The Pulse
June 9, 2022

An amendment giving bylaw and peace officers more authority to remove people from the transit system for loitering or using drugs is the latest action in a series of efforts aimed at curtailing crime and perceived threats to safety downtown through law enforcement.

The city has also funded several outreach programs over the past two years to help people who are struggling with houselessness, mental illness, and drug abuse get resources and connections to further care. These programs join the patchwork of city services, charities, and volunteer-run organizations in Edmonton dedicated to dealing with these crises.

The city calls this a "multilayered approach", but it's all inadequate to the task at hand, suggested Robert Miller of the Harm Reduction Society (HARES), a volunteer-run mutual aid organization that works to meet the needs of downtown community members who are missed by the city's programs.

"There are a lot of finer points to what lacks in the city response, but the biggest is simply that these services are over capacity and under-resourced," he said of the lack of adequate housing supports that creates a need for street-level outreach. "Outreach teams help to keep people alive, but they are ultimately still left out in the cold by policy failures at every level of government."

These responses will only be effective to a certain extent until the underlying issues are adequately addressed, Miller said.

"We live in a society where housing is a commodity, which must be denied to some in order to create value for others; our society is built on Indigenous genocide, and refuses to reconcile with this fact, let alone take steps to heal that damage; we live in a society where the moral value of a human being is largely decided by the colour of their skin and their capacity to produce value, and those deemed undesirable or unprofitable are made illegal."

On the eve of the June 9 deadline set by Justice Minister Tyler Shandro to see Edmonton's public safety plan for downtown and in the transit system, city council voted to amend the bylaw governing the conduct of transit passengers, prohibiting people from remaining on transit property for any reason other than using transit and banning the visible use of drugs.

Councillors who opposed the amendment worried that the rule will be applied inequitably, with racialized and Indigenous people bearing the brunt of enforcement. This was why council removed the loitering provision in the bylaw last summer, said Coun. Aaron Paquette of Ward Dene.

"It simply did not work and it was not equitable," he said. "It was obviously very heavily weighted toward visible minorities as the enforcement target."

But the majority of councillors agreed with city manager Andre Corbould that the amendments were needed to help transit riders feel safe.

• Chief Dale McFee's salary this year is $340,000, the Edmonton Police Commission revealed on June 8 in response to a request that it be made public. The salary surpasses those of the Calgary and Winnipeg police chiefs but is lower than those in Toronto and Ottawa. In a statement, the commission says it will implement a policy of publicizing the chief's salary annually for the sake of transparency. It also released a copy of McFee's contract.
• The Drug Overdose Response System (DORS), a smartphone app designed to automatically contact emergency services if someone overdoses while alone, is now available across the province. According to Mike Ellis, the associate minister for mental health, the app has drawn 440 registered users since it launched a year ago. Meanwhile, 31 organizations and Coun. Michael Janz signed an open letter on June 7 criticizing the province's recovery-oriented approach to the drug poisoning crisis and the lack of available treatment options or information about existing options.
• The city has launched a campaign called Side by Side to improve safety for scooter and bicycle users and raise awareness of the safe passing distance bylaw, which came into effect in September 2021. An accompanying YouTube video and PDF guide are also available. Bike trips in Edmonton have "nearly doubled" in the past 10 years, according to safe mobility director Jessica Lamarre.
• Edmonton police are inviting residents and business owners to register existing external-facing security cameras with the Public Camera Registry, a voluntary program that will allow police to request footage to aid in investigations. The tool is expected to be in officers' hands by the end of 2022. In a release, Sgt. Blake Schols emphasized the registry is not a surveillance system, will not give EPS access to cameras, and will allow participants to opt out at any time.
• Imagine Monet, an immersive exhibition pairing panoramic projections of the impressionist master's work with classical music, is freshly installed at the Edmonton Expo Centre and will run until Sept. 2. A sister production called Imagine Van Gogh sold over 100,000 tickets when it passed through Edmonton last summer.
• Thomas Costigan, a defensive lineman with the Edmonton Elks, has received the Joey Moss Award. Named for the late dressing room attendant, the award is given every year to an Elks player who embodies Moss's positivity and perseverance.
• CBC News spoke to Heather MacKenzie, a solar expert who designed her own net-zero home in Blatchford, about how homeowners can reduce their carbon footprint.

In Episode 17 of Bloom, Faaiza Ramji tells her new co-host, Karen Unland, about her experience at Inventures, the Alberta Innovates conference that took place in Calgary from June 1 to 3.

It was a long-awaited chance for the entrepreneurial and investor community to get together in real life again after the pandemic pushed the conference online for a couple of years. Ramji attended as the founder of Field Notes, and she says the "spontaneity of meeting and connecting and helping" was something she missed.

"So much of what we do in the startup game is based on how we connect with each other," she says.

"You can do that to some degree on Zoom — I think we've all become very good at it," she adds, but it's nothing like being in the same room, sharing a meal, reacting to an interesting speaker, or seeing someone out of the corner of your eye and making a connection.

Faaiza and Unland also discuss the strong showing by Nanostics and Fly and Fetch at a couple of pitch competitions associated with the event, and they look ahead to some other opportunities to mingle in person, namely Startup TNT's Investment Summit V and C-Tribe x Tech.

In our sponsor spot, Dawn Newton of Accelerate Edmonton continues her conversation with Taproot co-founder Mack Male about Alberta Catalyzer, a provincial pre-accelerator program for Alberta founders.

Bloom is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and everywhere else you get your podcasts.