Poll: Omnibus Bills

Welcome to the first poll on the blog. The topic for this one is Omnibus Bills, which are a type of bill that groups together a diverse number of subjects into a single legislative document. On one hand, they can speed up the passing of legislation tremendously and increase the chances of the measures contained being passed. On the other hand, the included measures could potentially be only loosely related, allow for controversial measures to be “bundled” into a take-it-or-leave-it package, and suppress discussion of individual parts of the bill.

The current debate in the House of Commons is over the Safe Streets and Communities Act, which groups together previous bills ranging from youth crime to sex offences to counter-terrorism and (until recently) police surveillance of internet activity. A precedent for this type of bill comes from the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1968-69, which covered issues such as divorce, birth control, homosexuality, gun control, gambling, and cruelty to animals.

So the question is…

Municipal Policy Primer: Alberta’s opposition

L->R: Sherman, Mason, Smith, Taylor

Hello all, it is September and I haven’t posted in a while. Today’s topic is going to be municipal policy in advance of a possible election either this fall or in the spring. Whenever it is, it’ll depend on the will of whoever wins the leadership of the natural governing party of Alberta this month.

This post follows the launch of citiesmatter.ca by the Mayor’s Office of the City of Calgary. Since they covered responses of PC leadership candidates, I will only focus on the policies of the major opposition parties. If you really give a crap what the natural governing party has to say, go to the other site.

For the purposes of this discussion, I am going to lumping in affordable housing policies with general municipal policies.

Urban Vacation: Paris Notes

Champs-de-Mars as seen from Le Palais de Tokyo

Note: This draft for this article was written a little over a week before it’s posting.

I pull out my netbook to write this review as I begin the second leg of a nineteen-hour, transatlantic journey back home to Calgary. A cup of coffee has put me in the right mood to reflect on and write about my travels as of late. This morning I was in the top floor of an apartment in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, about four blocks from Musée de Louvre. Aweek before that, I was finishing up packing my room after a year of postgraduate studies in Nova Scotia.

It’s been a long week.

Checking the numbers twice on HSR

German ICE3 Train - © Wikimedia Commons

The last week has been a flurry of news. The next federal election is off to a start, a friend is nominated for the Green Party in Calgary-Centre, Canadian big city mayors are calling for a national transit strategy, and other exciting things.

Today, the Green Party of Canada released it’s HSR policy. Now, I’m onboard for HSR, at least as an issue of long-term connectivity between Canadian cities in relatively dense urban corridors. I believe that, in the long run, we are eventually going to have to do this as the price of energy goes up (which will drive up the absolute cost of train travel up but drive it down relative to driving to taking the plane). Like any megaproject which requires vast amounts of public spending, it will require a lot of planning and due process.

As soon as I read the GPC release, however, I knew that something smelled fishy. Let’s take a look.

Primer: Federal Politics and Canadian Cities

If you are like me, you probably caught Wednesday’s Globe and Mail article elucidating the positions of Canada’s big city mayors regarding the Federal role in urban infrastructure funding. It’s a good time to talk about it, with the hints of an election coming up. And I’ll make this clear: this needs to be an election issue.

In this article I’ll provide, with as much brevity as I can afford, what Canada’s political parties seem to be thinking regarding the subject.

5 Years, 0 Cars

Two SD-160s along 7th Ave in Calgary

I’ve been living without a car for quite some time, making the most of me feet, public transit, and carpooling. This has been the case for five years. To me, that’s a surprising amount of time. Five years ago, I was a freshman at the University of Calgary, straight out of high school and only 17 years old. I couldn’t drink or vote, but I could drive.

On a particularly sunny afternoon during my first year of university, I came back to the area where my car was parked only to find it AWOL — police report filed and car sold off to my insurance company within the hour. I considered purchasing another vehicle, but ended up deciding against it, for financial reasons as much as out of personal preference.

So how did the past five years work out?

Urban Vacation: New York City Notes

Night settles over Midtown Manhattan and the Lower East Side

This is the third and final part of my Urban Vacation series, following from the Montreal post I made a week or two ago. This one is a little late as I have been settling into my new place in Atlantic Canada. Some of my recollection of specific events and places will be a bit fuzzy given the delay in writing, I’m hoping that Googling will serve me well in finding out the names of several restaurants and what was on their menus. Gooooooo Google!

Here’s part three of my Urban Vacation. More after the jump.

Urban Vacation: Montréal Notes

Habitat 67 still keeping its groove on

This is the second part in my Urban Vacation series, following Ottawa-Gatineau from last night. Montréal is a city which I wish I had more time to spend in as it certainly is one which you could keep exploring and discovering the vital parts of for weeks or months. I write most of this lengthy review as I sit on an Amtrak train on a 10-hour trip from Montréal to NYC.

Here’s part two of my Urban Vacation. More after the jump.

Urban Vacation: Ottawa-Gatineau Notes

Looking down the canal towards the shell of Ottawa's new convention centre

As of Saturday morning, I kicked off my Urban Vacation. Thus far everything is going well –  a swift recovery from my pneumonia, plane didn’t crash between Calgary and Ottawa, lodging has been cheap (thanks to some extremely generous relatives).

Here’s part one of my Urban Vacation series. More after the jump.

My final week in Cowtown…

Hello readers. I know you are out there.

I love you too.

Ahem. Now that I have that off my chest, on with the post.

The genesis of this post begins several hours after perusing through John’s blog and seeing his post about being in Calgary for 10 years. And I got to thinking… wow, I’ve lived here for 16 myself, and now I’m all of a sudden leaving. Whereas my affable fellow blogger has settled into what he calls “maturity,” I’m going to the opposite direction. It’s time to explore, to get out and see the world, etc. Or at the very least, to go somewhere else, get even more education under my belt (where it goes, nobody knows), and a job that hopefully pays money and not food stamps. I have to support my WoW addiction afterall.

Yes, I (and Remotely Urban) am moving across the nation to Nova Scotia. I am settling down in Lawrencetown, where I will be attending the NSCC Centre of Geographic Sciences. Prior to that, I will be vacationing somewhat in Canada and somewhat in the United States, which I posted about a little while back.