Calgary Minute: Green Line, Ward Boundaries, and Failed Economic Theories

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

This Week In Calgary:

• Today is the day Council will be voting to finalize the South East portion of the Green Line. We will be live-tweeting the Green Line portion of the meeting, so make sure you're following us on Twitter. If you haven't done so already, you should also sign our petition calling for a referendum of all Calgarians on the future of the project.
  
  
• At the same meeting, Council will also vote to set new ward boundaries for next year's Council election. You may remember from previous editions of Calgary Minute that the process has been politicized this year. Prior to the 2017 election, Council appointed an independent citizens commission to determine the boundaries but when Council didn't like the result, they threw out the commission's recommendations and created their own. This time, they skipped the independent process entirely and will just do it themselves.
  
  
• On Wednesday there will be a Standing Policy Committee on Utilities and Corporate Services meeting, much of which will be held in secret as the committee will be reviewing a number of real estate transactions. On Thursday there is a meeting of the Calgary Planning Commission, which will review a series of land use amendments.

Last Week In Calgary:

• There were a lot of notable articles about the Green Line in Calgary newspapers last week. Danielle Smith explained how Calgary's LRT expansion has taken a turn to fantasy, Rick Bell covered the demand for a plebiscite vote, and Peter McCaffrey explained how the city's manipulative tactics have not changed since their failed Olympic plebiscite. If you have the time, all three are worth a read.
  
  
• Calgary's State of Emergency was lifted as of 12:01 a.m. on June 12th. We've learned significantly more about the virus during this three-month lockdown, and it's now time to start restoring normalcy.
  
  
• Mayor Nenshi thinks that he can spend Calgary out of a recession because "we're all Keynesians in a situation like this." We disagree - Keynes was wrong. Wasteful government spending doesn't magically become productive when the economy gets bad. Heck, even if you agree with Keynes - his economic theory would never suggest raising taxes in a downturn, something our Mayor can't seem to help but do.

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