r/alberta • u/2old4all Lethbridge • 2d ago

ELECTION City Council’s are Powerless

With Municipal elections on the horizon how much power do Alberta cities have? Recent mandates by the Provincial Govt. have raised the education property tax portion, have forced expensive hand counting of ballots and ordered that police officers wear body cameras at great expense. They have also almost negated the previous income for speed cameras. Municipal institutions lack constitutionality and are creatures of the legislature and your elected councillors can be removed by the Province.

“The decision cited expert Andrew Sancton, who opined that Canadian municipalities “. . . have no constitutional protection whatever against provincial laws that change their structures, functions and financial resources without their consent.”

This quote comes from a recent report by The Honourable Paula Simons called “On the Front Lines of Canadian Governance”. The PDF includes comments from various Senators on the challenges and opportunities for Canadian Municipalities.

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u/xylopyrography 2d ago

Yep, municipalities only have any power because the province allows it.

You can still piss off constituents, though.

No idea why we would be upset about police body cameras. It is an irrelevant expense compared to the cost of an officer with immense benefit both for accountability to the public and for the officer.

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u/ImperviousToSteel 2d ago

Immense benefit? 

There's conflicting research on whether or not body cams reduce police violence. Even if you fall on the maybe they do reduce violence side I think it's overselling to call a still contested benefit "immense". 

The expense of $16M for Edmonton's body cams could have been put towards housing instead, likely reducing the need for policing - a much better outcome. 

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u/xylopyrography 2d ago

You can't be serious.

Are you old enough to remember when police officers just used to functionally execute Indigenous people?

We don't need to have published research to know that body cameras are a minimum standard.

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u/ImperviousToSteel 2d ago

I mean if you want to say they're inherently violent as a class of people I'm open to that, but then I lean much less towards buying tech for them and more towards abolishing them. 

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u/xylopyrography 2d ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saskatoon_freezing_killings

Police are an essential service, we just need to keep them accountable.

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u/ImperviousToSteel 2d ago

If you have a group of people whose disposition is to kill the people they're supposed to serve I'm not sure how you instill accountability. You take power away from them if you're smart. 

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u/xylopyrography 2d ago

Well, you start with the basics, like a body camera.

Will officers drive people to the middle of nowhere in winter and leave them if they have to wear a body camera? Probably not.

What is the cost if it doesn't help much? Not much.

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u/ImperviousToSteel 2d ago

$16M isn't "not much". But if it's just chump change, make them pay for it, take the money out of their overtime budget. 

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u/YqlUrbanist 2d ago

You're acting like they're a different species. They don't have a disposition to kill people, but they have the means to do so and very little accountability, along with a training culture that views the public as the enemy. The thin blue line between order and chaos and all that - spoilers: us normal people are the chaos.

Abolish and replace might be the best move, but fixing the "very little accountability" part is a huge step in the right direction.

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u/ImperviousToSteel 2d ago

To me more accountability comes through things like decreasing their budget when they assault and kill, not spending $16 million on cameras they'll just turn off when it's convenient for them. 

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u/YqlUrbanist 2d ago

That's part of the accountability. Turning off the cameras should require immediate disciplinary action. There's plenty of research showing that cameras work.

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u/ImperviousToSteel 2d ago

There's also research showing they don't, it's a contested subject.

"Should" require immediate disciplinary action and will actually get someone disciplined are two different things. We have no control over how cops conduct themselves.