Category Archives: Uncategorized

Religion and culture are not the same as race.

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rageboy

As the world is rocked yet again by barbaric violent acts perpetuated by Islamic extremists, the Western appeasers appear like flies to wring their hands and demand that people not condemn Islam. When these timorous twits find themselves cornered in debate by the simple hard fact that Islam is the most violent, intolerant and troublesome major religion on the planet as is demonstrated by a plethora of Islamic dictatorships and theocracies that violate every human right imaginable, who are constantly at war with their neighbors (and factions within their own nations) and who spawn, train and sponsor murderous lunatics that commit acts of terror throughout the world the callow apologists will invariably scream RACIST in hopes of quelling discussion of these facts.

This concept appears so simple yet somehow is utterly lost among the politically correct. The word that clearly defines the difference between race and religion and culture is CHOICE! Anti-freedom types loathe choice of any type of course so I guess I can sort of understand how they are confused.

I cannot choose to be another race. I could aspire or wish to become another race I guess but I simply can’t change the reality of which race I was born to be. Michael Jackson proved that with almost bottomless resources, one still can’t change their race. That is why racism is so odious. How can you condemn somebody for a reality that they had and have no choice in? Racism is ridiculous, divisive and repugnant and is worthy of social condemnation.

Religion and culture are choices. I can choose and convert to any religion I like at any time. I can choose to practice any cultural thing I like as well. Because of this reality, I should be open to all and any critique of my choices in these regards and I sure as hell maintain my right to be critical and even insulting of the religious and cultural choices of others.

I am allowed to point out that the cultural practice of mutilating the genitalia of little girls and then trading them off like cattle in arranged marriages is a disgusting and unacceptable practice. I am allowed to point out that stoning women to death for their having been raped or whipping people to death for their being gay is vulgar and that the world must not accept this. I have every right to point out how forcing women to cover themselves and banning them from such simple things as driving and education is a stone-aged bullshit practice. The most important right that I have is in being able point out that all of these cultural practices and facilitated and justified by claims of being adherent to Islam.

I have no use for any religion personally. I can and will pick and choose however which ones I find to be the most destructive and repellent. I do think all races are equal, but I damn well know that not all cultures or religions are and I will point out the ones that are most egregious in the world. Today Islam is by far the most primitive and damaging religious choice on the planet and I am not a racist for saying it.

When I call out the religious or cultural choices of others, I can (and often am) called everything under the sun. I can be called intolerant, shallow, simple, stupid or simply an asshole. All of those are arguable. One thing I will not tolerate though is being called a racist as Islam is not a race.

We have a real and worldwide problem caused by radical Islam. It is hardly a minority thing when one considers that dozens of entire nations practice it. We need to discuss and address these issues. In order to do so, we must tell those who try to quell discussion by shouting “racism” to kiss our collective asses.
Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean) summarized it much more concisely than I in the image below as Britain fought a battle to protect free speech from Islamic nuts and their facilitating apologists.

bean

 

No religion is above critique or satire.

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Note to stone age cultists who feel that killing the innocent serves your religion:

The more innocent people you assholes kill, the more cartoons and depictions of your vile “prophet” will be produced and the more people like me will keep spreading them around.

When the hell will Islam join the 18th century already?

mohammed-cartoons-charlie-hebdo-muhammed-cartoons-2012-206-02-21-toonaphobia-xMoPigJPG-vimuhammad1prophet-mohammed-with-first-wife

Governing by form letter.

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One would think that the nine opportunistic floor crossers who betrayed their constituents would at least stand up and try to explain themselves in their own words.

In thinking that, one is in for some disappointment yet again. The “Wildrose 9” have either sunk into cowardly hiding or at best have purchased ad space in local papers where they have cut and pasted a form letter with talking points from their new Progressive Conservative masters and then vanished.

It has been said many times how the treacherous, self-serving move by Danielle Smith and her handful of caucus mates has been an affront to democracy and that is utterly true. Look how poorly their constituents are now being served. The “Wildrose 9” are now nothing more than a legislative joke. They hold no leverage any longer and Prentice will not expend any more political capital on them. These short sighted fools are now to be relegated to the back benches and will only speak or communicate as ordered as we can see in the lame form letters that they obediently released.

Yes, opposition MLAs have limits on their influence at times. The nine MLAs who defected in pursuit of power used to have individual voices at least and could openly speak up for their constituents.

As can be seen in their sad little letters, the “Wildrose 9” will no longer speak for their constituents. They will bark as the trained seals that they have become and will only communicate what they have been told to by their Progressive Conservative Party superiors.

Simply sad.

haleandersonHale and Anderson changed little other than the name at the top and bottom of their assigned form letters.

Gary Bikman posted his assigned form letter on Facebook here. It is easier to read this way in the literal sense but still stomach turning in it’s callow supplication to their new communications masters.

Portions of this letter are appearing in regional papers and in digital communications from the 9 Wildrose opportunists and it gives a good indication of what to expect from these shallow MLAs in the future. They will simply follow orders.

I can’t wait to see Danielle Smith stand in the legislature to toss a scripted, puffball question to Prentice as she will be ordered to do. Will she be able to retain that standard smile of hers or will some shame be showing through?

Staff laid off and hit hard by Danielle Smith’s opportunism

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layoff

Anybody who has spent much time around any legislative body has seen them. People, usually young, scurrying around in ill-fitting suits with lopsided ID badges who are often quite overworked and underpaid. This is the staffer-class in politics. These people are often recent poli-sci graduates or folks who got hired by the party in reward for years of hard work and volunteering. The jobs really don’t pay very well and are notoriously unstable due to political conditions.

Most staffers understand that they are always just one election away from potential unemployment. Staffers can at least prepare to a degree and take their unemployment in stride after an election.

This week’s events were unlike an election. Danielle Smith and 8 other opportunists abandoned their constituents and party members when they negotiated a secret deal and joined the party across the floor. What has been forgotten is that bevy of young staff members who were caught flat footed and now face unemployment at Christmas time.

Last night a female staffer was escorted from the offices while others had to pack her things. More of this will clearly be coming and many who haven’t been fired yet sit in frightened limbo.

Let’s be clear, the Prentice government does not want these staffers. These were loyal partisans to the Wildrose and the Progressive Conservatives don’t want them suddenly accessing their party databases. These staffers will be toast and the reduced Wildrose caucus simply doesn’t have the resources to keep them.

Not everybody is as heartless and self-serving as Danielle Smith thankfully. A fund was set up last night to at least soften the blow to these victims of political treachery and as of this posting it is over $7,000 already.

People from across the political spectrum are pitching in as even former NDP Leader Brian Mason has donated $500 along with a myriad of both smaller and larger donations.

Please consider tossing a few dollars in to help the young families hurt here. We have just witnessed a case of the worst political betrayal in Alberta history. Let’s end the year with a little Christmas magic to show that not all of us are as heartless as some of our political representatives appear to be.

 

CLICK HERE TO CONTRIBUTE

Gay Straight Alliances. Yes, we need them.

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In watching the debates continue over legislation regarding gay straight alliances in schools I am seeing heels digging in for no good damn reason on this issue. These alliances are essentially social clubs for kids and it is rather unfortunate that we have hit the point where government needs to (but still won’t), legislate to protect the rights of kids to form these very important groups in schools.

Just in my lifetime we have come a long way towards a more healthy and inclusive society but in seeing some of the discussions with gay straight alliances I see we still have a long way to go.

People need to learn to try and walk a mile in the shoes of others here. Bullying in school in general can be brutally damaging to who stand out from the norm and it is even more of a problem with gay kids who are just coming to grips with who they are.

schoolFor most of my schooling I was in the public system. I did spend part of my education in an all boys English style preparatory school. I won’t single out my old school here but posted that pic from the film Scent of a Woman as my school was very similar to the one in that movie and it brought many memories back when I watched it. We however were never allowed to keep our hair that long and had to be much more discrete with our smoking.

I will get to the point here. In those types of boarding schools in the 80s (and for generations prior), bullying was literally a part of the fabric of the institutions and it was openly encouraged by the administration. The prefects were encouraged to bully non-prefects. Non-prefects were encouraged to bully the juniors and so on. This was all done in the name of tradition. The masters in the school endured the chain of bullying when they went to school so by damn we should endure it too. The intent was to toughen kids up and turn them to men. The reality was lives of utter misery with no escape for kids who didn’t fit in with the majority.

A common response from a master to any complaint of bullying was along the lines of “We are preparing you boys for Ivy League and Yale has no use for pussies!”. Kids can be ruthless an in that environment of encouragement from authority figures it was simply brutal. I remember one poor soul who got caught masturbating. His nickname immediately became “Jack” and even the masters eventually started referring to him as such. To this day I can’t even remember the kid’s real name though I do remember the hypocrisy of it all considering that 90% of us were self-abusing at any moment alone we could find. All the same, if the arrows of taunting and humiliation were pointing elsewhere we were relieved and let them keep flying.

There was one kid who went through utter hell on earth in that school and I really don’t know how he survived it. He truly was on the bottom of the pecking order for the entire school. Dean’s father was an ambassador. Due to this Dean was raised overseas by an endless series of nannies and tutors. This left Dean with utterly no social development and when he arrived at my school at the age of 15 he had the maturity level of an 8 year old in many ways.

I remember our school orientation like it was yesterday. I was among 60 terrified new kids seated in a room in this new environment wondering what life was going to be like and adjusting to the reality that we wouldn’t be home for months. The Housemaster was explaining how we had socials with an all girls school (closely monitored of course) and how dances were held.

Dean felt compelled to speak up in his unfortunately awkward and nasal voice.

Dean: “Excuse me, Mr…..”

Housemaster: “You shall address me and all masters as sir young man!”

Dean: “Yes sir. Excuse me sir, but at these socials do we have to dance with girls because I hate girls.”

The room went silent in shock initially and then of course broke out in hysteric laughter. Even in not knowing how things were in those schools yet, I was thinking to myself “This poor bugger is dead.”

I don’t think Dean was gay though perhaps he was. I think Dean gave the sort of answer one would expect of an eight year old boy. Either way, Dean never had a chance and he was immediately the school “fag” from day one.

Dean’s misery was brutal to behold. He ate alone, he had spare time alone and whenever he was in the company of others he was invariably taunted or beaten. I didn’t indulge in the abuse of Dean as he just seemed to be taking enough as it is. I didn’t stand up for him either and I was no angel. I took part in bullying many kids in order to mask my own insecurities. I just couldn’t pick on poor Dean.

Dean survived until Christmas and when flying back out to school from home I found myself seated next to Dean on the plane. Nobody was looking so I socialized with the poor guy. He showed me his prized GI Joe collection. I tried gently to explain that perhaps he may want to be more discrete with those hobbies at that school and at his age but it was lost on him. Dean had no concept on what may help him fit in a little better.

Our time on the plane passed and we got to school. Starved for a friend and after our having bonded in a way on the plane coupled with the fact that I laid off him generally at school led to Dean latching on to me. I was mortified. While I was not involved in the abuse of Dean, I couldn’t be seen hanging out with him. I soon had to rebuke him in a public way and taunted him to keep him away. The poor kid had it rough enough and had the rejection of somebody he hoped could be his friend to add to things for him.

I am still quite ashamed of my behavior to this day.

Now after that rambling I want to tie this into the importance of these gay straight alliances. These kinds of clubs bring different kids together and this is the only thing that will lead to ending the abuse and ostracism that kids deal with. Gay kids need support and kids supporting gay kids need support. With alliances, kids are united rather than divided. A person can be supportive of different kids and not feel that they have to hide and bury their heads in the sand as I did as a kid.

It is the nature of bringing different kids together that makes these alliances so important. Having religious or cultural clubs or say simply a gay group can be a fine thing but they are exclusive by nature. In an alliance kids can gain strength, get to know those who are different and learn why it simply is unacceptable to bully and abuse kids for these differences.

I was fortunate in that I landed roughly in the middle of the popularity scale at my school. Not Mr. Popular but not among the outcasts either. I took moderate bullying and found it awful. It is unimaginable how it must have been for the kids such as Dean who had no escape or social circle to join and feel a sense of belonging. By law of averages, we must have had at the very least a dozen gay kids in my school. There was no way any of them could have considered coming out, they literally would have been hounded right out of the institution. Groups such as GSAs would give a sanctuary and perhaps give cowards such as myself more guts to stand up for others.

How many damaged people have been put into society from these broken social systems? How many suicides or crises came about later in life for people due to these awful school experiences? The only beneficiaries are therapists.

Gay straight alliances are important social clubs and they infringe upon the rights of nobody. Even if a religious school has to allow these alliances, it bloody well is no infringement on their religion. They don’t have to join the clubs (but they damn well have to allow them).

It is astounding that Prentice has created this Bill 10 that essentially changes nothing. If a school or board refuses an alliance, a kid has to then appeal? A troubled young gay person has to organize and stand before a hostile board to appeal for the right to simply form a supporting club??? Kiss my ass Prentice. I can see the politics of stealing the thunder from the Liberals by legislating gay straight alliances (sad that it even has to be legislated), but to undercut with this garbage in Bill 10 is simply repugnant.

Most of us fondly look back on our school years as a period where we grew and discovered. We had stresses and we had pleasures. We made friends and we loved, lost and loved again. Many people however look back on their school years as a terrible period that still haunts them today. Everybody should be able to enjoy those formative years and it will take initiatives such as gay straight alliances in order to aid in that goal.

Things are a world better than they were at my school in 1986 but in light of the fact that we need to actually legislate supportive clubs for kids in schools it is pretty clear that we still have a way to go yet in our evolution as a society. Let’s quit pissing around with this and protect kid’s rights to form these critical alliances.

 

 

 

We have to stop pandering to extremist protesters!!

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To put it simply, you can’t reason with the unreasonable. There is a collection of career protesters in Canada who are determined to protest any and every possible development in the country and they will not negotiate or compromise. We are wasting resources and putting our first responders at risk as we continually try to appease this tiny but loud minority of extremists. We empowered this directionless group when we sat on our hands for months while they squatted in and destroyed our public parks across the continent as we wasted time trying to negotiate with these people during the pointless “occupy” protests. In almost every situation we eventually had to get court orders and have these squatters physically removed. Our time in negotiation was wasted and waiting for them to move on was a waste of time too. These protesters really do have nothing better to do. Gainful employment certainly isn’t a consideration for most of them.

The list is long but the latest racket is coming from Burnaby where surveys are proceeding in preparation to expand the capacity of Canada’s Transmountain Pipeline which has safely operated and transported hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil per day to the West coast since shortly after World War II. Yes folks, we have had a pipeline across the mountains for decades and the world didn’t end. Kinder Morgan isn’t even proposing a new pipeline, it is looking to expand a current one. This still drew protest from the unreasonable and the extreme and now it has led of course to arrests.

One clear sign that these protesters are the same ones who took part in the pointless “occupy” protests a few years ago is their filthy living. The hypocrisy and sense of entitlement of these pigs is astounding as they demand that the world clean up while they themselves pollute their surroundings in ways that an oilfield crew would never even consider.

camp1 camp2Above are pictures of the filthy encampment where protesters have sat about for the last few weeks. Garbage is strewn everywhere and reports of a great deal of human waste a short distance away in the trees are coming out. Again, does this sound familiar? Of course it does. This is the same group of people acting the same way they did in “occupy”.

occupoopAbove is a picture of the Burnaby Mountain encampment along with some pictures from “occupy” encampments. The only real difference is that the Burnaby bunch didn’t have as much access to fast food as they did when they were squatting in more urban areas. One reason to arrest these fools when they set up camp sooner rather than later is ironically for the protection of our environment.

Below are pictures of these folks interacting with police.

Trans Mountain 20141120 coward dolt doltline loserI took part in a protest once that came to a point where police told me that I was to either leave or be physically removed. This was after hours of police seeking compromises with me. Despite claims from hysteric professional protesters, police are not actually that eager to physically remove or arrest people. The way I avoided being dragged into a police wagon that day was agreeing to move once things got to that point. I had made my point, why subject myself and the police to the mess of dragging me around?

Why do these idiots insist on making police drag them out? What point are they making? Many of them are hoping to create an impression of police brutality. All of the RCMP officers at this protest wore uniform mounted cameras and there were dozens of private cameras filming every second. While protesters spat upon, pressed and tried to provoke police, the officers showed great restraint as usual.

tolerance

respectOne idiot protester put himself in a tree forcing police to put themselves at risk to remove him. There should be extra charges for people putting police in harms way like this.

treetwitOther stupid and failed tactics to delay work were having one dolt chain her head to a piece of concrete while another moron climbed under a jeep. These acts accomplished nothing aside from making more work and creating a hazard even to themselves.

idiot moronThese ridiculous protesters even oppose the reversal of flow in an existing line as demonstrated in “Line 9” in Ontario. Note the similar tactics of piling garbage for others to clean up and chaining themselves pointlessly to things.

line9mess line92 Trish

The right to demonstrate and protest is a vital one but there are limits and we are allowing extremists to increasingly pass reasonable limitations. The “occupy” idiocy cost taxpayers millions in extra law enforcement and cleaning up after them across the country. These endless protests against all energy projects are costing taxpayers and private industry alike millions of dollars. I would rather our police were out seeking and arresting hardened criminals rather than putting themselves at risk to move or babysit these extremists.

This is a fun game to many of these protesters. They are typically upper middle class kids who know that their Dadda will bail them out as they repeatedly get arrested. They are out having fun at the expense and risk to all.

twitsMichael Sona was just sentenced to 9 months in jail for his role in the “robocall” scandal. The judge wanted to make an example of him and rightly show that we will not tolerate infringement of the democratic process. It is time to make such examples of these protesters who insist in illegally disrupting progress and putting others at risk. These companies have jumped through all the legal hoops and done all the preliminary studies and work required for their projects. They deserve protection from these extremists.

Instead of constantly arresting and releasing these clowns with fines, perhaps it is time to give some of them real sentences. Maybe with a couple months in jail some of these kids may realize that their trust-fund doesn’t serve them well when Bubba is making eyes at them in the group showers.

There is no reasoning with these protesters. It is time to start demonstrating that we have had enough of their antics and make them understand that enough is enough.

Do we really need campaign signs on public space?

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A few weeks ago I found myself in the familiar role of harvesting election signs after the by-election campaign. Again I could not help but note what a colossal waste of resources the placement of election signs on public spaces is. I have written on this before and I think it is time to bring it up again. Having municipalities ban signs on public spaces would benefit both political parties and the pubic in general. It is rare when a policy seems such a clear winner but I think councils need some more nudging on this.

There are a number of reasons why election signs should no longer be placed on public space.

They are ugly!

signs

By the end of any campaign the number of signs piled on public spaces can be astounding and I really can’t think of anybody who likes looking at them massed like that. I have been in the USA for a couple elections and they make our sign placement look scattered in comparison but we are working hard to close that gap.

It is bad for the environment

I am not Mr. Environmentalist by any means but I do appreciate some common sense approaches to conservation. In a general election in Alberta alone there are tens of thousands of signs on public space throughout the province. While the occasional candidate may re-use signs, they are for the most part a one time use thing as the parties tend to change themes, slogans, colors and candidates.

IMG621

I found the sign pictured above while picking up by-election signs. The sign clearly had been laying under the grass for over two and a half years. Signs on private space are taken care of by the homeowner if the campaign lapses in picking them up. Public space signs often end up vandalized, blown away and forgotten by campaign teams.

Public space signs don’t work!

The only real reason campaigns insist on placing signs on public space is that they don’t want to be perceived as lagging behind any competitors. If the signs were only on private space it would have no negative impact on any campaign.

millingIMG626The Alberta Party dedicated almost everything they had to their campaign in Calgary Elbow. To keep this from being too evident, they did spend a small fortune and some time on putting out massive amounts of public space signs in the other constituencies.

While Mr. Millington is a decent fellow and while the Alberta Party got a surprising amount of press during the campaign, Troy Millington got a paltry 2.4% of the vote in Calgary West despite the constituency being blanketed by signs small and large.

Public space signs are no substitute for a real campaign. If they were to have any impact at all, the hundreds of them placed out for Mr. Millington would have brought his showing at least beyond an average polling margin of error.

Removing public space signs will improve campaigns!

Election signs do serve a purpose in bringing about relatively cheap name recognition and when on private lawns can lend a strong effect of momentums as people see where their neighbors appear to be landing on the electoral map. While election signs on public land turn into white noise in the eyes of the voter, signs on private lawns have a real influence on the election.

If the only option for sign placement was on private land campaigns would bring their battle for voters to where it really belongs, to the doorsteps. Campaigns that want signs will have to approach voters directly and engage them. While any real campaign already knows this, a ban on public signs will force campaigns to focus even further on knocking on doors which is better for any campaign.

Resources will be saved as well. Volunteers who used to have to constantly place, repair and maintain public space signs can now be dedicated to something more productive while the thousands previously spent on public space signs can be spent on better things as well (volunteer beer and such).

Campaigns can irritate people and the waste can be astounding with signs everywhere while literature overloads everybody’s mailboxes for over a month. We could simply change this by having municipalities banning public space signs if we could just coax them to put that on the table. I just cant see a downside here.

Calgary city councillors need to learn what their mandate is

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Some members of Calgary city council have been complaining for some time now that they are overworked and that we need more city councillors to help share the burden. As is often the case, I have to call bullshit. If anything, Calgary city councillors have too much time on their hands. How else can we explain the amount of time that they dedicate to myopic pet projects that are way outside of their mandate and jurisdiction as a council?

Brian Pincott wants to ban fire pits and end the odious trend of apparent light pollution as well as banning people from cutting trees on their own property. Those all pale in comparison with the council time wasted trying to ban types of soup from restaurants however. With all those foolish initiatives, can we really believe that poor Brian doesn’t have enough time on his hands?

pinhead

Druh Farrell came up with the profoundly stupid “Bow River Flow” festival which was nothing more than an excuse to close a main road and poke a stick in the eyes of drivers. It failed terribly after a few seasons and thankfully was tossed in the dustbin.

druh

Diane Colley-Urquhart took on a pointless crusade against e-cigarettes which sadly has now been taken on by Mandel on a provincial level. I wonder if she opposes methadone treatment for addicts too or nicoderm patches?

dcu

City council now has a triumvirate of twits wasting council time trying to get rid of payday loan companies as they apparently prey on the poor. Can we assume that liquor stores, tobacconists, used car dealers and rent-to-own outfits will be targeted as well? Lower income people tend to make up a disproportionate portion of the client base of those businesses too.

What have all the idiotic, busybody initiatives above got in common?

None of the above pet projects of our supposedly overworked city councillors land within the mandate of city hall!!!!

Below I will quote directly from the Alberta Municipal Government Act. The act is hundreds of pages long but our esteemed councillors really only need to read one part. It is three simple lines and I will quote them below.

Purposes, Powers and Capacity of Municipalities
Municipal purposes
The purposes of a municipality are
(a) to provide good government,
(b) to provide services, facilities or other things that, in the opinion of council, are necessary or desirable for all or a part of the municipality, and
(c) to develop and maintain safe and viable communities.

There you have it folks. A very direct and simple mandate. Nothing about specifying which soups are legal or not. Nothing about banning things like e-cigarettes or regulating or punishing businesses that may be predominantly serving folks in the lower income bracket of society.

Every month we see at least one or two mind-blowingly foolish pet projects and initiatives from our city council in Calgary. It is galling that this collection of officials can waste so much time and money on these things and then whine about being overworked at the same time.

To Calgary city councillors: read those three lines that describe what your mandate is supposed to be. Follow those instructions! The workload will suddenly be reduced and we will get better government for it.

Sad that council will need to be directed to that act over and over again as they seem to think that they govern some sort of city state with huge, intrusive authority to govern our lifestyle or business choices. If they really want to build such a nanny state, may I suggest that our city council pursue federal seats in parliament as that is where such potential powers lie, not in city hall.

Let’s get real on secondary suites in Calgary

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lawnpark

Every time secondary suites come before city council in Calgary, we hear the usual chorus bemoaning the status of secondary suites in the city. The process is indeed tedious and not an efficient use of city council time as every suite application comes before council for discussion for approval or rejection. There is no doubt that this is a terrible system of approval and it needs reform. That being said, this does not justify the radical changes to zoning that the secondary suite obsessed want to see throughout the city.

Nenshi has a vocal cult following and secondary suites have always been a frustrating pet issue of his. This of course has led to quite the crusade over the years by his faithful to push to have secondary suites legalized throughout the entire city. Every year the hype gets louder and if these zealots were to be believed, everything from homelessness to nose-warts would end if only those darned stubborn NIMBYs in the city would allow widespread secondary suites.

What we have is a mess in the system for approval and regulation that indeed needs to be addressed. The potential benefits of widely legalized secondary suites have been grossly exaggerated by proponents for years though and we have to get back to reality here.

To begin with, how many new secondary suites would Calgary really gain if they were legalized throughout the city? A study back in 2008 estimated that there were 50,000 to 80,000 “illegal” suites in the city already. In the six years since then the city has grown of course so those numbers are likely higher. What this tells us is that those who want to build secondary suites are building them already despite current regulations. Clearly whatever legislation there is against secondary suites is of little to no deterrent for people who want to build these suites. Getting realistic, how many more suites could we expect if the suites were legalized? To be blunt, not a hell of a lot.

The numbers above do not mean that there is no benefit to legalization of more suites, but it does demonstrate that legalizing suites will not be the panacea to solve issues of high rents and homelessness in the city as the fanatical pushers of these suites like to imply they are. The supply really won’t grow by that much.

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Druh Farrell has long been a strong proponent of the mass legalization secondary suites throughout the city. Druh loves to wax on about the misery of tenants living in illegal suites as they have limited protections in landlord/tenant issues and can often live in unsafe conditions. Druh then loves to point out how high rents are and how limited availability is within the city. The true depth of Farrell’s rationale came to light in a radio interview though when she vapidly went into circles in confusion when confronted with the reality that if we found and regulated all of these illegal suites as she wants us to that we would actually end up with less suites and much higher rent. Druh and her ideological kin have always had something of a deficit when it comes to the concept of supply and demand.

We may have as many as 100,000 “illegal” (grey market) suites in the city of Calgary. Likely well over 75% of them need at least some upgrades to bring them to code in a legal and regulated market. Bringing a suite up to code in Calgary can range in cost anywhere from $10,000 to over $100,000. It simply isn’t cheap. Landlords who find themselves confronted with the sudden legal need to upgrade these suites will have to choose between closing the suite and evicting the tenants or doing the renovations and raising the rent considerably to recoup their costs. Landlords are not charities people. The bottom line is that we will either lose a suite or costs will rise. Neither of those two options aids in availability of suites or rental costs of course (that supply and demand thing). We need to work to ensure that suites are safe but let’s not pretend that enforcement won’t have a very big impact on supply.

Now the next question is whether or not a big market of prospective landlords is waiting in the wings just salivating at the prospect of opening a secondary suite but has not done so yet because it is illegal. The city of Calgary waived their ridiculous $4,500 application fee which is a good thing. This led to what was described as a “rush” by homeowners to apply for rezoning. How many applications were in this “rush”? 11!!! Yes, folks even with free application costs the grand total of initial applicants for zoning was 11 people. There were a couple dozen more pending. We are speaking numbers in the dozens in a city of well over a million people. Folks who want to rent secondary suites are already doing so in the grey market and will continue to no matter what the regulations.

We need some degree of oversight and regulation on where we will or will not allow secondary suites. Some neighborhoods simply are not well designed to handle them. Some people purposely seek out neighborhoods with low numbers of rental properties and they pay a premium to live in these neighborhoods. These people have a right to speak up and be concerned if the city wants to suddenly change the deal in zoning. The fervent followers of Nenshi spit out the NIMBY term at such folks of course but it has to be kept in mind that most of those followers are hipster renters who dwell in the Beltline who have little regard for the property values or taxation of others. These are issues that cant be dismissed.

There is a great deal of overreaction to prospective suites too. As I pointed out, there really are not that many folks who want to open new suites out there and having a suite or two on your block wont be a disaster by any means. Stuffing 10 suites into a cul-de-sac however will cause havoc and that is why rezoning still has to be considered case by case even if not by city council itself.

There is a need to reform policy on secondary suites in Calgary. Let’s set aside the zealous density ideals though and be rational about what needs to be done and what benefits can be gained. If one’s concerns are about availability and cost of living in the city, they should aim their guns at the essential suburban land freeze that Nenshi’s administration is practicing. The effect that broadly legalized secondary suites will have on homelessness and cost of living in Calgary will be negligible at best.