Calgary Minute: Turnstile System, Jobless Numbers, and More Emergency Calls

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

This Week In Calgary:

• There will be a Combined Meeting of Council on Tuesday at 9:30 am. Items on the consent agenda include a monitoring report on the Resilient Roofing Rebate Program, a Q2 update on Indigenous Relations, and a funding update for the Tomorrow’s Chinatown program.
  
  
• The Infrastructure and Planning Committee will meet on Thursday at 9:30 am but no agenda has been posted for this meeting yet. The Green Line Board will meet on Friday from 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm. No agenda has been posted for this meeting yet, either.
  
  
• Calgarians are expressing ongoing safety concerns with CTrain stations and Councillor Dan McLean wants to explore a turnstile system in an effort to curb social disorder. This type of closed system would limit access to transit platforms to fare-paying customers. McLean plans to ask about costs and implementation at the City Council meeting on Tuesday.

Last Week In Calgary:

• NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman was on hand for the Flames’ first playoff game, and he took the opportunity to make another pitch for a new arena. He suggested that, without a new facility, Calgary may not be able to host any more large NHL events. Surely there's a solution that doesn't involve hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money though? Every other sport seems to have worked this out.
  
  
• Statistics Canada released April’s Labour Force Survey. Despite Alberta’s unemployment rate declining, Calgary has the highest jobless rate in Canada. Alberta's unemployment rate for the month was the lowest it has been since 2015, and while the unemployment rate fell slightly in Calgary, it still sits at 7.2%. The overall rate of joblessness in Alberta is 5.9%.
  
  
• The dire state of Calgary EMS had Alberta Health Services bringing in additional staff and ambulances, deploying supervisors, and offering overtime to current staff in an effort to deal with the high volume of 911 calls. On Tuesday night, there was a backlog of 40 calls for EMS to respond to and reports of firefighters waiting more than two hours at a scene for an ambulance to arrive to transport patients to hospital.

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