
00:21:08
Speaker
I mean, they passed a bunch of motions that I thought were hilarious, like the UCP passed motions that allowed for free votes for the MLAs and everything, like there's literally nothing stopping anyone from voting any which way they want on any issue in the legislature. They passed a motion requiring MLAs who wanted to cross the floor to resign and seek a by-election, again, totally non-binding, total bullshit.
00:21:30
Speaker
In this kind of press release, they also bragged a lot about not changing anything, like kind of cognizant of their summer of repeal rhetoric that like, oh yeah, we kind of came in here with this like mandate to sweep out a bunch of shit. And like, look, we didn't, we're listening. And it's just like, you know, ask the energy industry to significantly increase its advocacy efforts. Like they like wrote a letter to the energy industry saying, please do more of this stuff.
00:21:56
Speaker
I mean, you're always going to get governments who are going to brag about the stupid useless shit they do, but it just seemed like there's a lot of it, especially when you frame it in something like the Senate Election Act, which is just extremely useless on its face. Okay, I think that's it for the summer repeal. You got any final thoughts or conclusions as we kind of wrap up this segment?
00:22:18
Speaker
Well, they're doing all kinds of stuff sort of telling us what side they're on. And, you know, I guess I've been thinking a lot about the earplugs debacle because, you know, I work at a university and there's all kinds of like, you know, campus free speech and stuff, which I have written now two articles on at Paris, since if anybody wants to read them.
00:22:39
Speaker
You know, Lindsay Shepherd just got banned from Twitter yesterday. But then, you know, when they're confronted with actually having a conversation about ideas that they don't like, handing out the earplugs was really, I mean, it was just, it was very strong symbolism of their real commitment to speech and debate. But, you know, we're going to really know what they think when the budget comes out, I think that's going to be really, really
00:23:08
Speaker
Yeah. Like the blue ribbon, the blue ribbon McKinnon panel is going to come out and they're going to be like, Oh, it looks like you're going to need to make massive cuts. And I expect to see massive cuts in the fall, but we're not getting a budget until after the federal election. So, I mean, this is kind of the one thing that we didn't touch on and all the harm that's being done. But because this budget process, they got elected in April because we're not going to see a budget until November, like every agency, like school board, disability group, housing, co-op, blah, blah, blah. That depends on provincial money.
00:23:38
Speaker
has like is essentially in limbo and hasn't been able to budget and so um you know the families who are in the kind of like disability community are like they're getting denied funding like the people who are needing funding aren't suddenly not showing up they don't not need funding anymore and so like this is something that i would keep an eye on too is this um
00:23:59
Speaker
I mean, Kenny has shown a penchant for going after the people who are not a part of his electoral coalition coalition and for being kind of needlessly cruel. But like, as we saw in Ontario, like if you go after, like it was the autism families in Ontario, but if you go after the, like the disability community and Alberta and their funding, like they're organized, they hate politicians. They are, they will scrap. And I don't think Kenny comes out on the right side of that. So something to keep an eye on, I think.
Safe City YEG Initiative Critique
00:24:23
Speaker
Okay, so that's kind of like main segment of the show over. I think now it's time we move over to Sundries. This is a part of the show with kind of like shorter quick hits where we kind of want to bring up things that we want to talk about. This is a regular feature in our email newsletter, the progress report, which, uh, if you're not subscribed to go subscribe to the best goddamn email newsletter about Alberta and Western Canadian politics out there. But the first sundry I wanted to bring up, well, I kind of, we both chatted about this. We both wanted to bring this up is safe city YEG. And why don't you kind of like demo the, the like what, what it is we're talking about and then why it's terrible.
00:24:53
Speaker
Yeah. So it's this new initiative by the city and you can go to this map online and see all these pins dropped everywhere. And if you click on a pin, it'll say like, I was verbally or verbally harassed or, you know, groped or like yelled at or something. Um, there are pins everywhere.
00:25:10
Speaker
So it's a digital map where people can say where they feel unsafe, essentially. Yeah, basically. So it's like safe city. Let's crowdsource where people feel unsafe. And it's really, it's everywhere. I live in what I think is like a pretty good, like walkable neighborhood. Like there are all kinds of people who live there.
00:25:29
Speaker
and their pins all over and I've lived there now for nine years almost and you know I'm like oh I didn't know like oh one block for me there's this but of course it is just contributing to this mindset that like the person who attacks you is like jumping out of the bushes or whatever because we know that you know especially for women like probably the least safe place for a lot of women is at home and so like what drop pins in homes then like this is really really
00:25:57
Speaker
not helpful as promoting a narrative that actually just makes people distrust their neighborhoods. It makes people not want to be in public spaces. Like if there are lots of pins in a park, then we're reducing the commons, right? Like we are reducing like people's desire to like be together in public space. And so I really do think that it
00:26:19
Speaker
Like this is the thing I've been saying in this whole podcast, but like it takes us back to this individualism, this way that like, you know, just stay at home, like don't, oh, did you know that like this street had like three gropings? It's like, did you know that like you go to a party or a bar or something and they're like 20, like it's really not like. We live in a society. We live in a society. I mean, I have a couple issues with this too. I mean, it's, it's kind of like easily gameable. I don't understand how this data is going to be useful in any context. Like,
00:26:48
Speaker
Um, so like, I struggle with the, like, how anyone is going to glean anything useful from this. I also think that it's like kind of clearly designed for and by white people. Like who has the, who has the like time to participate in this, who is going to be like ZOMG? There was like, there was a person in the park late at night. Like, like who is going to actually drop a pin because of that?
00:27:09
Speaker
You know what it made me think of is the proliferation of white women, memes of Permit Patty and Barbecue Becky. On the phone. On the phone, like, oh, did you know that there was some, like, melanated folks, like, having a barbecue in the park or something like that? Because of course, like, yeah, it is going to, like, there are going to be more pins where, like, more brown people live, so.
00:27:32
Speaker
I just want to say that trolling that map is good praxis, by the way. So by all means head to Safe City YEG or just Google it and drop a pin on every police station in Edmonton, every cop hangout that you're aware of, every like UCP office that you can find really anywhere. I mean, at the end of the day, troll that map. I feel very unsafe in a UCP office.
00:27:52
Speaker
Okay, the next sundry I want to bring up is a podcast, another podcast, podcast talking about podcasts.
Critique of Slumtown Podcast
00:28:00
Speaker
It's Slumtown. Slumtown is a five part one off podcast from CBC that's kind of currently making the media rounds. And it's like, it's essentially a podcast about drug houses and a handful of neighborhoods and kind of like inner city Edmonton.
00:28:14
Speaker
Uh, it's made by this woman named Elizabeth Hames and it kind of definitely apes the like Sarah Koenig serial S-town, this American life feel and sound. It sounds great. The production values are super solid, but man, uh, I regret to inform you that like slum town is canceled. Um, here is the social media blurb.
00:28:35
Speaker
A battle is brewing at Edmonton's inner city. Neighbours are terrified. Fights, overdoses, and crimes spill out from problem houses, many owned by a small group of people connected by one notorious landlord. CBC's Elizabeth Hames investigates.
00:28:49
Speaker
Oh boy. So I listened to the whole thing. Okay, first of all, I think that I have a lot of sympathy for the people she interviews. And I think that it actually, just from the title down, it reproduces all of the, you know, conditions, the kind of culture, the perspectives,
00:29:12
Speaker
that lead to problems like this where people are just made to be othered, they are just not part of society, we need to do something about them. So first of all, I think exactly that it was called Slumtown to be like S-town, but S-town was about an individual who had like mental illness and stuff who called his town a shit town, S-town.
00:29:32
Speaker
This podcast is just calling this part of Edmonton's slum town. It is saying that this is the slum town. It's not the bougie neighborhoods where CBC listeners are listening to this podcast and the quote unquote safety of their homes. So that was, I think, just the most basic first problem.
00:29:55
Speaker
And it also has this whole like villain, instead of the villain just being like housing policy and healthcare policy, the villain is this individual landlord with like multiple like non Anglo names. And he's just the one who's like preying upon people when
00:30:12
Speaker
This is not about one bad dude who's a bad landlord. Well, I mean, I think, yeah, it's obviously has a lot of problems and I don't want to diminish the fact that like the people who Elizabeth speaks to, especially in the first episode, which is kind of totally centered around homeowners, aren't facing kind of legitimate problems and disorder problems in their neighborhood.
00:30:34
Speaker
the people, um, are totally othered and they, they, they become essentially like zombies. They become this faceless abstraction, this like problem to solve as opposed. And I don't think she gets anyone on tape who is like actually a homeless person. I think she talked to maybe someone who was formerly a homeless or the sister of the family of someone who died, like,
00:30:54
Speaker
Like, it's really lacking in the actual narrative of the like, why are you in a situation where you have to deal with this shitty landlord and these unsafe houses?
00:31:05
Speaker
There's just no examination of that, right? It's very good at kind of like teasing out dramatic painful moments from the people who are experiencing dramatic painful moments, but there's no systemic or like analysis of like, yes, landlords typically tend to be bad. Landlords who own homes that are in bad repair in inner city neighbors tend to be even worse. There's no systemic analysis of the police, the real estate agents, the lawyers, the mortgage brokers, the municipal government that allows all these things.
00:31:34
Speaker
to kind of continue and to propagate, right? It's just like, who can I complain to? Who can these people complain to to solve this problem? Yeah, and so we did have a story of a victim and she was the most perfect victim because she was a young, beautiful white woman and her sister talks about it and it is heartbreaking, of course, on this individual personal level, it's heartbreaking for the sister.
00:31:59
Speaker
She was killed in a domestic violence situation, and that problem has not been teased out from this. It still becomes like, oh, she lived in one of Carmen Pervez, or Shaw, he has different names, one of his buildings, and she lived in another building, and then she was killed by her intimate partner.
00:32:22
Speaker
You know, I think it's deflecting a lot of structural issues into individual, it's painting like good victims, you know, what if the victim was just like, that they interviewed was just like, you know, racialized person you overdosed, right? Like that would have been a different kind of a story. And so this is not at all to diminish that story itself, but to say that there are certain choices that are made by producers and editors, right? And that those choices reflect a perspective that they're trying to put forth.
00:32:51
Speaker
It's like, come on. I mean, you're, you're producing all this great tape, but there's no, you're not asking like, why, why do we have a housing crisis? Like what, what are the things that the city and province are saying that they're doing on this file? What are they doing and why aren't they working? Like there's no, if this had been a podcast where it had been accountability, like going to the city, going to the province, going to whomever and being like, this is clearly a problem. What are you doing to fix it? But it's just, instead it's, it's highly produced kind of like paying theater, right?
00:33:19
Speaker
Yeah, and Alberta is one of the richest jurisdictions on the planet and we have a lot of space. And so the question really is like, why, if those two things are true, do we have so many problems? Um, like people, why are so many people suffering? Yeah. Like we as a society have the technology to build houses. This is not a technical technological fix. Um, it is really a question of like, Oh, can we build houses for the people who need them? And like, clearly we can't.
00:33:44
Speaker
Um, you know, this is part of a larger thing that I've been kind of digging into, which is the city of Edmonton actually has a kind of tragically small amount of publicly, publicly owned housing. And at the end of the day, the city of Edmonton could only kind of control the publicly owned housing that it has. And they have kind of all these great plans and they work with all these other partners, but kind of like, I kind of want to continue this conversation because, uh, maybe on a later podcast or on some other podcasts, because you know, publicly owned housing, like is the solution here. Yeah.
00:34:12
Speaker
Okay. Uh, our final bit, our final piece, Shama, I'm going to spring this on you cold because, uh, I think it is going to be more hilarious if we spring it on you
Rodeo Narratives and Cultural Reflections
00:34:22
Speaker
cold. Okay. The headline Corbella colon rodeo animals love what they do and wouldn't exist otherwise. Okay.
00:34:32
Speaker
So this is an article by Alicia Corvella of the Calgary Herald, of course, if you're not familiar with our kind of worst journalist in Alberta. Not Rick Bell? I... Why choose? Why choose? Yeah, kind of they're 1A, 1B, 1A. Okay. You've read the piece, I assume you'd kind of commented on it. I can bring it up for you, but it's... I'm going to read you some quotes from this piece, which are just incredible. Okay.
00:34:59
Speaker
JP Veach, a stockbroker and former bull rider says that while he can't prove it, he's pretty sure that rodeo bulls love what they do. I would suggest that they are beyond happy to buck rather than appear on a platter or being a steer, says Veach, who was married to Rona Ambrose, former federal conservative party leader and cabinet minister and Stephen Harper's government. Okay. Okay. Okay. So this is an article extensively about chuck wagon horses. Um,
00:35:27
Speaker
This is, this is in response to the like six Chuck wagon horses that have died. The Calgary stamp he just ended six Chuck wagon horses died. The Chuck wagon horses are mentioned in the title. Chuck wagon horses are mentioned kind of throughout the piece. And there's this total non sequitur quote with this JP peach guy.
00:35:42
Speaker
Okay, I want to try to bring this, bring the whole podcast together in my response to this. I really do think that they're creating their own reality. So when we say that the left and the right have different epistemologies, different ways of interpreting the world and world views, this idea that somebody can say with a straight enough face that it makes it into an article in the media that
00:36:10
Speaker
no no no no they really like it like the yeah these animals in the rodeo like yeah some of them die but it's okay because they have a really good time and like don't you see how rambunctious they are whatever they're really good like they're creating their own reality so
00:36:26
Speaker
So there's a second part to this quote that I saved. Okay. So he says he's talking about, he's pretty sure that rodeo bulls love what they do. Uh, here it is. These animals are treated like top athletes. Said Veach adding anything making the sport safer is a good thing, but the criticism reminds him of the refrains heard about Alberta's energy sector. So people, people not liking Chuck Wagenhorse is dying as a blood sacrifice to the oil and gas industry at the Calgary Stampede.
00:36:52
Speaker
That is apparently the same as the campaign to landlock Uppers Oil conspiracy theory. Well, let's bring us back to the way that the right is really good at creating community and solidarity, and it doesn't have to be based on anything real. It doesn't have to be based on the reality or unreality of these animals liking it or any of the other stuff that we're talking about. They're just saying, we're creating this reality where these things are true.
00:37:18
Speaker
So this is the way that, you know, Alberta mythology is like oil and rodeo basically. They're like it is this weird marriage of like the frontier and kind of global capital and yeah.
00:37:34
Speaker
So this is the kind of, in the final kind of few paragraphs from this, from Corbella's article. Benz Miller, who is a truck wagon driver who's kind of been quoted throughout the article, he says his horses are loved and pampered, receiving massage therapy, chiropractic care, and injured horses are sent to a horse spa to soak in salt water ice baths.
00:37:54
Speaker
Most rodeo events mimic real life on a ranch. Roping calves, wrestling steers, taming horses. It's an important part of how the West was won and how many agricultural families still live. Yeah. How the West was won. How the West was won. Who did we win it from? Yeah. Yeah. Uh, this is peak Alberta, this article.
00:38:16
Speaker
I think this piece is Peak Alberta. I don't think you can get any more Alberta than Leisha Corbella talking about the rodeo. But life, as they say, is either a daring adventure or nothing at all. For many rodeo animals, it would literally be nothing at all. I mean,
00:38:33
Speaker
It's an incredible piece of twisted logic to be like, actually, the animals love it. But the whole conservative movement, this nationalistic movement is all about twisting reality to fit a narrative.
00:38:49
Speaker
Okay. I think ending, ending on that note, I think is a great place to, to leave it.
Closing Remarks and Listener Engagement
00:38:55
Speaker
Um, you know, thank you so much Shama for, for being here with me and kind of being the very first guest co-host of the progress report. Um, you know, if you, if, if you are listening to this podcast, please take a minute to give us a five star review, of course, and leave a blurb. It really helps us kind of be more findable by more people on iTunes or Google play.
00:39:11
Speaker
Please send any kind of like comments, critiques, messages of support or hate to either my Twitter account, which is at Duncan Kinney, or my email, which is DuncanK at ProgressAberta.ca. Shama, where can people find you online? What's the best place for people to get ahold of you? Well, I'm on Twitter, so it's at FritzLasha, F-R-I-T-Z-L-E-C-H-A-T, and that's probably the best place. Or you can check out Pyresinstock.ca as well.
00:39:38
Speaker
Fantastic. Okay, well, for Shama and I at The Progress Report. Goodbye! Bye!