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Make this election a climate election
116 Plays3 years ago
What should you be looking for in your municipal candidates this year? Alison McIntosh and Carter Gorzitza from Climate Justice Edmonton join us to explain what you should be demanding from the local politicians at your door this fall.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:00:12
Speaker
friends and enemies, welcome to The Progress Report. I am your host, Duncan Kinney, recording today here in Amiskwitchi, Wisconsin, otherwise known as Edmonton, Alberta, here in Treaty 6 territory, on the banks of the Kasis-Kasawanissippi, or the North Saskatchewan River.
Municipal Election Toolkit Overview
00:00:26
Speaker
Joining us today to discuss their 2021 municipal election toolkit are Allison McIntosh and Carter Gorzitsa from Climate Justice Edmonton. Allison and Carter, welcome to the pod. Thanks for having us, Duncan. Long time, first time.
00:00:41
Speaker
Yeah, thanks for having us. It is very cool. I'm very glad that this document exists and that people are working on this issue. This is obviously very important. And municipal elections, they are interesting exercises in democracy. But before we kind of get into debating electoralism, why don't we get into why Climate Justice Edmonton developed this document? Why did you build it? What is your goal here?
00:01:10
Speaker
We want climate to be an unavoidable election issue.
Engaging Councillors and Communities in Climate Conversations
00:01:15
Speaker
Climate is the backdrop for everything that we do all the time. And one thing that we've noticed up to this point is a lot of candidates aren't really engaging with it and we want to change that situation. And right now on the council, we have some counselors who tend to vote in ways that kind of support our
00:01:39
Speaker
our goals, but we don't have anyone in council that's truly accountable to climate voters, the climate movement, and people that are
00:01:49
Speaker
you know, demanding structural change in that area.
Toolkit's Role in Grassroots Mobilization
00:01:52
Speaker
So hopefully by having this municipal campaign that's focused on getting people to talk about these issues with their candidates and with their broader networks, and then engaging with candidates directly, we'll be able to change that situation and have climate accountable city councillors, you know, starting this fall.
00:02:15
Speaker
Awesome. And I will say I have jumped ahead a little bit. So climate justice Edmonton, by the time this podcast is released, we'll have released a document, the 21 municipal election. What's your climate plan conversation toolkit? And that is what we are going over today. It will be in the show notes. I have read through it. Um, it's very close to being finalized and it is, um,
00:02:39
Speaker
Absolutely necessary. And I suppose my question to either of you, feel free to answer this, is like, what is the plan for this document beyond just kind of releasing a conversation
Complexity of Upcoming Elections and Climate Accountability
00:02:50
Speaker
toolkit? Like, how are you going to kind of turn this into more than just a conversation starter?
00:02:59
Speaker
Yeah, I think like a lot of this is I think us like many other grassroots organizations right now with COVID-19 and the pandemic, there was a
00:03:11
Speaker
decreasing capacity, sorry if this is loud, I can't tell, but a decreasing capacity and I think this is just this document's a bit of a kickstart to our municipal work to get some people activated and kind of get people back kind of paying attention to what we're doing and then hopefully we can beyond this going into double election September and October I guess for the municipal just getting people mobilized and engaging so we can start to form somewhat of a
00:03:40
Speaker
a cohesive, I guess, discussion on what's going on in politics when it comes to climate justice specifically. Oh, it's not just a double election. It is a triple, maybe even a quadruple election if you count the referendums. And you're running for Senate. Yes, exactly. I'm, of course, speaking of the least important but most hilarious election that's happening in Alberta over the next few months, the Senate elections.
Municipal Elections and Climate Action
00:04:05
Speaker
But we're not here to talk about that.
00:04:08
Speaker
Yeah, we're not here to talk about that bullshit. Though as a senator, I plan to work closely to develop, you know, to work closely with Climate Justice Edmonton to do climate shit. In the very unlikely event I ever become a senator. We look forward to having a man in the Senate then. No, I look forward to making a what to ask your senator when they knock on your door. I think my door has never been knocked by a senator. So maybe you could be the first.
00:04:35
Speaker
They never have to knock on a door. That's the beauty of being a senator. I'm 38 right now. Again, in the very unlikely event I am appointed to the Senate, I will be employed as a senator for 37 years until I either die or until I'm retired at 75. Basically, it's like being a union boss then. Yes, union boss. How you can deal for 30 plus years.
00:05:01
Speaker
You get a staff and a very high salary and you don't have to do very much. It's great. But let's get back to the actual election. I mean, it's funny to think about the power of the city of Edmonton. Like the municipal governments are like these kind of creatures of the provinces.
00:05:20
Speaker
you are electing a counselor and a mayor that has essentially at least a hand on the wheel of what is essentially like a large publicly owned corporation,
Electing Climate Justice Advocates
00:05:32
Speaker
right? Like the city of Edmonton employs like tens of thousands of people. It does a lot of things, like it provides a lot of services and it is ostensibly kind of democratically controlled and doesn't always have to operate under the logic of capitalism though quite often.
00:05:48
Speaker
Don't operate under the logic of capitalism. Um, why don't we kind of talk about the, the, why you're focusing on the Edmonton municipal election and like, and even just like why it's important to have elected officials who kind of share your values and who you can hold accountable, you know, when you start making demands. Obviously climate action has the biggest impact at the biggest scales and that's not the municipal scale.
00:06:17
Speaker
um, that's, you know, being able to make structural changes at the federal level, international agreements, things like that, and actually following through on them. But the city has a huge role to play in, um, those, the foundations of, you know, to, not to sound too, uh, utopian, but a better society, right? Um, everything from having, uh, urban infrastructure that is welcoming to migrants,
00:06:44
Speaker
to having places that people can go on a hot day that are cool or free from smoke, to having a built environment that's responsive to the
Cities Leading Climate and Social Change
00:06:59
Speaker
to the changing climate and to the needs of a decarbonized future. All of that is stuff that the city can and should be working on. And to this point, the city of Edmonton has numerous documents about decarbonization, energy transition, making changes in infrastructure and transit, but they are not, I would argue, not moving fast enough.
00:07:29
Speaker
in the current city council the current formation of city council of course there's some cranks climate cranks and you know that that can be a force that you know holds holds back some action so.
00:07:45
Speaker
I think the importance in the municipal scale is really building that community consensus that these are important issues. These need to be dealt with and that we can do it in a way that's really grounded in justice, right? We're not just talking about decarbonization, but we're really talking about addressing the foundations of inequality and oppression and changing them so that we overall get a society that is better equipped to handle the climate emergency, but also better equipped to handle
Climate Justice vs. Advocacy Groups
00:08:15
Speaker
the social and economic consequences of ongoing climate injustice. And I think to add to Alison's point, I think we often talk about climate justice and
00:08:29
Speaker
the I guess differences between maybe a climate justice organization and a climate advocacy group. And I think a lot of that just like really shines through in municipal level politics. Like when we talk about like migrant justice is climate justice and like why those two things are so deeply interconnected. It's like the like municipal governments like making like safe cities is like so fundamental to I guess like acting on the climate injustices that we talk about. And I think that's like very it's very relevant to both I guess like yeah,
00:08:59
Speaker
the acting part, the very on the ground work as well as like the vision. So I think like cities especially have like a really important role in influencing people's like imagined utopia or vision of what they want in the future and kind of work as little testing grounds for like progressive ideas. And a visionary city council is something that hopefully can inspire people to be acting and that acting and voting and thinking and kind of more of a visionary and climate justice lens.
Toolkit Applicability to Other Cities
00:09:29
Speaker
Yeah, like climate change is this world spanning global problem that we all have to act on. But like municipal government is the like shit we actually see, right? It's like riding the bus, it's picking up the garbage, it's like the buildings they own. And they have the resources to actually like go out and do shit, right? And so it is.
00:09:47
Speaker
It's funny. And while we are focusing on Edmonton in the context of this podcast, I don't think that anything we're talking about is specific, super specific to Edmonton. The document that you have created could be ported over to any city with very little change.
00:10:03
Speaker
And so like, even if you don't live in Edmonton and you're listening to this podcast, what has been created here, definitely just like slap a different name on it when it comes to your city and go nuts because it is all the things that are being considered and the way to ask your potential elected officials about these issues.
Leadership Turnover and Climate Accountability
00:10:24
Speaker
It's going to matter in your community just as much as it matters in Edmonton. And I don't want to spend too much time on this because obviously I just spent all this time talking about how
00:10:33
Speaker
This is not a necessarily Edmonton specific document and that you should listen to this podcast anyways, but the specific Edmonton context is important in the context of just how much turnover we're going to see on council. We're going to have a new mayor. We're going to have a majority new council. And the funny thing about municipal politics is right after you get elected, you're essentially thrown into like a two and a half month budgeting process, which is quite intense, which is largely driven by like, you know, senior civil servants who are very experienced and who kind of have their own agenda and their own goals.
00:11:02
Speaker
And unless you know what you're doing, unless you're being held accountable by people like Climate Justice Edmonton or like people who got you elected who care about these issues, it's quite easy to get swept up in the bullshit, right? This is why we want climate champions, right? That's clear, right? And, you know, an interesting thing in Edmonton this year as well is the redistricting that happened with the, not just with changing the names of the wards, but also changing their geography. So, I think there's going to be some
00:11:31
Speaker
new formations and some places that I think were maybe flipping perhaps more conservative leaning or more left leaning before that might kind of change a little. And it also makes the races for council themselves maybe a little bit more interesting than they would in the past with so few incumbents coming back and even some of the incumbents going into writings that they weren't representing before.
Platform Planks: Infrastructure to Land Back
00:12:00
Speaker
Um, I'm thinking of Tony Katarina and Odaemon, for example, being kind of a, kind of a weird choice and he might not win. Right. So, um, I think there's going to be a lot of changes and also a lot of new, uh, new fights to be had.
00:12:17
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And I think, I think that's the, that's the like extent of the Edmonton specific conversation that I want to have, because I think that the concepts that are being brought up in this document are great. And that's, and let's get into it, right? Like the first section of your conversation toolkit is called build better. Um, and what, what, what do you want to talk about? Jim, whoever wants to go first, what do you want to talk about from this section first? Uh, I'll actually let you go Allison. I think you know more about this.
00:12:46
Speaker
Sure. So, um, I guess actually it might be helpful to do kind of an overview, you know, our, our logic behind the toolkit itself. Um, we decided to have, there's so many different things that, uh, we could focus on and there isn't room for everything, especially when you want to be able to have these pretty accessible conversations with your friends and your family and your,
00:13:12
Speaker
candidates. So by no means is this document complete or everything that a climate justice approach would want to change in the city or in other cities too. But we've got these five platform planks. One is Build Better, which is kind of our infrastructure, built environment type points.
00:13:34
Speaker
Two is livable city, which is focused on, um, kind of quality of life and making sure that everyone has what they need to thrive in the city. Um, three is free transit building on, uh, unparalleled work that free transit Edmonton has done over the past couple of years to really build a, I think an achievable, um, movement towards getting fair, free, high quality public transit.
Retrofitting for Climate Goals and Renters' Justice
00:14:01
Speaker
And then four and five, which are defund the police and land back are our attempts to really uplift the voices of work that's been done over the past several years in Edmonton to draw attention to the harms caused by police in our community and also the need to restore land and sovereignty to indigenous people while we live and work here on stolen land.
00:14:27
Speaker
Um, those are areas where we really see ourselves as just amplifying, um, action that's already been done and, um, the research and the advocacy of so many, so many, you know, femmes and, um, people of color, uh, indigenous people before, uh, us. So. Yeah. Um, with build better and focus on infrastructure and the built environment, you know, one thing that I always go back to is that in order to, if Edmonton was going to meet.
00:14:57
Speaker
the Paris kind of standard for ourselves, 100% of the built environment would need to be retrofit or rebuilt by 2050. And that is just astounding to think about, right? And when we're approaching that, right now the city has lots of
00:15:16
Speaker
uh, different kinds of rebates, different kinds of programs for especially homeowners, but, um, some commercial properties too, to, uh, retrofit to change up their energy mix, but not in a really piecemeal manner that on their own don't get much done. And so what we're focusing on here are things like whole home retrofits or whole building retrofits, which takes the approach that when we're on this path towards, uh,
00:15:44
Speaker
you know, switching up how our built environment consumes energy and uses energy, that we're only touching each building once, right? We're getting the most bang for our buck in one go and having a way that when we're approaching that kind of problem, we're getting like high quality results right away.
Intersection of Retrofitting and Renters' Rights
00:16:09
Speaker
And I think to add in like with the justice component of it too, like
00:16:13
Speaker
so many of these things like if I think if we were a group like I won't name a specific group if we were just a climate advocacy group just like our main and only goal was to get to the paris climate accord standard or whatever like I think it's really easy to be talking just about renovations but then I think what this uh what this guide begins to touch on is the growing and has always existed but growing phenomenon of renovations and the potentials that like like
00:16:41
Speaker
renovating all these buildings and the need to do that comes with like very, a very clear need for renters like protection in the city of Edmonton as well just as well in Alberta where it's like, exhaustingly non existent, renters rights at all. So I think really thinking about it ties so deeply into like rights to housing and renters rights and these other, I guess like more long standing fights that have been occurring that
00:17:07
Speaker
are really foundation if we are going to be ever approaching a place where we are doing these large-scale renos. I have a sister-in-law who lives in Halifax, and rent control was an actual issue in the provincial election out there that the NDP ran on. Never have I ever heard any politician in Alberta run on rent control.
00:17:29
Speaker
Well, you won't because they're landlords. But the majority of people that live in Canada live in a place where there is some modicum of rent control and some are better than others.
00:17:42
Speaker
I'm thinking specifically about BC where there is technically rent control, but it's only tied to each renter's tenancy so that when you leave a place, they can change the rent by as much as they want before the next person comes in. But in Alberta, a landlord can change your rent by as much as they see fit every year. Whenever the fuck they want, yeah. Exactly. Landlords use that to
00:18:09
Speaker
um, discriminate against tenants that they just don't like for a variety of reasons to basically legally evict them. Um, and you know, especially when we're talking about retrofits in the built environment, a lot of tenants, especially people that rent houses or rent walk-ups are the ones paying their utilities bills. And so there's very little incentive for landlords to take climate action, but there's also basically no route for a tenant to take climate action themselves.
Landlords' Reluctance and Tenant Burden
00:18:36
Speaker
And so as electricity prices and, uh,
00:18:39
Speaker
you know, energy prices soar, that's falling on the back of people that are more likely to be a low income.
00:18:48
Speaker
You heard it here first folks, landlords are bad and we don't like them. Preach. I think you make an interesting point though about how we need this massive, essentially like building construction program, these deep energy retrofits on every single building that exists. But then you also don't want to let landlords use that when and if that gets off the ground to just, you know, essentially just get rid of people and throw them out on the street.
00:19:16
Speaker
Right. And, you know, relegating lower income people to lower quality housing, which already happens in, you know, every, every possible way, but especially as retrofits happen, you know, those buildings are going to be more desirable, um, higher quality built to withstand, uh, more harsher and, um, you know, it's going to continue to be poor people that are left out to dry unless city council, the mayor take action on finding ways that tenants can actually.
Critique of Privatization in Public Services
00:19:47
Speaker
take climate action and have a measure of protection against the vagaries of capital and financialized real estate, right?
00:20:00
Speaker
Exactly. Uh, this one I felt was a bit of a stretch for the infrastructure built environment section, but I obviously fully support it because just because of how much fuckery the city of Edmonton has done on this recently, but like asking counselors to oppose P threes and like contracting out privatization. Um, you know, we've seen city of Edmonton just fire a hundred transit cleaners, like in a secret meeting, like in camera, um, you know, people who they had hired
00:20:26
Speaker
during COVID, and then they're just like, actually, we're going to fire you. We're going to replace you with privatized workers. Just like absolute scumbag shit. And like, you know, they want to privatize out the services at the golf courses that they own, which should also just be like sold. Let's be real. Like why do we have municipally owned golf courses? Edmonton has three. Calgary has like eight or nine. Like Calgary has an absurd amount of publicly owned golf courses.
00:20:55
Speaker
But I think, I think the guide makes an excellent point around like talking to your counselor about like, yeah, like this happens all the fucking time. Administration loves privatizing and contracting out things that are just done by city staff to private companies. And, um, you talk about why it's so important to be harsh on your, uh, to be, to regulate on this with regards to your elected officials or potential elected officials.
00:21:21
Speaker
Yeah, I think you make a good point in it being a stretch to put in that section. I think we kind of struggle because it's almost applicable to almost all sections because of how, to such a high degree, the city of Edmonton contracts everything out and anything that they are doing, they're looking for ways to contract out in a just, I guess, like slow descendants into neoliberalism to the fullest extent, but I think
Public Services as Public Goods
00:21:49
Speaker
A big thing, and this ties into a lot of our free transit messaging, is that there needs to be a revival of understanding public services as public services and not understanding them as public expenses or publicly owned businesses that need to be functioning at so and so levels of profit.
00:22:11
Speaker
addictions and needs to profit and the ways that we like kind of understand every public service as a business and not as a program that is funded by the government and often is relying upon funding from higher levels of government like being very real about it like it isn't functioning off of the
00:22:29
Speaker
the profit that we make. So I think just like beginning to push back on that in every sense allows us to build like stronger workforces of more unionized workers that have security in their jobs and have jobs placed within their city and who are working for.
Hostile Architecture and Urban Inclusivity
00:22:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:45
Speaker
governments rather than these private corporations that are often consulting companies that are run by previous city of Edmonton workers who left it to go make more money doing the same work for more. 50-50 of the city of Edmonton's garbage pickup has been contracted up to private companies, and Michael Walters just put forward a motion to have more of that done by private companies. Real scumbag shit. You do not love to see it.
00:23:11
Speaker
Next section I wanted to chat about was your livable city section. And the first thing I'm going to toss out there is hostile architecture. There's a demand in there to end an end to hostile architecture. And this is, you know, the things that the bars across the benches so that people can't sleep on the spikes so that people can't sit down. Why did you prioritize? Why did you have that in the guide?
00:23:39
Speaker
way that particularly downtown infrastructure in Edmonton looks, it's and the built environment in downtown Edmonton, for example, is currently set up is pretty unwelcoming to even someone who's just out for a stroll and wants to, you know, take a break, drink a coffee outside, whatever it is. But the reality is that
00:24:04
Speaker
the built environment downtown looks like that to punish poor people for being poor, right? It's there to make sure that people that live outside or don't have another place to go understand that they're not welcome here. And really, as much as taking the spikes off of retaining walls and things like that are definitely going to make the city
00:24:34
Speaker
maybe more accessible or more comfortable for people that don't have many other places to go, it's for everyone.
Affordable Housing and Community Support
00:24:45
Speaker
And I think that making a move towards having a city that's genuinely welcoming really does help address some of the things that we have now with like kind of a hollowed out downtown that doesn't
00:25:00
Speaker
where there's not much going on at certain hours or where people don't think like, oh, downtown Edmonton is a place I could just go to hang out, for example. Just about downtown, there's hostile architecture everywhere, but I think that's where we see the highest concentration of it. But really, a lot of other things that the city could do to have
00:25:21
Speaker
public spaces that are really for the whole public include things like having public washrooms and water fountains that are more accessible, having places, you know, downtown often kind of feels like a wind tunnel just in the way that it's aligned. So finding places where people can be sheltered from the sun and the wind and really feel more comfortable as they're going about their day, whether they're someone who, you know,
00:25:50
Speaker
is living rough or whether they're someone who isn't is, you know, the, I think the ending hostile architecture is a clear example of how a city councilor or a mayoral candidate could demonstrate that they are committed to, you know, a just city or a truly accessible city.
00:26:15
Speaker
I mean, hostile architecture is something that is also can be fun to do, fun to address via direct action. Allen keys and sockets and wrenches and angle grinders are all interesting tools that can be used to make architecture less hostile. So just an FYI and the like. And some other kinds of padding also can be part of that strategy.
00:26:40
Speaker
And yeah, I mean, we've seen the heat waves that have washed across this country or gone across this country, like setting up public water fountains, setting up public washrooms. Like this stuff is not difficult. The infrastructure exists. You just have to fucking do it, you know? It's not hard. The other thing that happened that falls into the just fucking do it vein is like build affordable housing, right? You've got a question here where it's like,
00:27:08
Speaker
Will you champion affordable housing proposals in your ward as well as across the city? And it's like, this is not some difficult problem to solve homelessness, right? If you have unhoused people, you build fucking houses and you put them in there, you put those folks in there.
00:27:24
Speaker
But, uh, our city specifically, I mean, but I imagine most cities like to pretend that, oh, they couldn't possibly do it all by themselves and all. They need seven levels of other government to fucking step in and fund it. And it's like, I know how many units you have and control and it's fucking nothing. It's like the city of Edmonton controls like 700 affordable housing units. It's like, there's never been sufficient investment at any level of government.
00:27:54
Speaker
to the best of my knowledge anywhere in Canada, in affordable housing and in, you know, housing solutions to poverty and homelessness. But in Edmonton, what we've seen over the past 10 plus years are a lot of really exciting ideas and projects. Like I'm thinking of the Riverbend Anglican Church, for example, trying to do what they can, a small amount to have
00:28:20
Speaker
more affordable housing units and then it, you know, falling on the doldrums of nimbyism and community opposition. And so I think what we're asking for is for there to be people that are willing to champion that cause. And when it comes to affordable housing, but also for people that are living rough and encampments, um, really reframing that conversation to be that people
Structural Barriers in Housing Policy
00:28:48
Speaker
are who are living in tough situations, aren't nuisances, but they're your neighbors. And I think there's so many different ways that you can approach different kinds of housing, whether that's affordable housing, supportive housing, temporary housing, or bridge housing, whatever you want to call it, whether that's buying hotels, whether that's building purpose-built housing,
00:29:18
Speaker
But looking at that kind of, I guess, some of those structural issues again with thinking about the lack of protections for renters and actually people that live in public housing in Alberta aren't covered by the Residential Tendencies Act, for example. And so they have even less recourse.
00:29:41
Speaker
when it comes to injustices at home. And then also the gap between affordable housing where perhaps part of your income is actually going towards rent, but then market rents being far higher than when you move out of affordable housing, for example. There's just a lot of structural ways that the people who are low income, people who are
00:30:11
Speaker
you know, but getting housed after a period of houselessness get screwed over by the way that we
Reallocating Police Funds for Housing
00:30:19
Speaker
can do it. And so what we're asking here is for, you know, just a, I think a relatively simple thing and championing affordable housing proposals, but hopefully we'll get towards a more structural, structural change that can make sure that everyone who needs us to live has a place to live.
00:30:42
Speaker
Um, you know, maybe that, maybe that's a stretch goal for when we dismantle capital, but, uh, in, in the short term, at least let's make sure that we have more places that people can go. And that when, for example, the city, uh, and then EPS forcibly disbanded Peko Waywin last year with nowhere for the people that were living there to go.
00:31:07
Speaker
Um, maybe we get to a place in the future where hopefully it's not EPS forcibly disbanding an encampment, but that people who live in encampments could, could actually get bridged into a warm and safe housing situation that's appropriate for their needs or wants.
Harm Reduction Approaches to Homelessness
00:31:29
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, if we laid off every cop who slashed a tent or woke up some unhoused person on a bench sleeping who wasn't bothering anyone and diverted their salaries to building affordable, whole decommodified housing, homelessness would be solved in less than five years. I don't think everyone realizes how much cops make. A first year constable starts at 85 grand a year.
00:31:53
Speaker
After five years, they're more, they're a plus over a hundred grand and there's like another 50,000 a year in benefits they get.
00:32:00
Speaker
Sounds nice. More houses. Yeah, it would be a lovely job. And with a high school, with all you need is a high school diploma, right? It is absolutely wild. The encampment stuff is important too, right? We've seen an approach by the city to encampments that has been incredibly aggressive, that is police and essentially led by police and by law enforcement. How should we be talking to our politicians about
00:32:30
Speaker
this harm reduction approach to encampments.
Integrating Harm Reduction in Community Support
00:32:34
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, we got to this, um, part of the platform through talking with our, with people that we know in allied organizations that do frontline work. Um, basically a harm reduction approach to encampments is like a harm reduction approach to other, uh, potentially risky things, right? Like, um, harm reduction has this backyard for people that use drugs, um, where,
00:33:00
Speaker
it recognizes that a lot of the harm comes from things like blood-borne illnesses rather than, you know, strictly drug use. And similarly, like the issue with encampments is that it's wrong that people should, that people are, you know, it's morally wrong that people who, that people have to live rough, live in tents and encampments when we live in a place that is so wealthy that everyone
00:33:30
Speaker
could get housed if there was any kind of political will for that to happen. But a lot of the risks are things like poor sanitation and frostbite. And the harm comes from the harm is structural, right? It's not that the people are bad, right? And so a harm reduction approach to encampments
00:33:57
Speaker
would improve living connections and hopefully build connections to community to services supports. Um, where, you know, we're not doing forced evictions where there's no long-term supports available, where we are allowing people to live in, you know, some semblance of community. Um, even if it's, you know, not by no means do we want people to have to live outside.
00:34:23
Speaker
And it takes police and by-law enforcement out of encampments because it recognizes that they're not like a crime. It's a symptom of failing society or a failure of society rather than it being a crime or an inherent inherently bad thing, right?
00:34:47
Speaker
Yeah, and I think the concept of harm reduction is also in the document and is important just when it comes to access to harm reduction for people who use drugs, right?
City Advocacy for Safe Drug Policies
00:34:59
Speaker
While it is under the purview of the province, the city does have levers it can pull.
00:35:05
Speaker
you know, a variety when it comes to police bylaw, when it comes to setting up facilities. And these, you know, OPS facilities operate in this kind of legal gray zone as well, overdose prevention societies or overdose prevention sites, I should say. I was very hard to see. They're under huge threat from the province. They absolutely need to be protected. And there needs to be a recognition, I think, on council. And to a certain extent, I actually think that there is right now. But in the newly formed council,
00:35:35
Speaker
Um, that, uh, you know, there's, there's going to be an on the ongoing need for harm reduction sites and services, including, um, supervised consumption sites. Um, but also that some of the, some of the ongoing issues, um, with harm reduction can also be, uh, addressed with like.
00:35:59
Speaker
expanded measures, for example, like safe supply, um, which we talk about a little in the document. And that's not something that the city can change themselves overnight. Right. That's a health Canada issue, for example, but I mean, they could have, they could just start buying up drugs and testing it. Like, what are they going to get? Are they going to get arrested? I don't know. It's it's, you see that action in BC, right? Where drug users like banded together and tested drugs, bought high quality drugs, test them, made sure they were good and just handed them out for free on a street corner. Right.
00:36:29
Speaker
Yeah, there's compounding pharmacy in BC that makes prescription quality hydromorphone, for example, and prescription-grade cocaine even, and then makes it available to people that use drugs,
Advocating Free Public Transit
00:36:48
Speaker
right? This, again, looking at, like, what are the harms of drug use? Well, we have a tainted drug supply. There's four people that die in Alberta from overdoses, and so,
00:37:00
Speaker
The city can at minimum advocate higher levels of government advocate at higher level levels of government for for decriminalizing and legalizing safe supply. So that we have fewer people dying right you know the city or the province talks a big game about recovery they're focused so much on.
00:37:21
Speaker
saying, well, we're building these beds. We're helping people get better, but you can't get better if you're dead. And again, so many people are dying every day in our city and in the province because we have such an ongoing failure on the part of the province to really take the drug poisoning crisis seriously.
00:37:50
Speaker
There's another section of the report I want to get into and apparently it's close to your heart, Carter, and that is the free transit section. What are we talking about when we're talking about free transit and why is it a key demand? When we're talking about free transit, I guess as a preface to this is off kind of the lots of work that's gone into this through free transit Edmonton, as well as collaborating with like groups kind of across the country as well and as well in other places that are fighting for free transit in their municipalities. But fundamentally,
00:38:19
Speaker
Free transit is the concept, the idea that transit should be treated as a public service and a public service that is accessible to all people, and that the right to mobility within a city, the right to access different parts of the city, the right to access services that exist throughout the city, is a right that all people living in Edmonton should have.
00:38:43
Speaker
I guess like kind of our biggest thing with free transit is just moving away from a model the city currently has which is functions highly off of like
Economic and Social Benefits of Free Transit
00:38:55
Speaker
lots of grants and money and support from both provincial and federal government, but also uses profit made from fares paid by transit users to kind of balance off the transit system. But we've seen that like it really doesn't equal up to being a generous amount of the money used at about 30%, give or take, depending on the year, definitely isn't going to be that this last year. And I think it just really
00:39:22
Speaker
Free Transit is a good example of treating public services like public services, like a public good, and is kind of something that is like unifying in that I don't actually think
00:39:35
Speaker
It's a very appealable idea. I have rarely met anyone. It's actually more often the technocratic, left-center people who are most critical of it and most, just your average person that you're talking to and you say, this would be good climate action, this makes a lot of sense.
00:39:55
Speaker
We already are spending quite a lot of money on it. So making it a public good and not focusing on making that money back inherently would be a good idea. Like people rarely argue and they often see it as quite a logical decision. I think there is a lot of pushback because I do think
00:40:11
Speaker
with progressive politicians on city council and some of the ones incoming. You have this very like technocratic and empirical based way of understanding like offering public services, which is just kind of this like ongoing idea that if we have enough data, we can do things properly and make the most amount of money by like adding in small fares and a smart fare. And I think the smart fare work and the smart fare card are kind of the embodiment I guess of this.
00:40:39
Speaker
this way that I think a lot of city transit planning has been kind of functioning on this technocratic idea. And transit is this kind of like simple and elegant idea to be like, look, it's a public service. If you want people to use it, make it free.
Challenges in Transit Funding and Visionary Leadership
00:40:59
Speaker
And like the money, the cost involved with collecting fares and like the hassle involved for drivers whose job it is to not collect money, that your job is to drive a freaking bus, like the amount of conflict and assaults that we see on drivers over fares that would be avoided in this thing. The amount of the less money we'd have to spend on like transit security guards and like transit by-law people enforcing whether you had your fare or not.
00:41:30
Speaker
It would be, it's a brilliant idea. I love free transit as a kind of like game changer in a, you know, just as a way to view public services and a way to look at your city. And there's this fundamental contradiction at the heart of like fares, right? It's like, oh, we need to keep, the fares need to provide some target of the total transit budget, right? This is what you hear from transit planners and from civil servants and bureaucrats who are involved in the transit system.
00:41:55
Speaker
And it's like, like, does it? Like, like if, if we only got 20% of our fares, if we only got 20% of our budget from fares, as opposed to 50%, do we just like get rid of the transit system?
00:42:08
Speaker
You know what I mean? It doesn't really track if you think about it too hard. And it is, unfortunately, the city folks, the ETS, the city administration folks who are responsible for transit don't seem to be big fans of free transit. I don't know. Maybe you're closer to the issue than I am.
00:42:30
Speaker
But at least the transit unions, the bus driver union seems to be in favor of it. What's the vibe on the city, from the city of Edmonton specifically when it comes to the concept of free transit?
00:42:42
Speaker
Yeah, I think something got it there just before I answer this question. I think talking about this like the profit it makes and if we made 20%, what does that mean? I think that really gets at it where these are public services fundamentally. It would be atrocious if the city didn't make enough profits.
Universal Access to Transit over Means Testing
00:42:58
Speaker
They just turned off all the LRTs and buses.
00:43:02
Speaker
When you think of this last year and the kind of so first of all, like, yeah, like pandemic and like asking people to stay inside or not to use public transit unless they need to be using it. And then like thinking of the ongoing effects of climate change, like the heat wave and all of these things that there is times that we don't need to be we don't need to be influencing our.
00:43:22
Speaker
our constituencies, I guess, and the citizens of our... You need to go pay for transit so that we can make our lines hit and make sure we're in the green this year. We shouldn't have to be encouraging people to be doing something that could be potentially unsafe at that time. And we'd have a far more resilient transit system if we are not dependent upon a certain amount of people paying a certain amount of money. And I think the city of Edmonton
00:43:51
Speaker
I guess a response that we often get, which I don't think is wrong. It's nice that the city has a lot of support programs for people who are in low income categories and can apply and get free transit. And it is much better than a lot of other places for that. But I think what that kind of reaction is really reflective of is this kind of bureaucratic technocratic way of looking at
00:44:17
Speaker
Um, public services that fundamentally like a races, like people who like can't go through that means testing, which is the people who need
Free Transit and Systemic Climate Justice Changes
00:44:26
Speaker
it the most. So there's, I don't think there's even much of an argument that means testing is ineffective. Like it is ineffective. And we know that. And I think most of your accounts know that, but in order to, I think live in your beautiful empirical world where things are answered.
00:44:41
Speaker
with numbers exclusively means testing is kind of like needed, I guess, to make those numbers hit. But speaking of like general like acceptance or feelings around the concept of free transit, I definitely think there has been pushback. Like I think even like it would be false to say that like every, like the unions are fully on board or fully not. There has been support in times, support is wavered at different times. When transit was free for a little bit during COVID, there definitely was like
00:45:10
Speaker
if there was union members who decided they didn't want free transit and were bus drivers who didn't like it because it encouraged too many people to get on the bus and loiter on the bus, which they perceived as making it. I'm sure there was interactions that people had that were harmful to them and harmful to the other people involved, but I think those fundamentally get at
00:45:33
Speaker
The issue there is not transit. The issue there is that there isn't safe places for people to be during a pandemic. And the issue there is there isn't a livable city. And I think that is where these things really tie together. Like often we can, free transit is an easy one, but when we're talking about affordable housing or safe supply and harm reduction, it can be easy to imagine if a listener is listening, thinking like, what, this is a climate plan. Like I'm kind of confused on where we're going, but I think
00:45:58
Speaker
When you zoom out and you begin to look at the bigger picture of, yeah, like safe supply and harm reduction, fundamentally intertwined with affordable housing and fundamentally intertwined with free transit and mobility and all of these things are going to be deeply affected by the changes that we need to make. And I think the fights that we're fighting right now isn't even that
Leveraging Grants for Transit Funding
00:46:20
Speaker
these
00:46:20
Speaker
Like we know these changes need to happen. And I would say that even the center knows that these changes need to happen. It's about if we're going to be protecting people along the way, which I think is kind of the important part. Carter, I'm wondering if you could also talk about why transit also needs to be good. Like for the people that keep saying, well, if we don't collect any fares, we're just going to have fewer lines or less service and that kind of stuff.
00:46:48
Speaker
yeah yeah awesome thank you that's a good prompt because i think it's been something i was raging about for a bit because i think we even felt that a lot like people were would really push back and say like that yeah they're like we don't want transit to be free because it's not good enough yet like we need to expand service first and like we're just going to cut the legs off transit if we do this but
00:47:07
Speaker
I actually think when, especially bureaucrats are left of center and center, city councilors are saying stuff like this, they are appealing to the same kinds of logic that Mike Nichol is employing, which are fundamentally lies. When Mike Nichol goes on his Twitter and is like, the city of Edmonton is wasting $150 million, blah, blah, blah on this transit expansion. Wouldn't you rather that go?
00:47:29
Speaker
like into your, that's your tax dollars. And like, yeah, like I'm sure some of it maybe is your tax dollars, but it's not your municipal tax dollars, it's a federal grant. And that money is literally just like sitting there waiting for us to use it. So if you're annoyed about your tax dollars, you can get mad at the federal government, but us as citizens of Edmonton, like need to be taking advantage of those grants and those, the funding and the long-term funding that might come through. And like, I think that's like something that, yeah, it's very easy to weirdly tie this 30% fair profit
00:47:59
Speaker
to expanding transit when that 30% like not even profit I guess 30% payback is not as minuscule to the cost of building good functional transit and that is stuff that comes from much higher levels of government so yeah we need a visionary city council that wants to have expanded transit and doesn't see those things as inherently intertwined because
00:48:22
Speaker
Yeah, we're never gonna get anywhere if we especially like imagining pre this valley line like we just sat in this weird place where we're like We need to make as much money off transit before it gets better like it's a impossible scenario when we have a single line through the city and like disparate bus service Yeah, I think I think pushing back on this idea or this like yeah this idea that we need to wait for it to get better in order for it to be free It's just like
Reallocating Police Budgets for Community Services
00:48:47
Speaker
It's false. Higher ridership will give us more grants, and we honestly just need City Council that's going to fight and work hard to get those grants and bureaucrats. Yeah, Free Transit. It's good, folks. And Free Transit Edmonton, if you're not a part of it, if you haven't gone to the website, there's lots of good content and ideas there.
00:49:05
Speaker
You know, second to last year, we have an issue that is near and dear to our heart here at the progress report, which we have podcasted on many times. Uh, that is defunding the police, you know, diverting money from policing to literally anything else that will make our city a better place to live. And when I, I've had the opportunity to speak to a couple kind of city councilor candidates just out and about, uh, in the world. And it's the first thing I bring up.
00:49:32
Speaker
Because again, the very first thing that happens when a counselor gets elected is they get thrown into a budget process that takes like two months and the largest single line item in their budget is policing.
00:49:44
Speaker
And if we really want to do anything about all of the stuff that is talked about in this document, if we want to do free transit, we want to do affordable housing. Uh, if we want to build a livable city, like there's a very easy pot of money, which to acquire the funding to do all of those things that are going to make our city better. And it's, it's police.
Police Accountability and Climate Justice
00:50:07
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, fundamentally what a lot, a lot of what we've been talking about and what we've been building into this platform are, is demanding a city council that's accountable, accountable to regular people, account of poor folks, people of color, migrants, renters, and the EPS is not
00:50:30
Speaker
an accountable body within the city. You know, they, they get to keep a lot of grits. Um, they, they don't have to be very transparent about their activities. Uh, what stuff costs, how much money, all this kind of stuff. Um, meanwhile, in this very neoliberal logic that the rest of the city operates in, you know, every dollar has to be accounted for. Um, and you know, certain counselors, um,
00:51:00
Speaker
you know, nitpick on, you know, every single dollar that goes to parks or recreation or housing or whatever it is. And that same level of scrutiny is not applied to the police. And it kind of can't be because they have very little obligation to the public in that matter. And yet, theoretically, they are supposed to be in charge of keeping us safe. But of course, we know that's not true. I think, you know, defunding the police
00:51:30
Speaker
has a lot of climate implications. Of course, with this platform item for us, you know, we see this as a mandate that's been given to both of us in 2020, but of course before that too. But in the last year, a lot of people have become a lot, especially white people have become a lot more aware of the racism that's inherent in policing.
00:51:58
Speaker
And I think we got a really clear call to action in 2020 about defunding the police. And yet I got doorknocked by a prominent candidate in my ward, whose doorknockers didn't even know where their candidate stood on defund the police. This is someone who's ostensibly progressive. And again, who has signs up all around the neighborhood, but didn't have an answer to this relatively, I think, basic question. And so.
00:52:27
Speaker
you know, even though I think we've all been given this clear mandate to push to defund the police and to disarm and dismantle police forces, um, that's not something that, uh, many people running for council or for mayor in Edmonton have taken up as a core issue for them. And that's a real problem. And when it comes to climate, um, we see, you know, all of the,
00:52:57
Speaker
the current and future. For example, climate refugees that are coming to rich countries like Canada, rich cities like Edmonton, people who are migrant workers in agriculture, and people of color, indigenous people who are disproportionately targeted by police
Environmental and Social Costs of Police Operations
00:53:27
Speaker
on the backdrop again of like stolen land and of environmental harms that are happening here and around the world. And so
00:53:38
Speaker
you know, maybe this is a little higher level or conceptual or whatever, but defunding the police truly is climate action, regardless of where that money goes. Yeah, especially when we ground the police helicopter and it stops burning all of that fuel. 160 liters of fuel per hour. I looked it up, but not on the Edmonton. The Edmonton police don't tell us that or how much it costs for them to operate it per hour. You have to go and look up the model on like,
00:54:07
Speaker
aviation purchasing websites. Um, so find that out, but it, you know, there's, there's huge climate costs that too, not to mention that they're used to surveil. Um, the Edmonton police helicopter has a very creepy Twitter account where they post pictures from the sky, um, of the things that they're seeing. And it's supposed to be fun community engagement, but I think if you have a disposition towards not really trusting the police, it's actually incredibly creepy.
00:54:36
Speaker
Um, and so, you know, if they've got time to take pictures of the Wolf Willow ice rink and how it's getting, you know, flooded in the winter and hockey's coming soon or something like that, maybe they don't have to be in the sky all the time or at all.
Edmonton's Role in Land Back Initiatives
00:54:53
Speaker
Yeah, fuck the police helicopter. Ground that shit. Last but definitely not least is the land back section of the report. And, you know, this is acknowledging the fact that Edmonton, but I mean, all of Canada, but especially Edmonton, when you look at Edmonton's history is built on stolen land. Fuck Frank Oliver. And, you know, Edmonton Municipal Council is not like the place
00:55:21
Speaker
where like substantial land back stuff is going to happen, but some land back stuff can happen. And there are, you know, recommendations from, you know, the missing and murdered indigenous women and girls report, as well as the truth and reconciliation commission that are specifically targeted at municipal governments.
00:55:40
Speaker
You know, we've seen, specifically around policing for a large, largely. You know, we've also seen the city of Edmonton take some steps forwards with regards to urban reserves. And an idea I really like that's in the report is giving Indigenous-led organizations or entities the first priority when selling city land and facilities. City's a huge land owner.
00:56:06
Speaker
And, you know, like, there's no reason why those that land should just be like sold for a dollar, you know.
00:56:19
Speaker
Do you want to take this one or I can? Oh yeah, definitely. I think fundamentally too with this part of our, I think our action plan, or not even our action plan, but this document generally, is it is not done and there's so much work to be done and I think as climate justice Edmonton organizers, there's a ton of work for us to be doing to be grounding ourselves in defunding the police and racial justice and indigenous justice.
00:56:47
Speaker
Yeah, I think there's like some fundamental positions that counselors can be taking, which are, I guess, showing of their true colors, which they can commit to that would lead to some of the calls from the Youth and Reconciliation Commission, as well as the murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls.
00:57:08
Speaker
calls to action. One of them that I think is quite simple and easy for me to focus on as someone less familiar with, I guess, the entire all the calls to action, but especially on free prior informed consent, I think there's
Indigenous Consent in Infrastructure Projects
00:57:25
Speaker
the hot energy topic for progressive city councilors right now is hydrogen and I think it was like after this like really weird thing where the differential NDP were like pipelines aren't as cool anymore but we still need renewable energy and pipelines how can we do this and they're like we need to make hydrogen hydrogen pipelines um and there has been like a lack of discussion on
00:57:36
Speaker
a
00:57:47
Speaker
what the hydrogen production is going to look like. Is it going to be blue hydrogen, which still requires the burning of fossil fuels in order to actually be functioning and can increase our levels of natural gas and coal being burned in the province? And blue hydrogen emits as much as natural gas based on new research.
00:58:12
Speaker
So yeah, there's like a lot of stuff here where it's like, I think there's like very, we can like get really into these like new infrastructure projects, but like also at the same time, like we're, if we're going to be like a city that now our progressive candidates are running on like pipelines, these like large.
00:58:26
Speaker
large infrastructure projects which span a lot of land and are not things that are known to be particularly unified in acceptance and opinion. We have to start grappling with that. I think just talking about these large infrastructure projects that span outside of our city boundaries and the support that we have internally for those projects,
00:58:48
Speaker
It doesn't fully align, I'm sure. Yeah, maybe there is more to be said there and maybe we'll have thought about this to a higher degree, but I think, yeah, there's just a lot of grounding that I think city councilor or mayoral candidate that is like holding these values, I guess, like as their foundation would change a lot of the dialogue on this. And I think honestly, most people would.
00:59:16
Speaker
obviously appreciate it because it is very ungrounded, I guess. Yeah. And then we've seen the city try and move forward with this urban reserve strategy and like the devil really isn't the details when it comes to that. You know, there are urban reserve strategies that like ghouls like Tom Flanagan support and there are urban reserve strategies and ways of enacting that that are actually good.
00:59:41
Speaker
you know, the resource that is mentioned in your report, which I also just want to double down and re recommend is the Yellowhead Institute's red paper, which is essentially a like,
Urban Reserves and Indigenous Frameworks
00:59:53
Speaker
all about how Land Back can be operationalized and has an extremely important document, which I would recommend who are interested in what Land Back, like the actual mechanics and how it would work, how it could work, would read that document. And happy to link to that in the show notes. We're also very happy to link to the Climate Justice Edmonton's Climate Conversation Toolkit. I'm so glad that we were able to get both of you on
01:00:21
Speaker
Any kind of closing thoughts or words before we wrap up the pod? Just that people that are interested in getting involved can drop us a line on our email, which is climatejustice Edmonton at gmail.com. And I'm sure there'll be time for our pluggables at the end, but following along and getting involved, the climate movement needs everyone.
01:00:49
Speaker
Even if you haven't been involved up to this point, there's no time like the present to join in. And, you know, if you're not in Edmonton, there are climate justice oriented movements everywhere, you know, and that's a fantastic thing and there's places to get involved.
01:01:09
Speaker
The first thing that you can do, though, is whether using this toolkit or the work that other organizations have done, just starting to have these conversations with people in your life, with your candidate, but also with friends and family to grow more of a climate justice perspective as the norm and as the kind of the default when we're talking about the environment. Again, rather than approaches that don't center
01:01:38
Speaker
you know, we're addressing harms that have been done, you know, in the past.
Community Involvement in Climate Justice
01:01:43
Speaker
Yeah, and I think if there's any folks with like other groups like who are doing work on these topics, or if you don't want to be doing work on these topics in the municipal election, but you could offer some help, like I think we would love to sit down and talk with you. And yeah, I'm really excited to build out our municipal strategy and get pushing people because
01:02:09
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. This toolkit is just the first step amongst many in the lead up towards the October election. So definitely stay tuned and get involved. Yeah. And revolution eventually. Exactly. Always marching towards revolution. Thanks again for coming on. How can people find you on the internet, follow along and support either your personal work or the work of Climate Justice Edmonton? Give us the links.
01:02:35
Speaker
Yeah, you can follow climate justice Edmonton on Instagram at climate justice Edmonton on Twitter at CJ Edmonton. Our website is www.climatejusticeedmonton.com. And on the website, you can subscribe to our newsletter. We send semi-regular updates about our campaigns and different things that people can do to be part of our movement and allied movements here and across so-called Canada.
01:03:03
Speaker
Um, you can also follow free transit Edmonton at free ends at YEG that's on Twitter and Instagram. They got the same one. Um, Carter, do you have a personal plugables? No, no, I don't. Um, maybe one day I'll have a Twitter account, but right now I don't use it. It's better that way. It's better than great. You're pure than the rest of us. You can, uh, follow me on Twitter at Mac and Allie. That's M C I N underscore a Li.
01:03:32
Speaker
Mm hmm. And folks, if you like this podcast and you want to keep hearing more podcasts like this, there's I'll just keep it brief. There's one thing you can do that is the most important thing you can do. And that is become a patron. Start kicking a little bit of money our way every month. Five, ten, fifteen dollars, whatever you can afford. The five hundred and so folks who do do that
01:03:51
Speaker
are absolutely key to keeping this independent media project going. It's very simple if you want to do this. There's a link in your show notes. You can also go to theprogressreport.ca slash patrons, put in your credit card and contribute. Jim and I would really, really appreciate it.
Supporting Independent Media
01:04:05
Speaker
Also, you have any notes, thoughts or comments, things you think I need to hear.
01:04:09
Speaker
things you think I screwed up on. I'm very easy to reach. I'm on Twitter at Duncan Kinney, and you can reach me by email at DuncanK at ProgressAlberta.ca. Thanks again to our guests, Carter and Allison. Thanks to CosmicFabU Communist for our amazing theme. Thank you for listening, and goodbye.