…I truly don’t know of another area of public policy where relevant facts and salient debates are more divorced from the public discussion — where ignorance and fear have more currency — than is the case with tech policy. The unreality of the debate tends to work out fine for the defense contractors, industry consultants, and major corporations involved in tech policy. But that state of affairs leaves the public in the dark.
Nancy Scola, writing for The American Prospect blog on the INTERNET KILL SWITCH (!!!!1) and “The Trouble With Tech Reporting“
Saturday’s article about secondary suites in the Calgary Herald, “Basement suites hit brick walls – Homeowners leave city open houses frustrated by rules” does a good job pointing out the absurdity of Calgary’s land use bylaw.
To have city council hear individual land use re-designation applications, in a city of over a million people, doesn’t just hurt the people that need affordable housing, or the home owners looking to rent out their basements, it hurts council itself.
This isn’t just an issue of parking, or homelessness, or even of creating more urban density to combat Calgary’s urban sprawl; the secondary suites issue is one of governance – a recognition that city hall exists to serve the needs of Calgarians. With bylaws like these, it’s hardly surprising that many Calgarians are growing ever more cynical about the way our council works, or doesn’t work at all in their eyes. As Dan Gustafson is quoted as saying in the Herald article “it’s to the point of ridiculousness.”
The shameful admission that city council approved only four land use re-designations in the 10 months prior to the launch of their $25,000 secondary suites grant program for homeowners – a band-aid solution at best – is another glaring example of the paralysis gripping our council. This paralysis consistently prevents council from making the right decisions, look no further than today’s analysis that “backroom politics cost taxpayers $2 billion.”
It was hard not to laugh out loud reading Ald. Diane Colley-Urquhart’s absurd claim that “these illegal suites […] are destroying our neighbourhoods.” Even more disgusting was her call to ramp up enforcement to “hire the inspectors and get these people out of there” and straight onto the street in the middle of winter. But given her recent inept effort in the Calgary-Glenmore by-election, this kind of ignorance seems more and more commonplace amongst our many mediocre elected officials.
I hope they can prove us wrong by tackling the real problem, a land use bylaw that prevents honest homeowners from securing a legal source of additional income while thwarting the efforts of students and other lower income Calgarians to find a safe, affordable, and legal place to live.
To meet the Calgary Homeless Foundation’s call for 200 new, affordable and legal secondary suites every year (in line with their goal of ending homelessness in our city), it’s going to take vision and leadership on our city council. Sadly, these two things are about as scarce a legal basement suite.
Acting with the legal support of the BC Civil Liberties Association, this week two activists filed a lawsuit challenging a Vancouver bylaw that restricts the right to “distribute material critical of the Games during and around the events.”
BCCLA President Robert Holmes commented on the severity of the punishment for violating Olympics inspired bylaws in Vancouver, Richmond and Whistler that give municiple workers the power to enter private property to remove “offensive” signs to protect the Olympic brand:
If you think through what people get thrown in jail for in this country, six months in jail is usually reserved for criminals who have a record of several convictions of breaking and entering, but now it’s the government that wants to break in and take down signs that should be part of people’s freedom of expression.
Collectively now: W. T. F. ?!?!
(link h/t cknw.com)
There’s a parade of “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED“ pronoucements about the recession being “over,” which – in case you missed it – includes the Bank of Canada’s very own Goldmach Sachs’ alumni: Mark Carney. Only if he had made the annoucement on the deck of an aircraft carrier, could it be more farcical.
James Howard Kunstler‘s snarky response to the string of “the recession is over” pronoucements made me laugh:
All this goes to show is how completely the people in charge of things in the USA have lost their minds. They seem to think this mass exercise in pretend will resurrect the great march to the WalMarts, to the new car showrooms, and the cul-de-sac model houses, reignite another round of furious sprawl-building, salad-shooter importing [AM: I LOL'ed ], and no-doc liar-lending, not to mention the pawning off of innovative, securitized stinking-carp debt paper onto credulous pension funds in foreign lands where due diligence has never been heard of, renew the leveraged buying-out of zippy-looking businesses by smoothies who have no idea how to run them (and no real intention of doing it, anyway), resuscitate the construction of additional strip malls, new office park “capacity” and Big Box “power centers,” restart the trade in granite countertops and home theaters, and pack the turnstiles of Walt Disney world – all this while turning Afghanistan into a neighborhood that Beaver Cleaver would be proud to call home.
Link via @newres
