Calgary Minute: Election Updates, Keystone Cancelled, and E-Scooters For Everyone

Calgary Minute - Your weekly one-minute summary of Calgary politics

This Week In Calgary:

• Wednesday morning's scheduled Standing Policy Committee on Transportation and Transit meeting is cancelled. We assume the Committee needs more time to work on their communications pin after we called them out for their ridiculous claim that a 51% reduction to transit ridership represented a "slight reduction", and tried to ignore a corresponding $90 million budget shortfall. The next meeting of the Committee is currently scheduled to be held on 17th of February.
  
  
• Wednesday afternoon's Standing Policy Committee on Utilities and Corporate Services meeting will go ahead and will cover an Open-Pit Coal Mining in the Rocky Mountains Eastern Slopes Update, as well as a confidential update on a proposed lease in the East Village.
  
  
• With the 2021 election getting closer every day, we're very excited to be releasing a poll later this week on the Mayoral race that we have commissioned from an independent pollster. This poll will be only the first in a series of municipal election polls that we will be running this year to help keep you informed about the candidates. If you'd like to support the costs of our future polls, please consider making a donation - high-quality research isn't cheap!

Last Week In Calgary:

• President Joe Biden cancelled Keystone XL on his first day in office, a move that has devastating consequences for our City and hundreds of other towns directly along the right-of-way. TC Energy said in an email to employees that it will have to eliminate more than 1,000 construction jobs in the coming week.
  
  
• Two more sitting Councillors announced their decisions regarding running again. Jeff Davison has announced he will be running in Ward 6 again, which is big news because allegedly Councillor Davison has spent months exploring a Mayoral bid. Ward 8 Councillor Evan Woolley announced that he will not be seeking re-election.
  
  
• We don't normally cover letters to the editor here, but this one was too good to pass up. One reader recommended ditching the Green Line and buying every Calgarian an e-scooter instead. We know they're likely joking, but we *wish* the Green Line was that cheap. In reality, you could buy every Calgarian approximately 28 e-scooters for the cost of the Green Line!

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