The Great Airport Debate
As most of you probably know, there is an ongoing debate in our fair city – the likes of which none of us have probably seen in our lifetime. I speak of the debate over the closure of the Edmonton City Centre Airport. On July 8, 2009, Edmonton City Council voted (Nine to three, I believe) to initiate a phased closure of the downtown airport. As per that decision, one of the two runways was permanently closed following the Indy this summer. The other runway will be closed within a number of years, to facilitate the relocation of businesses at the City Centre Airport (henceforth referred to as ECCA) to the Edmonton International Airport, or to a general aviation airport, Villeneuve, near St. Albert.
During the initial council debates, there was a strong push against the closure, largely from the likes of the Alberta Enterprise Group, the Kingsway Business Association, and various aviation industries at the airport. Following council’s vote, things seemed to quiet down, save for a lawsuit or two that didn’t go anywhere. That was until we witnessed the rise of Envision Edmonton, a “grassroots” organization led by a variety of businessmen from around the province, with the goal of forcing the issue to a plebiscite on the October 18th civic election.
Unfortunately, Edmonton happens to be filled with Albertans – roadblocks to progress. So now they have the signatures to force a plebiscite, supposedly. Never mind that the law states that petitions for plebiscites must be filed no more than sixty days after the council decision. Also, I’m not a huge fan of direct democracy. I far prefer our representative form of government. With direct democracy, important decisions can be left up to an unfortunately usually ignorant populace, creating a form of mob rule, as seen with Proposition 8 in California in 2008, where voters voted to ban same-sex marriage in the state. That said, the plebiscite will most likely go ahead this fall, so there’s no use crying over spilt milk.
I will outline the reasons that Envision Edmonton (henceforth referred to as EE) wants to keep ECCA open, and I will debunk those reasons. I will also intersperse my personal positions where appropriate. If you haven’t figured out my position yet, this is it – completely close ECCA, and develop it into a cutting-edge, world-class, high-density, mixed-use, green community.
One of EE’s core reasons to keep ECCA open is the medevac issue. This would have to do with medical flights transferring patients from Northern Alberta to the city. EE argues that if the airport is lost, people will DIE. They make that very clear – City Council will have blood on its hands. But let’s look at some facts:
· The majority of critical medical cases are handled by STARS Air Ambulance, which doesn’t require the ECCA – it can land right on top of the University of Alberta Hospital or the Royal Alexandra Hospital. According to the Edmonton Regional Airports Authority, victims of a car accident in Grande Prairie were flown directly by STARS to the U of A, with no stop at the ECCA.
· The majority of fixed-wing medevacs are not time-sensitive. That is, the extra 10-15 minutes of transport time to the hospital will not kill them. These flights will land at the Edmonton International Airport, where patients can be easily transferred by ground ambulance to city hospitals. If, in fact, there is a critical, emergency situation, new helicopter facilities are being built at the International. Critical patients can be transferred directly from the fixed-wing aircraft to a helicopter and flown to a hospital. This would add an estimated six minutes of travel time. Additionally, it should be noted that in nearly every case critical patients are stabilized before the flight. AN extra six minutes will not kill them.
· The healthcare and well-being of Northern Albertans is NOT the responsibility of the City of Edmonton. If Northerners are concerned about reduced access to medical care due to the ECCA closure, they should talk to the Province of Alberta, which has that responsibility. Interestingly, Alberta Health Services has stated that the closure of ECCA will not affect medevacs in anyway.
Another argument that EE likes to use is that the closure of ECCA will cripple Edmonton business. They claim that not only will a driver of economic output be crushed, but business will prefer the convenience of Calgary. They claim that Northern Alberta business will use Calgary rather than Edmonton since they will lose their central airport. To be honest, some of the one thousand people that work at the airport might lose their jobs in the relocation of the businesses based there. However, in comparison to the economic growth the city as a whole will experience, those job losses will not really matter in the long run. Here are some reasons:
· Currently, ECCA produces only $18 million in tax revenue – to all three levels of government. A new development could net as much as $900 million in tax revenues.
· Would business move to Calgary if ECCA was closed? I can’t see any factual basis for that argument. Calgary International Airport is not particularly close to their downtown, about a 20 minute drive. EIA is further, but I don’t think an extra 10-20 minutes is going to prompt a business to move to Calgary.
· One could argue that ECCA is actual responsible for moving business to Calgary. Before the 1995 plebiscite, there was scheduled service from ECCA to various destinations – Vancouver, Regina, but mostly Calgary. In 1995, Edmontonians voted to consolidate scheduled service to EIA. Despite what EE and Danielle Smith of the Wildrose Alliance say, this consolidation was not a failure. EIA has more direct destinations than ever before, is one of the fastest growing airports in the world, and is currently expanding. I’d say that counts as some fairly significant economic growth – though ECCA supporters tend to reject the successes of EIA, instead calling it the Leduc International Airport and claiming that economic growth from the International only benefits Leduc County. Sure.
· In 1995, Shaw Communications famously moved its corporate headquarters from Edmonton to Calgary. J.R. Shaw’s departing words? “Get one airport”.
· I have read some arguments from pro-ECCA people that EIA is so far away that you may as well drive to Calgary. That really confused me – 40 minutes versus three hours. Of course that is comparable. Some people must have a very poor sense of time.
· The argument that ECCA is the gateway to the north is a moot point. I believe that about 78% of passenger flights from the North already fly to the International, not ECCA. EIA has more northern destinations, and of ECCA’s allotted passenger seats, only 7.8% are actually used.
· Of ECCA’s 80,000 aircraft movements, 41% landed at ECCA. That is, they flew in a circle. Another 10% landed at Edmonton area airports, such as Villeneuve or EIA. Fort McMurray is the second largest destination after ECCA itself, followed by Calgary International.
· The closure of ECCA would remove height restrictions on our downtown. This is largely why our tallest building is only 146m tall with 36 stories, while Calgary has 12 buildings taller than that.
· EE argues that other cities have ‘downtown airports’ and love them. They cite the following cities on their website – Phoenix, Boston, Atlanta, New York, Stockholm, Florence, and Rotterdam. I’m not quite sure what airports they’re looking at, to be honest. I have been to Atlanta, New York, and Florence. New York’s airports are nowhere near Manhattan. Atlanta’s airport is also a fair distance away. While Florence’s airport is close, you cannot even tell it’s there from the middle of the city. EE also cites secondary airports of Canadian cities – Calgary’s Springbank (which is way outside the city), Toronto City Centre (which doesn’t affect building height and is not particularly popular with Torontonians), Montreal’s Mirabel (closed to passengers due to distance), and Regina has Moose Jaw. I’m not sure what their argument is with those examples, since most of them are further away than Villeneuve, which will become our regional general aviation airport.
As I see it, the benefits of redeveloping the airport lands into a cutting edge community far outweigh the costs of closing it. An extremely small proportion of the metropolitan population utilizes this airport. Once redeveloped, it will be a world-renowned green community, home to 30,000 residents with ample green space and connections to public transit. As the head of a Swedish development company vying for the redevelopment contract recently said, this development opportunity is ‘huge’ in North America. Coupled with additional LRT expansion, a downtown arena, and the World’s Expo in 2017, the redevelopment of the City Centre Airport is a crucial part of turning Edmonton from a standard city into a world-class one.
Faux News
So I’m writing an article that wasn’t on my list, but I felt the need to write this one due to some recent developments.
Yesterday, Quebecor, the company that owns the trashy tabloid-like Sun newspapers, announced their intention to launch a 24 hour news network that will be told from a distinctly conservative standpoint. Sun TV News, as it will be called, aims to “banish the established “boring, smug and condescending” news networks to the sidelines with a snappy, right-wing take on current events modelled on America’s wildly successful and controversial Fox News.”
And that’s when I felt frightened.
Fox News is quite possibility one of the most destructive forces in the United States today. They constantly spout lies, half-truths, and twisted interpretations in order to strengthen the far-right radical conservative movement. This is all part of the so-called “culture war”, the growing rift between American liberals and conservatives. This increasingly vicious fight quite honestly has the potential to destabilize the United States.
And some of Canada’s far-right conservatives want to do the same thing here. Unlike the U.S, we do not have a culture war. Sure, there are liberals and conservatives, but there is no where near the vitriol that we see in the States. I fear that with the potential launch of Sun TV News, that could change.
What especially struck me about the proposed channel was that it is being led by Kory Teneycke, who until last year was Prime Minister Harper’s Communications Director. Somehow I don’t think this channel will have any trouble getting approval from the Canadian Radio and Television Commission.
There are a number of things that bother me about this channel. Firstly, it claims that is against the boring, smug attitude that they apparently see on CBC and CTV. Essentially, in-depth and intellectual reporting is something you won’t see on Sun TV News. To uneducated simpletons, the CBC is boring and condescending because its smart people discussing smart people things. Sure, these channels could perhaps find a way to appeal to those how are not particularly educated or interested in global events and politics, but that in-depth and intellectually based journalism seen on CBC and to a lesser extent CTV is absolutely crucial to our democracy. Sun TV News claims that it will go from the populist approach - which is basically a code word for anti-intellectual. I believe that this network will provide few facts with very little depth to them, and instead rely on emotion to convey their message. That is what populism is, and that is why it is dangerous, because it breeds a populace of uninformed, emotionally charged people, as seen with the Tea Party movement in the United States.
The network also claims that it will run its news segments during the day (when nobody is watching) and the opinion segments in the evening. I personally believe that a news network should not have opinion segments. They are there to report the news, with facts and unbiased analysis. It is not the responsibility of a news network to push certain opinions. People should be given the facts and left to decide for themselves. A talking head should not be on a news channel to spout his or her opinion as if it were fact. The other problem is, despite the leaders of this new channel saying that viewers will be able to tell the difference between news and opinion, it is far more complicated than that. Sure, Glenn Beck has an opinion program on Fox News. However, he represents his opinions, outright lies, and paranoid delusions as facts, and his audience is led to believe that he is telling the truth. Opinion programs are able to push ‘facts’ at people, but whenever they are criticized, they can simply hide behind the guise of being an opinion. And that’s why there should be no opinion programming on dedicated news networks.That said, there should still be reasonable debate on news networks, like the CBC’s Power and Politics, which features people from all sides of the political spectrum in cordially discussions on today’s issues. Opinion programs are emotionally charged, fact-lacking shows that lake that cordial debate.
The channel also says that it is against political correctness and has already taped Ezra Levant, the infamous hater of multiculturalism, bilingualism, and any form of modern liberalism. He’s the one who recently brought Ann Coulter to Canada. He’s also from Calgary. My concern is that, like Fox News, this network’s distain for “political correctness” is merely a code word for being a pulpit for racism and discrimination, backing the views of traditional white, Christian families against the evil “minorities” and “immigrants”.
Here’s hoping that reason prevails at the CRTC, and that our hate speech laws shut this thing down before it can get off the ground.
“New Era of Accountability”
In the wake of the sponsorship scandal in 2006, a Calgary MP by the name of Stephen Harper rode into the Prime Minister’s Office, pledging to restore the people’s trust in government through sweeping changes in accountability, outlined in a new federal accountability act. Oh, how happy we Canadians were to know that we had a Prime Minister who believed that the government should be open and accountable.
How wrong we were.
It has become apparent in the past four years of Emperor Harper’s rule that Mr. Harper doesn’t really believe in that whole accountability thing. He avoids the press like the plague, all questions asked of him in “town-hall” style debates have to be checked by his staff, and his government has been extremely lacking in releasing documents, such as documents pertaining to the Afghan detainee issue, to Parliament as required.
A few days ago, the government barred any staff from appearing before Parliamentary committees, which consist of MPs from all parties and look into various issues, including how the government is run. Well, according to Harper’s communications director, Dimitri Soudas, government staff are not accountable to Parliament.
Um, excuse me?
The employees of the government of Canada - employees of the people - are not accountable to the representatives of the people? These people are working for the people of this country. We have every right, through Parliament, to question their activities. The reasoning behind this move is that the evil Opposition is just too hard on the poor staff. How dare the opposition question the actions of government staff? That’s just not right! In all seriousness, government staff should not be exempt from public questioning because its too hard for them. These people have a responsibility to the people of Canada, as much as Harper denies that they do, and they must be accountable to Parliamentary committees. That is just how a healthy democracy should work.
Plans for the Blog
Once I return from the States, I’ve decided on some plans for this blog. Every Friday or Saturday, I’ll do a segment called “This Week in Politics”, in which I will cover the week’s events in local, provinical, federal, and international politics, with a brief commentary. For issues that require a deeper analysis, those posts will come throughout the week. As well, I’ll be posting non-political posts when I feel like it, such as movie reviews and short stories.
Dr. Palin or: How I Learned to Stop Thinking and Love the Bomb
I hate to do another entry on American politics when there are many Canadian and Albertan issues that need to be addressed, but this makes me disgusted that no one holds Fox News accountable. They are blatantly lying. There is no question, it is just a pure lie. It makes me very happy the our media has some level of integrity in this country.
Fox News’ lie is that the United States would not retaliate with nuclear weapons in response to a chemical or biological attack as part of the new Nuclear Posture Review and the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty that President Barack Obama and Russian President Dimitri Medvedev just signed.
According to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: “”If we can prove that a biological attack originated in a country that attacked us, then all bets are off.
And what the treaty itself says that “the U.S. reserves the right to make adjustments to this policy in case of biological weapons threats.”
So Fox News and its contributors are just outright lying. No one can call them on it. And they are the number one news network in America. Feeding their viewership false information to turn them against the Obama Administration.
Another thing I found interesting were comments made by Sarah Palin, “No administration in America’s history would, I think, ever have considered such a step that we just found out President Obama is supporting today. It’s kinda like getting out there on a playground, a bunch of kids, getting ready to fight, and one of the kids saying, ‘Go ahead, punch me in the face and I’m not going to retaliate. Go ahead and do what you want to with me.’”
Two things about this. One, she is comparing the use of nuclear weapons to playground fights - which is absolutely terrifying. The vast nuclear arsenals held by a handful of countries have the ability to kill hundreds of millions and destroy human civilization. And a very influential political figure compares this to children on a playground. Right.
Second thing. Palin says that no administration in American history would consider doing what Obama is doing. At the same event, she was spouting about how things would be different with Ronald Reagan, the Messiah of the American Right. Really? Hmm…Barack Obama said his dream was for a nuclear-free world. Oh, wait, so did Ronald Reagan! Obama’s treaty with the Russians states that each side will reduce their nuclear arsenal by a third. Turns out the Reagan desired the exact same thing.
I thank random chance everyday that I was born in Canada.
If anyone doubted that Glenn Beck is a paranoid and delusional lunatic, here is proof…
This Land is Your Land, a communist anthem.
Here is a Edmonton Journal article on Danielle Smith. It is terrifying. And her party is leading in the polls. A brief rundown of what Mrs. Smith believes:
Alberta should not be investing in the “knowledge economy” (basically a direct shot at anyone in post-secondary, since the knowledge economy focuses on economic activity through research and innovation) and “silly things like nanotechnology” (a direct shot at the University of Alberta, home of the National Institute of Nanotechnology). She says Alberta’s economic future lies entirely, ENTIRELY, on the oil and gas industry. Our future rests on a finite resource. I see a logical problem here.
Smith believes that social assistance should be provided by private individuals, not the government. “Individuals and non-profit groups are the first line of support for underprivileged Albertans,” Smith says. Oh, yay. I would not want to be an underprivileged Albertan under Premier Smith. While Albertans may be generous, there’s no way even the biggest of charities can provide enough money necessary for social assistance.
Smith believes in school vouchers in school choice, meaning that the government will pay for students to go to private schools. Excuse me? We have a public system funded by the government. The government is not responsible for paying private schools. If people want to go to private schools, they can. They just have to pay for it. Our tax dollars can simply not go to these for-profit institutions rather than our already struggling public system. She believes in a similar system for healthcare, which would allow private healthcare.
She truly is the Sarah Palin of the North.
Under no uncertain circumstances can we allow Danielle Smith and the Wildrose Alliance to come to power. The policies of Smith and the Party are dangerously backward and short-sighted, and are filled with thinly-veiled separatism. A Wildrose government would, in no uncertain terms, ruin this province. It would leave our impoverished out in the cold, would severely weaken our post-secondary education system and our research industry, our healthcare and public education systems, and would turn our government into a subsidiary of the oil industry (moreso than it already is). If Wildrose is still leading by the time 2012 rolls around, we have a responsibility to fight this party with everything can. We cannot allow them into power.
Thesaurus: The Most Majestic, Splendid, Impressive, Awesome, Grandiose, Magnificent Dinosaur
Thesaurus (Latin Vocabularius Expansionus) was a family of large sauropod dinosaurs that lived during the late Jurassic and early Cretaceous Periods of the Mesozoic Era. One of the largest herbivores ever discovered, Thesaurus is known for having an enormous number of similar species for each genus contained within the family.
Thesaurus was first discovered in 1904 by paleontologist Dr. Merriam Webster, in a region of the Southwestern United States known as Synonymia. Occasionally, bones of Thesaurus have also been found in the neighbouring region of Antonymia. Upon its initial discovery, the legitimacy of the find was challenged by famous dinosaur collector Robert Oxford, but he eventually conceded that “the Thesaurus is, in fact, an excellent companion to my own collection.”
Today, Thesaurus is one of the most famous dinosaurs, and is frequently cited by individuals in order to make themselves sound smarter than they appear. Thesaurus’ easily recognizable figure and placement in most school classrooms has lead to it becoming one of the most famous, eminent, celebrated, notable, popular, recognized, well-known dinosaurs.
