Stelmach Survives Leadership Review

No surprise here, although the number is higher than expected since rumours of his impending demise were rampant following the recent upsurge in poll numbers for the neocon-like Wildrose Alliance party.

Stelmach wins 77% support for leadership while the party faithful were confronted by some 700 protesters.

Apropos.

Photo credit (for Balloon Boy Stelmach): Gavin Young, Calgary Herald
 

Quote du Jour: Alberta's Clueless Energy Minister

From Thursday's Just Answer the Damn Question! Period:

Mr. Taylor: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Geez, this is funny. Not every stakeholder is spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayers’ dollars advertising on radio, on television, and in the newspaper. The minister dodged my question yesterday when he would not state in this Assembly how much this propaganda campaign is costing. To the minister: how many taxpayer dollars are you spending on advertising on this pro Bill 50 campaign? Simple enough for you?

Mr. Knight: Well, Mr. Speaker, again, I don’t know what constitutes advertising. Apparently, he’s an expert in the field. So if he would like to send me a letter that indicates which pieces of this stuff he considers to be information for consumers and which pieces he considers to be advertising, perhaps what we could do for him then – you know, he’s the expert on advertising. He told me that yesterday. That’s fine. If he’s the expert, let him tell me which pieces are advertising and which pieces are distributing information that Albertans want.

Related debauchery:

Alberta [Government] private plane tab $383K

Is it any wonder the Cons' poll numbers are taking a nose dive?

Will Steady Eddy survive his leadership review this weekend? Highly doubtful but Cons are known to stick with losers til the bitter end so stay tuned.
 

Quote du Jour: A kick in whose head?

Plunging natural gas prices are gutting the Alberta treasury, with the once-booming province staring at a deficit of almost $7-billion, its biggest ever.

The price of natural gas has fallen by more than half this year, steadily sliding each month as a flush of new supply in the United States smashes against weak demand because of the recession.

It has been a “real kick in the head,” said Alberta Finance Minister Iris Evans, as she announced a budget update and the new deficit of $6.9-billion for 2009-2010, $2.2-billion worse than predicted in the April budget.

This province has been run by economic fools for decades. Conservative fools who keep getting elected by an ignorant public that apparently likes being kicked in the head repeatedly by finance ministers who never come through on their forecasts. Ever. And we always end up paying for it by more cuts to essential social services like health care and education.

Don't look to the Liberals or NDP to be making any breakthroughs during the next election even with a lot of grumbling aimed at Steady Eddie Stelmach. The buzz now is all about the (further) right-wing party, the Wildrose Alliance. Just what we need - our own bunch of neocons.

I'm a liberal. Get me out of here.

Update:

Next thing you know, we'll be having a garage sale too.
 

Iris Evans Cures Mental Illnesses

I kid you not:

"The huge failure of Canadians is not to educate the children properly, and then why should we be surprised when they have mental illnesses or commit dreadful crimes?" she said.

This is why Easterners think Albertans are just a bunch of dumb hicks. (Not that we don't have our fair share of those here...)

Seriously, this woman is a trained nurse. And she's a former provincial minister of Health and Wellness. I kid you not (once again). Let's hope she never worked on a mental health ward. The stoopid. It hurts.

No wonder mental health services are so poor in this province. She probably thought that handing out flash cards with multiplication tables would automagically fix patients who needed help. On the other hand, she was too fucking cheap to even manage to do that.

And don't even get me started on this crap:

To raise children "properly" one parent should stay at home while the other goes to work, Alberta's finance minister suggested Wednesday.

In a tangent at the end of a speech on Alberta's economy to the Economic Club of Canada in Toronto, Iris Evans spoke about the importance of teaching kids about finances and how those lessons can be empowering.

After struggling with finances as a mother herself, Evans said, she made it her mission to teach her own children about money. Now, as adults with their own families, her kids have topped up RRSPs, live in good houses and have good savings, Evans said.

She also said good parenting means sacrificing some income to stay at home while kids are young, as her children have done.

"They've understood perfectly well that when you're raising children, you don't both go off to work and leave them for somebody else to raise," Evans said. "This is not a statement against daycare. It's a statement about their belief in the importance of raising children properly."

Iris Evans: Canada's Dr Laura. (And just as self-righteously annoying.)

Update:

Evans apologizes (but still stands by her cure for mental illnesses, apparently.)
 

Alberta's Rental Assistance Program is Going Broke

This is what happens in a province in the middle of an oil boom when a Conservative government that admitted it had no plans to handle it refuses to impose rent controls.

A new $9-million provincial rent assistance fund is being swamped with hundreds of unanticipated requests for cash and will run out of money by September, prompting the associate minister of affordable housing to ask her colleagues to cough up more than double that amount to keep the program afloat until next year.

Yvonne Fritz said a newly created rent supplement program that began distributing money last month has been so heavily used it will likely run out in September, when her department predicts it will have provided funding to about 1,500 Albertans hammered by rent increases.

When the money was announced in April's budget, it was supposed to last until March 2008.

"Unanticipated requests?" That just shows how absolutely deaf this Tory government is about the housing situation in this province after being told for years by thousands of people that there's a major problem.

Here's one example of how the program is not working:

The potential for new money is little comfort for David and Ann Murray, two Calgary seniors who say the rent supplement program isn't working well in its current state.

David, 69, is a retired heavy duty mechanic, and his wife Ann, 67, is hobbled and weakened after battling cancer for the last decade. Their rent will go up by $400 Sept. 1. After applying for the rent supplement program, they were told Wednesday morning they will qualify for $80 in monthly assistance.

The couple says they will never be able to afford the new $1,200 rent for their two-bedroom duplex -- plus utilities -- with their monthly net income of about $2,500 and only $80 in help from the program. They say the rent increase will force them to leave the city for somewhere cheaper.

"That was a subsidy in name only," said David. "It's another situation where (Premier) Stelmach has promised things but when it comes out, it's a little dribble."

Referring to the province's announcement this week that it will contribute $15 million to the Stampede expansion, David added: "He has money for the Stampede, but not for low-cost housing or other people in Calgary."

The province's widespread housing crunch continues to be an issue for anyone who doesn't own their home, with the city's vacancy rate sitting at 0.5 per cent and rents increasing by an average of 18 per cent in Calgary last year -- the highest in the country.

"Crunch" doesn't even begin to describe it. It's a disaster and this provincial government waited far too long to do something about it - finally determining that what would work, in their minds, was to apply a bandaid to a gushing head wound. They just don't get it. These Conservatives never have. They want "the market" to decide and are just subsidizing greedy landlords instead of controlling their money-grubbing behaviour. Not surprising coming from this bunch of political tightwads though. Our province drowns in oil money while they throw pennies out to the people.

It's been that way for decades here, but the people who are either profiting from this environment or are so socially conservative that they're damned scared of any political party left of Attila the Hun keep voting the bastards in. It's Conservative hell and if anything does go wrong - well it's always the collective bogeymen "liberals" fault. (They used to be able to blame everything on Ottawa - not any more with their Tory buddies in power there, obviously.)

Perhaps...perhaps...with the rise in interest rates this week, the skyrocketing price of housing in this province and the middle class slowly inching their way down that oily ladder of success instead of having the upward mobility they're so used to as inflation hits them harder in their pocketbooks (the price of gas rose 6 cents overnight here last night), they might finally get some common sense and a whiff of long-overdue reality and actually think before they go to the ballot box next time.

Perhaps.

In the meantime, Stelmach, expect more homeless people living in shelters (including families - as if that makes a difference to you) and don't be surprised when you're being continually pounded on to do the right thing. People may not have a home, but they sure as hell still have their voices.

Related: Alberta Municipal Affairs and Housing - the department in charge of the rental assistance program
The Calgary Urban Project's Low Income Housing Registry - for landlords and renters
Calgary Housing Company for low income rentals (with a waiting list of over 2500+ on a continual basis for years now)
Inform Alberta - a search engine for "community, health, social, and government services across the province."
craigslist - free online classifieds
 

'Canada can no longer afford homelessness'

That's the correct conclusion that Gordon Laird of Calgary's Sheldon Chumir Foundation reached in his piece about how much homelessness costs our country.

The coldest, deadliest nights of the year are now behind us. But the cost of homelessness isn't. According to a new report from the Sheldon Chumir Foundation for Ethics in Leadership, Shelter: Homelessness in a Growth Economy, homelessness is costing Canadian taxpayers $4.5 billion to $6 billion a year.

Canada in 2007 collectively spends more managing homelessness than it spends on international development ($4.1 billion) or on annual debt reduction ($3 billion). In fact, the cost of homelessness in Canada is comparable to the cost of the $4.35 billion 2006 GST tax cut and the entire 2007 environment plan on climate change, fresh water and wildlife conservation.

Since the early 1990s, Canada's main response to homelessness has been to build new emergency shelter beds and fund front-line services to help contain and warehouse a growing pool of homeless Canadians.

It hasn't worked. Welfare services, municipal services, provincial health-care systems and the non-profit sector have been left to take up the slack for the estimated 300,000 homeless people as well as the upwards of 2.7 million low-income Canadians who now face housing affordability problems.

This nation's decade of relative inaction on homelessness, from 1993 to 2004, cost Canadian taxpayers an estimated $49.5 billion, across all services and jurisdictions.

All levels of government have shown a lack of leadership. Most provincial governments, for example, inadequately fund welfare, making it difficult, if not impossible, for recipients to find a place to live in our soaring real estate markets. Some of these same people then wind up in homeless shelters funded by all three levels of government. Taxpayers are paying at least twice and still we have homelessness.

While Canada's economy is booming, poverty is actually increasing. It was assumed that the economic boom would benefit all Canadians, but the evidence shows that the income gap is actually growing and affordable housing is harder to find. CIBC World Markets predicts that the average Canadian housing price will double by 2026.

Poverty is now the leading cause of homelessness in Canada, trumping substance abuse and mental illness. Canada's "new homeless" – families, women, students, immigrants, aboriginals – are simply low-income Canadians who need affordable housing.

Many governments, both here and abroad, are championing the notion of "Housing First," that is, immediately addressing housing needs through rent supplements. It has finally been recognized that homeless shelters are effective only as a short-term measure.

When I started working with the homeless in Calgary back in the early 90s after the last oil boom and bust, I suddenly realized how well hidden they'd been - stashed away in shelters, treatment centers, jails, short-term programs, hospitals, church basements, motels, or in parks or other areas where I had not ventured often, sleeping on someone's couch for a nite or a week, staying with family temporarily - very much invisible. And the stereotypical homeless person - the bottle picker or alcoholic - was definitely in the minority but was and is the most visible.

The number of homeless people who were working homeless back then hovered around 45% - a stat unfamiliar to most Calgarians at that time, I suspect. I haven't looked at the latest numbers here but considering the availability of low-wage jobs available here which, unfortunately, are the type of jobs that suit many homeless peoples' skill sets or stage in life, I'd guess that number has risen. The disconnect comes between the cost of living and those low wages.

Then there are the sick. I had a homeless client who went in for kidney dialysis regularly, another one with severe gout, several diabetics and epileptics, one with "wet brain" (Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome) and then there were the mentally ill, of course. People who were or should have been receiving government disability benefits. But those payments are not enough anyway, leaving too many housed sick people (and I know this firsthand) at an almost constant risk for homelessness because landlords typically ask for the first month's rent and a security deposit. (Here's an idea of how much that can cost at this time.)

It should come as no surprise that the poor are hardest hit during boom times: the cost of everything skyrockets because of "supply and demand". And, as we saw with the failure of Reagan's Trickle Down economics theory, the fact that more people are making more money definitely does not end up helping the disadvantaged.

Laird is right, the more homeless there are, the more services they need and that does cost more money - obviously. There are the problems that led to people becoming homeless along with the new problems caused by ending up homeless - a huge load for some people to deal with before they can reclaim any sort of "normal" life again. Those services, in this province, have mainly been surrendered to the private sector while the PC government stubbornly refused to raise welfare rates during the 1990s or to provide any extra services at all. (At that time, the allotment for a single, employable person was ~$400/month - unconscionable).

Along with increased homelessness over the years, the NIMBY (Not in MY Backyard) attitude grew here - even in the dead of the coldest winters when the City of Calgary needed to make more emergency shelter beds available to avoid having homeless people dying from exposure. I recall an interview with one fearless campaigner who absolutely refused to consider allowing a local empty building in her neighbourhood to be used because she feared for her safety. Last winter, when another community was petitioning the city not to open such a shelter in their area, she actually spoke in support of emergency shelters after realizing that her worst fears were never realized - she had continued to be safe in her neighbourhood, despite the fact that the shelter had opened contrary to her wishes. The lesson: not all homeless people are dangerous. And I think if the public actually took some time to educate themselves about who is homeless - including the families on the street - they might develop more compassion. But we're not there yet.

We saw the blowback in Alberta recently when the Stelmach government staunchly refused to impose rent controls. Let the market decide, was the mantra. The problem with that attitude in these times in this province is that soaring housing costs are no longer only affecting the poor and homeless: they're hitting the middle class as well. And, when that happens, the voices speaking against the market-based economy (which really means "whatever homeowners/landlords can get away with charging") become much louder - especially when other costs are rising as well, like gas prices. Suddenly, more people are "disadvantaged" and the gap between the homeless and the middle class narrows - especially when some realize they may be one paycheck away from actually being homeless too. Stelmach's response was to only allow landlords to raise rents once per year. Not enough Ed. Sorry.

Tory governments are in love with "task forces" here - talk til you drop and wait to find out that they're not going to do much of anything anyway. It's their addiction so they claim they're "listening" to Albertans. They may be listening but they don't exactly hear anything other than the sound of their own voices most of the time. In fact, they can be so out of touch that former premier Ralph Klein even admitted that his government had no plan for how to deal with the latest oil boom. They are always trying to play catch up and it is always years too late.

Alberta's year end surplus was $8.5 billion, "more than double the original estimate." Mind you, they've continually low-balled the surplus estimates so they can come out in front of the cameras like proud peacocks to proclaim "look how wonderful we are!" while using their so-called surprise as a justification to not properly fund services in the meantime. And, every year, it's "let's stash this away for a rainy day". Well, it's been pouring and they haven't even noticed - or they just don't care. Just how much have Albertans benefited from these windfalls? Ask around. Not much.

And so they'll continue to place small bandages on major issues like homelessness hoping nobody will notice that they have no willingness to seriously tackle the problems. Ostriches with tiny first-aid kits. That's what they are.

The only booming that's not happening here is the voice of Albertans coming through loud and clear in parliament on behalf of people who are suffering as the tory MLAs prefer to cover their ears and sing "la la la...I can't hear you" just like the spoiled children they are.

So no, you won't see homelessness wiped out in this province any time soon. However, if more people knew about how much it really costs to keep so many people homeless, maybe they'd actually give a damn. For that to happen, they'd actually have to start really caring about how this government spends its money instead of continuing to act like doormats. And, if they did that, fewer of those Tory MLAs would be headed back to Edmonton after the next election.


Related:
Shelter: Homelessness in a Growth Economy report (.pdf file) from the Sheldon Chumir Foundation

CBC Calgary Forum: Blueprint Alberta: Rent

Average cost of a one-bedroom apartment:
In 2003: $661
In October, 2006: $780

Rental vacancy rate in Calgary:
In 2003: 4.4 per cent
In October 2006: 0.5 per cent

NPR's special about Housing First.

h/t to The Progressive Economic Forum for highlighting The Star's article.
 

The Liberals Take Ralph Klein's Old Riding

Well, hallelujah! Maybe there's hope for Alberta after all.

Liberals declare victory in Calgary-Elbow byelection

Calgary dealt Premier Ed Stelmach's Tory government a sobering blow Tuesday night, with voters electing a Liberal in the heart of the city.

Though the Conservatives re-captured the rural stronghold of Drumheller-Stettler in one byelection in the southeast of the province, Liberal Craig Cheffins seized victory in Calgary-Elbow -- a riding that had been Tory blue since 1971 and was last held by former premier Ralph Klein.

No small feat.

The new MLA for Calgary-Elbow took the stage at his campaign headquarters shortly after 9 p.m. to the strains of We Are the Champions, delivering a victory speech to more than 100 supporters.

"You know there's a message to be delivered to the Stelmach government," he said, as the crowd chanted his name. "We know we can have better government in this province."

It's just taken some people far too long to get that message. (Damn Conservatives and they're insistence on being conservative.)

"Calgarians have sent a message and I have heard that message clearly," Stelmach said. "Let me assure you, mine is a government with a clear plan for dealing with the growth pressures in Calgary."

Bullwinkle: "Watch me pull a rabbit outta my hat."
Rocky: "That trick never works."

In the wake of a public infrastructure funding feud with Mayor Dave Bronconnier, what some say is an unchecked housing market, labour shortages and other boom-time stresses in the city, earlier opinion polls suggest Conservative-government support is dropping.

"What some say??" The housing market here is absolutely ridiculous and the Stelmach government refused to impose rent controls making this city and it's ongoing almost 0% vacancy rate unbelievably hostile to low-income and middle-income renters. Buying in this environment is practically out of the question. Just look at the province's trend:

Housing prices are soaring in Edmonton, delighting property owners and causing financial headaches for those just starting their search for a new home.

The average price of a new house in the city is now $440,000 -- an increase of 40.5 per cent over the past year, according to Statistics Canada. That's a greater increase than anywhere else in the country.
[...]
Only cities located in the West showed a sharp increase, although not nearly as high as Edmonton:

* Calgary: 27.4 per cent
* Saskatoon: 24.9 per cent
* Regina: 17.3 per cent

By contrast, the increase in the average cost of new housing in Vancouver was 6.7 per cent, and 2.3 per cent for the Toronto and Oshawa area. In Montreal, it was 3.9 per cent.
[...]
Richard Goatcher, spokesperson for the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, said housing prices could level out if fewer people move to Alberta.

As if that's going to happen in the middle of an oil boom. Klein finally admitted last year that his government had made absolutely no plans for this boom. So what does Stelmach think he's going to do now? And with all of this growth has been burgeoning demands on our infrastructure that the Tories also held off on improving as needed before the boom even hit. Blowing up a hospital was obviously not one of their smarter ideas. And what they didn't blow up, they simply privatized.

Anyone who's lived in Calgary as long as I have, some 22 years now in the city and surrounding area, has watched this city grow leaps and bounds with massively increasing pressures on services, roads, and housing that the provincial government threw band aids on while their sycophants kept voting them back in. Maybe reality is finally catching up with those who chose to believe the broken promises these Tories made for so bloody long. Or maybe those who've moved here from throughout Canada are showing that things can be different by helping to turf these Conservatives. Either way, it's about damn time something changed around here. An elected Liberal in Ralph's old riding ought to make those Conservatives stand up and pay attention. They're not going to get another free ride the next time around by slacking off the way they're used to. They're actually going to have to work for their votes.

Related: Eugene Plawiuk has the breakdown of the voting in the Drumheller riding. Slackers.

In the Drumheller-Stettler by-election 1/3 of eligible voters cast their vote. The riding has 21,790 voters and only 7144 voted. Of these 4,180 voted PC.

Is Calgary Turning Red?

Via columnist Rick Bell:

You kick it long enough and hard enough and somebody just might kick back.

So here we are, nearing six months since some of Stelmach's less-conscious supporters crowed about applying some boot to this city after their man won, and a growing number of locals are beginning to feel this crowd is a big pain in the posterior.

According to the noses being counted by well-respected pollster Bruce Cameron of Calgary's own Cameron Strategy, there are an increasing number of nostrils out of joint with Unsteady Eddie and his Conservatives without a clue.

Yes, flicker, flicker, lightbulbs are actually going on in these parts. About time.

In fact, an amazing half of Calgarians think the Tories don't deserve to win the June 12 byelection to replace Ralph as MLA for Calgary-Elbow.

That's not all.

Since January, Stelmach's sad sacks have tumbled 19 points in this city, to 40%, two numbers lower than in Edmonton, where the party support is also down.

Yes, the poll shows fewer Tory backers here than in Edmonton, as in the city with all the Liberal and NDP MLAs and the nickname Redmonton. Oh my.

"About time" is right. Obviously, there is some vast left-wing conspiracy at work here. I just wonder where the hell it's been hiding all of this time. Somewhere under the oil, no doubt.