Category Archives: waste

I guess BC is getting tired of the prosperity.

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While it still is a year away and we certainly saw the collective worthlessness of pollster’s projections in the recent Alberta election, the current polled trends in BC are disturbing. It appears that like a beaten wife who keeps returning to her abuser, BC wants to again embrace the governance of the party that castrated their economy for nearly a decade. It looks like the BC NDP is polling at about 50% right now.

 There are few reliable constants in the world but one that can be relied upon is the economic disaster that comes with a provincial NDP government. Bob Rae proved that the largest and most robust provincial economy in Canada could be brought to it’s knees with his catastrophic term as the Premier of Ontario. Saskatchewan lagged the nation in economic growth and activity under an NDP government as the province lost most of it’s youth in an exodus to Alberta seeking jobs. Manitoba is determined to remain a dependent little brother in confederation and under the inept guidance of their NDP government they are achieving that goal in spades.

 I remember very well working on oil exploration projects in the North where I literally would survey the perimeter of our program right on top of the BC/Alberta border. We would not venture an inch on to the BC side as our costs would explode and it simply was not worth it for our clients to pursue data there. Fort Saint John and Dawson Creek were in dire straits as the BC NDP government regulated and taxed the economy to the point where BC became a have-not province within Canada.

 Along with the consistency of NDP governments destroying economies is the consistent rebound for the economy when the socialists are finally tossed out. Saskatchewan is now a fast growing economic powerhouse in Canada thanks to the rational guidance of the Sask Party government. BC has been booming for over 10 years as the Liberal government undid much of the economic neutering caused by the previous NDP government. Ontario’s economy exploded under the Conservative government that replaced Rae’s grossly inept NDP. The pattern is clear and constant.

Despite such stark and repeated examples of the damage that NDP government’s cause, a large segment of Canadians simply refuse to accept this reality. Like a crack addict who knows the pipe is killing him yet can’t resist putting it back in his mouth again, provinces seem prone to repeated self-destructive behaviour in electing socialist governments.

 Please, please, please BC wake up! If you are tired of the Liberals than by all means pursue an alternative. Going back to the NDP however is simply an example of the cure being worth the disease. I do hope that this trend changes as I would hate to see our provincial neighbors dropped back into the economic toilet again.

 Alberta and Saskatchewan can’t keep up with subsidizing Quebec alone.

 

Can we all agree to work towards ending campaign signs on public spaces?

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Many blogs and columns are busy dissecting and interpreting our election results from last Monday. I am still too tired to wade into that realm right now after weeks locked into a campaign office (a few weeks in Australia should remedy that starting this Saturday). The last couple days have been exhausting in packing an office while making sure that countless signs and related materials are picked up and recycled/disposed of and I can’t help but be frustrated by the waste of both materials and time in placing campaign signs on public spaces.

Campaign signs serve an important purpose. They help build familiarity with the name of a candidate and their party. On private lawns campaign signs allow people to openly demonstrate their support for a particular candidate to their neighbors. Private placements can have some impact as many people can be more inclined to join the wave if they see a large trend of neighbors supporting a particular candidate. The impact of signs on public space is negligible.

The bottom line is that in a campaign no candidate can afford to let their competitor gain an edge in any manner even if the advantage is very slim. If only one candidate refuses to participate in the placement of public signs they will look weaker as their competitors flood spaces with their signs. I got many calls from supporters who were concerned about certain public spaces being under represented by our party in signs and of course that led to a compulsion to add yet more signs to the mess.

While I am indeed libertarian leaning and generally am not favorable of increasing any regulations, I have to say that I would like municipalities to step in and place an outright ban on placing campaign signs on public space for all elections. We simply cant rely on campaigns to choose not to place these ugly and generally ineffective signs on their own. If one campaign begins the placement, others will follow. If it is legislated, no one campaign is given an advantage or disadvantage.

Signs can and still would be utilized on private lawns. Large signs can be used as well of course. It is a person’s property, let them display whatever they want on it. Wouldn’t it be nice if our parks and public spaces were immune from that visual pollution during campaigns though?

Some of the major intersections were nothing less than stomach turning as a virtual vomit of colors assailed the eyes while one drove looking at blur of signs from a variety of parties. I am pretty confident that most people simply stop seeing the signs after a few weeks.

It would be good for all campaigns if they were freed from the perceived obligation to jam public spaces with mountains of signs. Those signs are expensive. How many hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent on public signs by campaigns in Calgary alone in the last election? How many volunteer hours were spent on the placement and maintenance of these signs? The public signs are magnets for vandalism and every large campaign has a full time person designated to simply keeping those signs standing. Those dollars and those hours all could have been more effectively used in other aspects of the campaigns. I would prefer to have a volunteer on the phones or door-knocking full time rather than wasting time fixing and placing public signs. I would rather those dollars be spent on another lit drop or even better beer on election night. Both expenditures would be of more value.

This is not a great thunderous electoral reform issue such as recall or even fixed election dates. This is an issue of colossal waste happening that can be very easily fixed. I think it is time to start the process of getting legislation into place. I seriously doubt many people would miss the signs on public space in future elections.

This is the crap that makes people quit voting.

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 Well, the Canadian Taxpayer Federation came out with their annual “Teddy Awards” for waste in government.

 Usurprisingly Alberta won the provincial category. This is not surprising as our entitled and entrenched Progressive Conservative government really has shown utterly no regard for their expenditures of the hard earned tax dollars of Albertans.

 The highlight that won Alberta top honors in waste is that we have a legislative committee with 21 members on it who have been paid $1,000 per month for being on that committee. This committee however has not even met in over three years!!!

Now government waste of tax dollars is far from new and it has never failed to irk me. I will tell you something that angers me far more than government members lining their pockets on the backs of the taxpayers; there were members from every opposition party serving on that committee!!

Alberta Party: Dave Taylor

NDP: Rachel Notley

 Liberal: Bridget Pastoor (since crossed floor) and David Swann.

Worst of all in my view, Wildrose Party: Guy Boutilier and Heather Forsyth!

How are all of these people who took $1000 per month in pay for a committee that never met for years going to be able to justify this?

Was it impossible for an opposition committee member to put out a press release decrying this waste? I assure you it would have been picked up.

 I wish there was a good excuse for this but I see none.

All of us who support opposition parties expect better than this from our MLAs. We have come to expect waste and entitlement from government MLAs. It is hard to claim we are better when our own MLAs apparently will sidle up to the trough without hesitation.

 More offensive than the wasted dollars is the damage done to an already cynical electorate. It is damned hard for me as a volunteer to knock on doors to respond to a person who says: “They are all the same.” when indeed our bloody MLAs are all acting the same on this.

 I still support the Wildrose Party and do feel that they hold infinitely more promise and principle than the governing PCs. I will continue to do so. I sure as hell hope that some of our MLAs and MLAs to be learn something from this.

 We should be exposing government waste, not indulging in it! Brighten up guys. It will be at least four more years before we get another crack at this.

Druh Farrell eager to leap into another tax-funded boondoggle.

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 While we still await the final costs for the still delayed disaster that some call the “peace” bridge, Druh Farrell the chief proponent of that embarrassment to the city is already trying to have more tax dollars potentially destroyed through fast-tracking a program where the city will compost our coffee grounds.

 The merit of having government take over composting for us is debatable at best and I will be posting some information on the myth of a landfill crisis and the benefits of recycling below.

 Calgary is to begin a $1.3 million pilot project with 8000 homes where a third bin will be added to their fast growing collection of waste bins. The new bin will be for organic waste that can theoretically be converted into a useful compost. I am happy at least that the city is doing a pilot program rather than jumping neck deep into this notion. This is a responsible way to see if the program needs adjustment or is even worthwhile to pursue as a whole.

 Never one to be bound by responsible actions though, Druh Farrell is furious and is demanding that we fast-track the program into full implementation as soon as possible. Never mind the fact that we don’t even have the facility to deal with the waste (estimated to be $60 million or so). Never mind that we have not tested to see if citizens really like the notion of having a bin full of rotting organic waste sitting in July heat for two weeks at a time. Never mind seeing what a true and total cost estimation of a city-wide program may be. Full speed ahead says Druh!!

 I suspect that Druh realizes that the pilot may expose this program to be a waste and a failure thus her eagerness to rush right into it. I may of course be giving Druh too much credit there.

 We are in a city that constantly claims to be so broke that annual tax hikes are the norm yet our council can’t seem to run out of ways to waste our money. Let’s let this pilot project run it’s entire course, look at the outcomes, and then start to discuss if the entire city needs a third waste bin.

 We rushed into recycling in the first place and ended up with thousands of tonnes of glass that nobody wanted piled in our landfill after having been expensively collected and sorted. Do we have a place for a mountain of compost? How about this Druh, why don’t we store the rotting organics in the middle of your precious Kensington while we try to find a facility to process it. That may take some of the shine from the concept.

 Below is video from Penn and Teller’s series “Bullshit”. I do warn, as the title of the series indicates the show is loaded with expletives. Despite the colorful language, the show is packed with facts and realities of recycling including a live experiment of how gullible well meaning urbanites can be at times. I strongly recommend watching the show in full (not at work and not with kids around).

 

The dark comedy continues and Calgary taxpayers are the punchline.

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 It just goes on and on and on. Yes, this is yet another post on Calgary’s ongoing boondoggle the “peace” bridge. I will not refer to that bridge without putting the word “peace” in quotes because the bridge was never meant to have that name. The “peace” was added by council as public outrage was growing while Calgarians finally began to realize that city council was ripping them off to an estimated tune of $25,000,000 for an ugly pedestrian bridge in a spot where no bride was required. The naming was a crass move to try and tie the bridge into respect for veterans and it took unforgivable gall.

Some members of city council are now calling for a forensic audit now that it has been found that the bridge is going over budget.  Even after cutting $2 million in landscaping costs (that we will still have to pay for eventually), the bridge from hell is still $200,000 over budget. Considering the re-welding of steel and re-pouring of concrete leading to 18 months of delays, I can see the reason for an audit. There is no way that bloody thing is only $200k over budget. I shudder to think how much taxpayers will be raped for when this is all finally over.

 Here is a link to a great timeline put together by Jason Markusoff

Here is another story by Markusoff on the bridge today. He has covered it excellently.

And yet one more today from Jason. The poor guy must see that bridge in his sleep.

Update: The latest story finds evidence that the bridge may come in at closer to $30 million when all is said and done.

 Now enough background and updating on that monument to Calgary City Hall arrogance and waste of tax dollars. What is important is that we as Calgarians finally get up and kick out these freespending fools who use our money for their idiotic vanity projects. Listed below are the remaining Aldermen who supported the “peace” bridge. If they are in your ward, please do all you can in 2013 to put them out of work!!!

Brian Pincott

John Mar

Dale Hodges (went into hiding for the vote and would not comment)

Gord Lowe (went into hiding for the vote and would not comment)

Last but not least by any measure is the prime cheerleader for the bridge:

Druh Farrell

 

 Folks, if nothing else is to be accomplished in the next election, the removal of Druh Farrell from city council will have made the entire election a success for the City of Calgary.  Druh Farrell is the only person who rates their very own category on my blog as the list of follies and foolish leftist things she supports appears to be nearly endless.

 Despite the exhaustion with the issue and clearly growing rage with that wretched bridge, we still see Druh vapidly tweeting and celebrating the anticipated opening of this slap in the face to taxpayers. While most civic politicians will be wisely finding themselves on the other side of the city for the ribbon cutting on the finger-trap, Druh will be grinning ear to ear as she celebrates this boondoggle. She truly sees this mess as some kind of good accomplishment. Even Calatrava won’t come out to the opening. He has cashed his cheque and would not be able to hold back his giggles as he sees what he put over on Calgarians.

 Druh was the inspiration for one of my first youtube videos when she spearheaded idiotically closing Memorial drive on Sundays in August in order to thumb her nose at Calgary drivers. She really has to go.

Please Calgary, watch the news on this bridge as it develops and don’t forget it when you go to the polls. We need to stop overlooking this kind of behaviour by our elected officials. It is bad enough that we will have to look at that ugly bridge for decades. We can at least stop having to look at the proponents of it in council chambers if we kick them out.

Voting with their feet and wallets, Canadians are heading to suburbia.

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The anti-“sprawl” crowd is a vocal group but in looking at our development patterns these people are clearly in a tiny minority. Despite efforts to stunt outward development and an almost cult-like subgroup of people screaming for and trying to shame people into dense downtown living, Canadians en masse are simply choosing to move away from the cores of cities.

Some recent number crunching has revealed that non-core areas have made up 97% of Calgary’s growth with similar numbers in cities accross Canada.  

It is not that hard to figure out why this is a trend. When I was in my early 20s, I lived in downtown Calgary and I loved it. I could walk to pretty much anything I needed and while Calgary is not known for it’s exciting downtown nightlife, the downtown still provided many bars and such to be patronized. I was shopping for food for one and didn’t mind walking a couple blocks with some grocery bags and riding an elevator with them. Of course, my needs and preferences changed as I grew older. The main thing was having kids.

Suddenly grocery loads are a bigger deal and the need for a car is becoming more acute. While I was comfortable walking downtown streets at night as a young man, I really did not like walking with my kids past the seedy elements that are drawn to city centers. I wanted space. I wanted a yard for the kids to play in. I wanted a spread out neighborhood where I knew who lived next door. I wanted family to be able to visit without paying $20 in parking. To summarize, I like over 90% of Calgarians chose to live in the suburbs and have utterly no regrets.

I understand that some people manage to live downtown with kids and enjoy it. Well good for them. It doesn’t need to mean that the rest of us should have to.

I am tired of the near scorn being directed at suburban commuters for daring to choose to live in a cost-efficient comfort with their families. Nobody should be ashamed for not wanting to live in a crowded dense area. We have the space to grow outward and we are doing so. Good.

Now that we have established that the vast vast majority of Calgarians do not want to live downtown, can we start to model policies based on that reality? We don’t need more damn bike lanes. There is no screaming need for more bikes, there simply is a loudly screaming minority of bike riders. We are refusing to recognize where our population really is and are choking traffic to accommodate a tiny minority. Never will a large number of middle-aged folks suddenly decide to start riding bikes 20km to work downtown in January so let’s quit with the idiotic planning under the assumption that they will.

Those who are tired of smog and idling should look at reality here too. Choking traffic will not reduce this. People will simply get up earlier and sit idling longer as they have lost lanes to a handful of bike riders in winter. You want to reduce fuel consumption and idling? Speed up traffic flow then.

Our mayor and council love to blow millions on endless studies of everything under the sun. Well we don’t need to spend a pile here to see the trend. We are a prairie city that is growing quickly and it won’t be stopped. Lets start planning based on that reality instead of some unrealistic utopia of a densely packed downtown. People simply do not want to live like that.

Really folks, the urban density pictured below is hardly a noble goal to pursue.

City council is considering wasting your tax dollars in order to stunt business development.

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It is hard to tell which does more damage to Calgary’s business environment; city council’s indecision when it comes to zoning decisions or when city council actually makes a decision on something and intervenes in projects. They both are damaging in general.

There clearly is a great deal of money to be made in generating studies and reports while our cowardly city council tries their hardest to avoid making a simple decision on anything. Despite pretty clear evidence that a bike share program in Calgary is totally unviable and likely would turn into a terribly expensive taxpayer boondoggle, our council of cowards has turned away from completely shelving the program. $24,000 has been wasted on one biased bike-share study and our council has decided to throw more good money after bad in order to study the issue further.

Last year I went to a meeting at my community association where an exasperated lawyer was trying to build his case to get the city to give him the green light to build a small office complex on Center street near 41 ave. He had bought some houses there under the assurances that he would have no trouble in getting his offices approved and he would be able to construct and move into his new facility. This was not to be so and the poor man was jerked around by the city system for a couple years. He has since put all those houses up for sale and one can see the line of realtor signs on Center north of the Tim Hortons there.

You see, there is an element of the hard left who have this long-term utopia in mind where Calgary would have LRT access to all portions of the city and that includes a proposal to run a train right up Center street.  While there is no official plan on the books for this extension and certainly there is no money to build it, there are some members of city council who want to see this happen. What is happening now is that they are stalling all development on Centre Street North as they know that new development on Centre would hinder plans and expropriation of property should the city decide in a decade or so to put a line there. This is similar to the provincial legislation that essentially seizes and devalues private property in anticipation of expropriation rather than just buying it.

The outcome of this unofficial policy on Centre Street North is stark, ugly and obvious. Houses are run down and worthless as owners will not put in any dollars to maintain a place that they expect to be expropriated. Crack houses, massage parlours and general slums are blossoming along this stretch of zoning uncertainty and things will only get worse. Who in their right mind would buy property on Centre right now?

I can’t imagine how much that poor lawyer lost in his attempt to develop something nice and new in good faith. He still hasnt managed to sell those dumps that he purchased.

The impact spreads beyond Centre as well. We have seen a marked increase in general crime and vandalism in our neighborhood as the unsavory element drawn to the run-down houses walks to neighboring communities in hopes of stealing something for their next fix. This devalues houses for blocks around Centre and it is soley due to instability and indecision on the part of our ineffective city council.

Not simply content to meddle with development through their inaction though, our city council is now looking to stop development through direct action. Council decided yesterday to study (surprise surprise) an idea to purchase 19 hectares of land along Highway 1 in order to stop potential development of retail business.  This is getting outright insane people. This is not some rare natural area and it is not an area lacking in open space. Have a look at the picture below to see the massive volume of undeveloped and protected space already set aside in that area.

What we have in city hall these days is an almost religious-like fervour against the concept of what some pejoratively call “sprawl”. This anti-business gang will stop at nothing to try and hinder city growth and this idiotic notion of buying land to stop retail development is a clear indicator of it.

Lets assume that the city wastes millions and millions of our dollars to buy this land in a gross dispay of market intervention. What will the consequences be? Well, our reputation as a good place to do business will sink further as instability in zoning is assured and the anti-development attitude of our council is more clearly exposed. The retail businesses that were considering that site will not simply vanish. What will be more likely to happen is that a larger new retail center will simply be developed farther West this causing people to commute even farther for their purchases. How green. Residential development will push even farther as it chases retail services and the dreaded “sprawl” will have expanded more.

Get real you fools! Calgary is a thriving and growing city. We are blessed with the open space surrounding us that allows us to grow and build good neighborhoods for our families. To those who really want to see the outcome of high density planning may I suggest a trip to Manhattan. There you will see obscenely expensive real-estate values due to lack of supply. That leads in turn of course to neighboring slums and ghettos that are totally unimaginable in cities like Calgary. Homeless and crime levels in densely packed cities are worlds worse than ours and much of the reason is density.

People are welcome to pursue whatever unrealistic utopia they like I guess. What is concerning though is that these blinded idealists have found their way onto city council.

Airdrie, Okotoks, Cochrane and Strathmore will continue to thrive and people will continue to develop outwards to avoid the congestion and discomfort that anti-“sprawl” measures will bring about. We will continue to grow as a city but our development will be an odd hybrid of sattelite cities and a dysfunctional downtown crowded with discarded rental bikes and empty busses.

Please Calgary can we elect a city council with a grain of common sense in 2013? We really need to break the trend.

A couple places to cut spending.

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Whenever it comes to spending cuts, supporters of big government like to try and act as if spending on core services will have to be decimated. Nenshi loves doing that in Calgary when people complain of tax hikes. He likes to ask if people don’t want their streets plowed or if people want policing cuts.  There are hundreds of other areas of spending that we could reduce or simply do without altogether. Some of these are some pretty big ticket items on the national and provincial fronts.  

 In the 21st century, we have utterly no need whatsoever for a State Broadcaster. The CBC was initially formed to help bring information and communication across a very vast country. Broadcasting infrastructure such as local studios and towers did not yet exist and the CBC indeed helped unify the nation in bringing all of that together. Those days however are long gone. Satellite technology ensures that people have access to information whether through radio, television or internet in every corner of the country. While working in the arctic, I never saw a house without a satellite dish. Cellular coverage is available on the ice-roads on the Beafort Sea. 
 

 Our State Broadcaster is completely obsolete yet it is costing Canadians $1.2 billion per year. If privatized, I am sure that the infrastructure of the CBC  would be worth at least a few billion when sold as well. That money could be dedicated to the national debt thus reducing interest charges thus allowing for more spending on core services. I am sure that most provinces would be happy to dedicate another $100+ million per year to their health expenditures even if indeed it does mean that we will see fewer reruns of Anne of Green Gables and Little Mosque on the Prairie.

 Another behemoth of spending that we really don’t require is bilingualism. Let’s face it, aside from Quebec, New Brunswick and to a much lesser degree Ontario, French speakers are in such a tiny minority that it is a joke to really consider the rest of the provinces to be bilingual. Unilingual French speakers are an even smaller minority within a minority. The amount we are spending on this microscopic segment of the population however is not small at all.

 A recent study has found bilingualism to be costing $2.4 billion per year in Canada.

Now perhaps a case can be made for enforced bilingual services in some of our Eastern provinces but lets look here in Alberta (the other Western provinces are similar).

 In Alberta, 1.9% of our province consider French to be their mother tongue. Only .05% are considered to be unilingual French speakers. Think about that folks because it really is only the unilingual ones we need to be concerned with here when it comes to providing French services. In provincial bilingual spending alone, we spend $2027 per year per unilingual French speaker. With federal spending on top of that the cost becomes much higher.

 That sure is a lot of money to spend to ensure that a tiny minority can read the back of a cereal box in their preferred language.

 What is the long-term goal for this spending anyway? Is it expected that we will have a large population fluent in both official languages in Alberta? If that is the case, it has been a terrible failure. French is not growing in popular use in Alberta no matter how much we spend on it.

 Is it really that impossible to model spending based on actual need?

 When will we allow common sense to creep into spending decisions? We are seeing countries all around the world going broke because they thought that they could tax, borrow and spend themselves into prosperity. Those countries are now being forced into considering some almost crippling austerity measures to make up for their past overspending. We are in an envious position in that we have not hit that debt/spending wall yet. We need to get rational about what we spend on and how much.

 Where are our priorities? In virtually every poll health and education are the top two concerns voiced by Albertans. Why then are we running short on the aforementioned items while spending billions on luxury programs such as the CBC and bilingualism that only service tiny minorities?

 Think to yourself, will your life change radically for the worse if the CBC were privatized? Would Alberta suffer a crippling cultural blow if we no longer spent millions upon millions to accommodate a convenience for .05% of our population?

 With more time and research people can find all sorts of areas where spending can be cut without any measurable effect on our core services. We need to remember that when elected officials try to play that bait and switch method in defending the hyper-expenditure increases being made by big government.

 We can still maintain a high standard of health and education provision while not raising taxes or overall government expenditures. We have a great deal of spending cuts to make on items that we don’t need however.

I wish the environmentalist set would look at the real offenders.

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The small Metis community of Conklin Alberta made headlines around the continent a couple years ago when twelve black bears had to be shot at their local garbage dump. Outrage was expressed by many towards Sustainable Resources and the officers who had to do the cull. The officers can’t be blamed in this circumstance. When bears have been spoiled by humans, there is no rehabilitation and relocation for them. Black bears will travel hundreds of kilometers to find new human created sources of food once spoiled and they will be increasingly dangerous and irritable once that trip is completed.

The bottom line is that a ready food source was made available to the bears for years due to irresponsible waste management in an area highly populated with bears. To be honest, I don’t know who’s responsibility the garbage dump is but the past (and current) management of the facility is completely unacceptable and will be leading to more bear shootings soon. The municipality is Wood Buffalo and the village is Conklin. I imagine that among those two entities one is responsible for waste management.

Below is a picture of black bears eating at the Conklin dump a couple years ago. Following that picture are pictures that I took of the “improved” Conklin garbage facility a few days ago.

Clearly international embarrassment has not been enough of a motivator for this community to solve it’s garbage problem.

 Bears at Conklin dump pre-2009

bears

Open unprotected bins at Conklin dump January 2012

 Conklin dump

Below are pictures of the garbage I found that animals had dragged from the dumpsters into the nearby trees.

bushjunkb bushjunka

 The bush surrounding the dump area is nothing short of disgusting. Garbage is strewn for acres as entire bags have clearly been pulled from the open dumpsters and dragged into the trees by animals for consumption. Ravens then spread the smaller pieces even wider.

There indeed is no longer an open landfill at the Conklin dump. They have put up a partial fence and a warning sign about bears along with the open, unsupervised bins packed with domestic waste.

PICT0419

The sign goes into detail on the small print about how people should not approach or feed bears. The fence stretches about 30 meters to either side of the gate and stops. It is meant to keep people out of the dump area after hours. The fence is not meant as any form of animal deterrent. There really has been no deterrent measures put in place at the dump.

The Conklin dump is providing a virtual buffet for animals and it is doubtless that more animals will become spoiled and will die as a result. Foxes, coyotes and wolves are being harmed by this mess too.

I was fortunate enough to grow up in Banff Alberta. I remember well as a kid in the late seventies and early eighties tourists being directed to hit certain parts of town on garbage day to see black bears and people were directed to the dump out by Lake Minnewanka to see grizzly bears. Part of the summer routine was often to clean up the garbage out back before school as the coyotes and bears had gotten into it.

Banff got it’s wakeup call in the early 80s when a grizzly terrorized the town for weeks with five people mauled and one killed in a series of attacks before the bear was located and destroyed. I hated that period as a kid as we loved playing in the bush but understandably our parents kept us all well within the townsite until the bear had been killed.

After that tragic happening, Banff transformed quickly into a town that did not feed the bears. Home collection of garbage ended as bear proof bins were placed around town. Open landfills ended with transfer stations where domestic garbage was taken to a bear proofed site for disposal.

 If a town of 5000 (with 15,000 tourists) in the mountains can responsibly manage their garbage in the 1980s, why the hell can’t an oil-rich community of a few hundred do the same in 2012??

It only takes a short trip through google to see how many communities in areas with bears have learned to keep bears from their dumps in cost effective ways. There are many solutions out there if a community wants to seek them. Conklin apparently is not interested in seeking a solution unfortunately.

Now where is the outcry from our environmental crusaders on this? Well they are busy yelping at the big bad oil industry whether justifiably or not.

I am currently in a camp in the Conklin area. The energy industry is very careful to mitigate wildlife impact in every possible way while working. Garbage containment is actually one of our easiest areas to deal with. Our industry rarely gets credit for it’s responsible and ethical environmental practices unfortunately.

Throughout our camp we have bear proof garbage cans for spot disposal of small amounts of garbage. These are the exact same bins that are present in Banff.

bins

Larger volumes of waste go to a compactor to be trucked out to a proper landfill.

compactor

 There are about 750 people in my camp. There is not so much as a french fry left out for wildlife to get at. Is it too much to ask a town of a few hundred to do the same?

Where is the outcry on towns and their shoddy waste practices? It is lost among those loudly and wrongly targeting the oilfield. Rest assured if we (oilfield) behaved like the town of Conklin in our practices, our operation would be quickly shut down and we would be heavily fined.

I strongly suggest that people concerned about wild animal welfare contact provincial authorities and demand that they crack down on towns with irresponsible waste practices. Put down your signs protesting the oilsands for a minute and try to make some realistic and worthwhile change come about. We sure heard loudly from groups when some ducks died.

Lets hope my next series of pictures does not involve shots of dead black bears.

Realities of reserve housing.

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Every new year we see a pile of retrospective “stories of the year” being reprinted and broadcast. The reality is that much of the press is enjoying their holiday season and those “year that was” sort of things make for good filler. One story that is in every compilation of issues this year has been the housing crisis on the Attawapiskat reserve. We can pretty much see that story every year in January, the only thing that really changes is the name of the reserve that has hit crisis levels.

The optics from Attawapiskat were striking. People were living in terrible conditions on a Northern reserve with a long cold winter looming before them. A person would have to be totally heartless to not feel terribly for the conditions that these people are living in and enduring.

When most people see scenes like that, they want to see the situation changed and as soon as possible. Unfortunately people often gravitate towards the the most simplistic of solutions to troubles and assume that government has somehow been shorting our aboriginal communities in support for housing. Our State Broadcaster (the CBC) is always overjoyed to perpetuate that myth.

The reality is that we have been massively increasing support for housing on aboriginal communities through funding and education in management. The harder reality is that little will change on reserves in Canada no matter how much we increase resources directed towards them because the entire concept of the reserve system and the Indian Act is a catastrophic and unworkable failure.

I suspect that many people don’t understand the damage that has been done due to generations of utter dependency and a lack of property ownership in our system of racial segregation through reserves. I took a drive to a nearby reserve the other day to take some pictures and demonstrate the futility of trying to build new housing in perpetuity.

The reserve I toured was a Dene one in Northern Alberta. This reserve is actually in much better shape than many that I have worked on in the North. Much of that is due to relatively easy access, a nearby flourishing energy industry and an large band based oilfield services company. Despite all that though, 70% of the adult population of this reserve is unemployed (the service company primarily employs off-reserve people) and only 18% of adult members possess a high school equivalent diploma despite constantly rebuilt educational facilities. This is no fault of the residents. Nobody can easily be functional in the workforce or educational system when raised in these messed up enclaves of dependency and misery that we call reserves. Simply  working one’s way out of a rut is not really an option for most though the means appear to be right there.

Despite being better than your typical reserve, this one demonstrates the many traits that are common to all isolated reserves. One can see trends of housing types as different contracts are awarded and designs utilized year by year to try and keep up with the insatiable demand. The condition of the houses varies widely depending on the condition of the occupants. There are very very few housed to be found that are more than 20 years old as they simply do not last that long on reserves.

Below are some typical houses on the reserve. Most are of modest size, simple and functional.

 

Now the above pictures are of standard houses on the reserve. Below is the exception that is invariably found on a reserve. The house below is likely that of the Chief or at least one of the Chief’s close friends or relatives. On almost every reserve one can find this disparity in housing provision as like it or not, corruption is rampant and the designation of housing falls directly to the Chief and council. A small group of large and often opulent houses can be found on almost every reserve. This one was not the most striking that I have seen in that regard but the house and yard below clearly surpass that being given to the typical band member.

One can see some of the frustration of band members when they are living with a large family crammed into a modest 700 square foot house while the Chief and friends enjoy large modern homes with nicely landscaped yards. This is one of the things that helps lead to the complete disregard for the condition of their own homes.

As band members do not actually own their own homes and their disposition is at the whim of the Chief and council, there is pretty much little to no incentive to perform any maintenance upon their houses. Why replace a window when you can’t own or sell the place? Why reshingle? Why maintain sewage piping or drainage?

Below it can be seen what happens when windows get broken on reserve housing.

Poly can be used.

 Tuck tape can be used.

  Most commonly boards are used.

 With no work being done to maintain them, houses deteriorate very quickly. With a very harsh Northern climate, this problem is even more acute.

One can always find houses in their final state of disrepair  yet still occupied to demonstrate the housing problems on reserves. The only real variable is where the finger of blame gets pointed.

A very common sight on all reserves are seeing relatively new houses boarded up and abandoned as they have become uninhabitable. Mold and fire are the most common causes. These houses are essentially destroyed from the inside out due to lack of maintenance and respect for the house itself. These are everywhere.

The anger, disrespect and social challenges lead to having to turn all band services buildings into small fortresses to protect them from vandalism and break ins. This too is common of pretty much all reserves.

All of the buildings have barred windows or heavy rolling shutters along with heavy iron doors. At the least this must be psychologically disturbing to residents.

Getting back to my initial point, the problem on these reserves is not for lack of funding. New houses are being constructed (at great expense in isolated communities) all the time. It is nearly impossible to keep up with the destruction however.

 

We see a great deal of hysteria finger pointing when Canadian reserve conditions come to light. Most Canadians are urban living and have never had opportunity or need to actually spend time on reserves in person. This leaves many people vulnerable to such myths as that of Canada not directing enough resources towards reserve housing. That is why I hope that providing a pictoral posting helps people see a little more and understand just how it is on these reserves.

It is without doubt that there is housing crisis on Canadian reserves. There is no denying that there are countless other social and economic challenges being endured by reserve natives. The question is not whether or not current conditions are acceptable. The question is how to change this.

My conclusion is to work towards a complete end to the reserve system and rescinding the Indian Act. Decades have pretty much proven that this current path is an utter failure that is only causing human suffering at great expense to the rest of the nation.

Some people indeed may have a case to make on fixing the system as it is. I look forward to seeing some more creative solutions.

To claim that not enough resources have been directed to Canadian reserves however is shallow and simply wrong. These are a deeply troubled people and the capacity for them to consume resources is infinite with no visible sign of progress. The entire system must change.

We need to stop looking at the past and trying to somehow use it as an excuse to justify the mess we are enduring presently. The status-quo is serving nobody aside from some chiefs and many overpaid, parasitic bureaucrats and lawyers who make their living in the “Indian industry”. We need to recognize that the status-quo is not sustainable and we need to honestly look at how to work towards a better future.

I hope that more people begin to look more deeply at these issues so that we may begin to make real progress on this. It truly is a shame that we have so many people living like this in a land so blessed with resources.