The Pulse: April 7, 2022

The Edmonton Police Commission has engaged Pe Metawe Consulting to host roundtable discussions with Edmontonians to inform its decisions on the police budget over the next four years. The second public consultation is scheduled for this weekend, after no one showed up to the first event at the end of March.

"We obviously don't have a lot of insight into why, but it could be a combination of a large dump of snow, reticence, and poor communication from us on the type of environment and confidentiality, and a mistrust of the culture around Edmonton police currently," said Pe Metawe team guide David Plamondon.

Pe Metawe, an Indigenous-owned consultancy that also operates a tabletop game store, was hired to lead 12 community engagement sessions at a cost of $50,000 (that budget also includes a public survey from Leger). It will host an additional session at the beginning of May as a replacement for the session that no one attended in March.

The consulting organization has 12 questions to guide the in-person engagements, which marks the police commission's first formal public consultation on a police budget. In a focus-group format, participants are asked about how safe Edmonton is overall, what they think about the police budget, and how non-police services like mental health support should be funded, among other questions. The responses will be compiled in a report to guide the commission's discussions ahead of city council's deliberations on the next budget cycle later this year, including a possible review of the police service funding formula.

The Community Safety and Well-Being Task Force, which was created in the wake of public hearings into racism and policing, also provided in-depth recommendations on police funding as part of its Safer For All report that was released in March 2021.

Those recommendations included a call to bring the police budget in line with comparable cities and tie a portion of it to specific performance. The city council at that time did not adopt that recommendation, but in December 2021, the newly elected council voted to divert some of the funds the police would have received under the funding formula and put it towards social programs instead. As a result, the 2022 police budget increased by $1 million instead of $11.9 million in an annual budget of almost $400 million.

Rob Houle, a member of the task force, said he isn't sure if the engagement sessions are meant to "devalue or undermine the work of the task force" but that he doesn't expect anything substantial to come out of the events.

"This kind of process and this reiteration of the whole process seems to be a reaffirmation that even though there were promises to change the way things are being done, there isn't really any substance to those promises," said Houle. "What the task force recommended and continues to recommend are real tangible changes to the way policing is done in Edmonton."

Houle also said the city appears to be entering another budget cycle where police will emphasize "how unsafe" Edmonton is to back up their call for more funding.

"But in reality, they've been doing the same job with marginally less money given ... and crime has been either going down or been steady," Houle said.

• Alberta is expanding access to fourth doses of COVID-19 vaccine to people who are 70 or older, or 65 and over for First Nations, Métis, and Inuit people. All seniors in congregate care are also eligible for a second booster shot, regardless of age. To book a fourth dose, five months must have passed since the third dose.
• City council voted unanimously to approve a plan based on the calls for action made by the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) in 2019. City manager Andre Corbould said Edmonton intends to act on all 94 calls detailed in the MMIWG report. The plan includes an Indigenous Peoples' awareness campaign, an Indigenous housing strategy, anti-racism training, and the establishment of an Indigenous ombudsperson, CTV reports.
• A study using Edmonton hospital data found that people exposed to air pollutants are more likely to visit emergency rooms for substance use disorders. "While few studies in the literature currently report on the impacts of air pollution on substance abuse, there is a growing body of evidence that exposure to air pollution affects the brain and can alter behaviour," wrote Mieczysław Szyszkowicz, the lead author of the study, which was published in the peer-reviewed journal Air Quality, Atmosphere & Health on March 18. To date, scientists have correlated pollution with behavioural changes among mice. They are now investigating the link between pollution and depression.
• "(They're) not all sweaty when they get to work, but they can still cover a lot of ground quickly," said Paul Burgess, owner of Mud Sweat and Gears, referring to the growing number of Edmontonians who ride e-bikes. Battery-assisted e-bikes now cost in the range of a couple of thousand dollars, leading some to see them as a viable commuting alternative, reports CBC. A report last year from Triton Market Research predicted the North American e-bike market will grow by more than 10% every year from 2021 to 2028.
• Konstantin Stoletov, a Russian cancer researcher at the University of Alberta, has raised $20,000 with the help of the local climbing community to help Ukrainians since the Russian invasion. Their efforts focused on helping people escape the northern city of Chernihiv, and he says the funds reached around 3,000 people through evacuation assistance, financial support, and food. "I think I can retire now because my life is complete," Stoletov told CBC, though he plans to continue his fundraising efforts.
• On the heels of city council's decision to redirect $507,000 from the aerial mosquito program to more eco-friendly alternatives, Coun. Aaron Paquette plans to table a motion aimed at clarifying what eco-friendly mosquito reduction alternatives are and whether the city has the resources to carry them out. Paquette, who voted to redirect the funds, said he wanted to assure Edmontonians that council's intent is not to give mosquitos free rein. The defunded aerial mosquito program dropped ground-up poison-coated corn cobs in standing water to wipe out larvae.
• David Kilgour, the former cabinet minister known for his "independent streak and dedication to human rights causes," has passed away in Ottawa at the age of 81. Kilgour was first elected as a Progressive Conservative MP for Edmonton-Strathcona in 1979. He joined the Liberals in 1990 and served as Canada's secretary of state to Latin America, Africa, and the Asia-Pacific region, then left the party and served as an Independent MP until his retirement in 2006.

In Episode 10 of Bloom, co-hosts Emily Rendell-Watson and Faaiza Ramji talk about Wyvern, a local space-data startup that wrapped up the Y Combinator technology accelerator last week, as well as PulseMedica, which raised a $2.6-million seed round that will help it run its first clinical trial beginning in June.

Ramji and Rendell-Watson also cover how High Dough, a Detroit-style pizza joint, is opening a second location after finding success in the Three Boars space on 109th Street during the pandemic.

"Pandemic successes in hospitality are even more amazing because we know how hard it's been for those businesses even pre-pandemic to really grow in scale. So I think that's ... phenomenal," Ramji said of the move.

Vimy Ridge Academy's new esports academy is also on deck for this episode, as is Samdesk's video series, The Breakdown.

You'll also hear a message from Bloom's sponsor, Innovate Edmonton, in which CEO Catherine Warren continues her conversation about inclusive innovation with Taproot co-founder Mack Male.

Bloom is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and everywhere else you get your podcasts.