Speaking Municipally

The new owners of Edmonton City Centre proposed strict security measures at each entrance of the downtown mall, and councillors endorsed changing the definition of public space. Plus, an American company has a vision to turn an industrial park in northeast Edmonton into one of the largest data centre campuses in North America.

  • (00:00) - Introduction
  • (02:43) - Ad: Edmonton Startup Week
  • (04:11) - Public spaces bylaw review
  • (10:37) - Defining public and private spaces
  • (13:42) - City Centre security plans
  • (20:03) - Northeast Edmonton data centre proposal
  • (22:38) - Edmonton's industrial investment
  • (25:59) - Horse Hill, sprawl and land speculation
  • (28:47) - Data centre regulation and impacts
  • (34:49) - Transit Royale proposal
  • (40:57) - Close

Here are the relevant links for this episode:

Public spaces bylaw
Edmonton City Centre
Data centres
Transit app
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This episode is brought to you by Edmonton Startup Week. From Oct. 5 to 9, founders, innovators, investors, students, and big thinkers will come together for workshops, panels, showcases, social gatherings, and more. The week includes a kickoff showcasing this year's top 10 companies and a farm-inspired "Coming Home" launch party at Edmonton Unlimited on Oct. 8. Pick sessions that match your interests, and leave room for something unexpected. Explore the full calendar

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Creators and Guests

Host
Mack Male
Co-Founder and CEO of Taproot Publishing Inc.
Host
Stephanie Swensrude
Stephanie is a curator and reporter at Taproot Edmonton. She attended NAIT's radio and television program and has worked at CBC, CFJC in Kamloops, and 630 CHED.

What is Speaking Municipally?

Taproot Edmonton presents a weekly discussion on key stories in municipal politics. We pay attention to City Council so you don't have to! Join us as we delve into conversations about the context surrounding decisions made at City Hall.

Mack Male:
Please present your boarding pass. This week, the new owners of Edmonton City Centre proposed strict security measures at each entrance of the downtown mall, and councillors supported changing the definition of public space.

Stephanie Swensrude:
Plus, an American company has a vision to turn an industrial park in northeast Edmonton into one of the largest data centre campuses in North America.

Mack:
Hi, I'm Mack.

Stephanie:
I'm Stephanie.

Mack:
And we're...

Both:
Speaking Municipally.

Mack:
Welcome back to Speaking Municipally, episode 374. For those of you watching us, you can see that Stephanie is in a new location. Where are you, Stephanie?

Stephanie:
I'm at City Hall. I finally have moved in. There was a bit of a delay getting, like, furniture and stuff in here, but well worth the wait because I have a sit-stand desk.

Mack:
Look at that. Yeah.

Stephanie:
The ergonomics. And it's just so nice being here. Except those stairs coming up to, like, council chambers and the media room are hard. Maybe I just need to work on my cardio.

Mack:
You're gonna get good exercise working at City Hall.

Stephanie:
I feel like Rocky. Or is that a thing in the movie? I don't know. I don't — yeah.

Mack:
Probably. Yeah. It reminds me of my university days, you know, going up and down the LRT stations all the time. It was a lot of stairs. Every time I go back to campus, I'm like, "Wow, I did this every day, many times a day." I was probably in much better shape back then. We're glad that you're there. This has been, like you said, a long time coming. And I feel like this is like a little bit of a changing of the guard in local media here in Edmonton. I mean, when I started writing about stuff at City Hall, there were still a lot of reporters who worked there. You know, they had offices there. And in the intervening years, that situation has changed quite a bit. There's almost nobody there now, but now Stephanie's there. And I think that's really great.

Stephanie:
Yeah, there's only, I think, three other offices occupied, and, you know, they're not occupied every single day because there's not stuff going on here every single day. There was no one here today, for example. So —

Mack:
But Stephanie is there. She can now, you know, track down councillors on their way from chambers back to their offices —

Stephanie:
Ha ha ha.

Mack:
Ask them questions, just like the good old days. I'm glad that you're there, Stephanie. And, you know, it takes support from everybody who's listening for us to be able to do this work, have Stephanie be there at City Hall, ask those questions, find out that information. So this is an opportunity to plug membership if you want to support the work that we do. We'd love for you to become a member of Taproot Edmonton. And you can find out more about that on our website. We'll put the link in the show notes. Another thing you can do to support Taproot is buy an ad. And in this case, we're partners with Edmonton Unlimited on Edmonton Startup Week. We're really glad to be returning as a media sponsor again. And we have a little ad for you about the event which is coming up.

Stephanie:
So this episode is brought to you by Edmonton Startup Week. From Oct. 5 to 9, Edmonton's founders, innovators, investors, students, and big thinkers are coming together to learn, connect, and build momentum. There are dozens of events taking place throughout the week. You'll find workshops, panels, showcases, social gatherings, and much more. Pick sessions that match your interests, but consider leaving room for something unexpected. The kickoff on Monday, Oct. 5, will showcase this year's top 10 companies. Some of them you'll know a lot about already if you read Taproot's roundups, while others will be new. The flagship launch party takes place at Edmonton Unlimited on Thursday, Oct. 8. The theme this year is "Coming Home," and it's got a farm-inspired vibe, given that the event coincides with Canadian Finals Rodeo and CFR Week. It's gonna be a bucket of fun.

Mack:
Ha ha.

Stephanie:
Check out the full calendar of events and learn more at edmontonstartupweek.com. Thanks.

Mack:
I knew you'd kill that, Stephanie. Thanks for doing that. I don't know if I have any good, like, cowboy gear. You know, I'm not a person who goes to Stampede regularly, but I'll have to dig something out of the closet for launch party this week. This coming week. It'll be fun.

Stephanie:
Yeah, I think every Albertan needs a cowboy hat at least, you know?

Mack:
Yeah, fair enough. Yeah. Okay, we've got three pretty interesting things to talk about. We're back to talking about things that council have been talking about. The first one we're gonna start with is the Public Spaces Bylaw, which coincided with some news from Westrich about the City Centre Mall, which they are soon to be taking over. But let's start with the Public Spaces Bylaw. This was before committee, right, Stephanie? So what were they discussing and what did they decide?

Stephanie:
So the Community and Public Services Committee endorsed some changes to the Public Spaces Bylaw during a one-year review on Monday. Many of you will probably remember it was a little bit of a controversial bylaw at the time for several reasons. One of them is that it was seen to criminalize poverty and it was gonna have an outsize impact on vulnerable people. So the bylaw, for example, added a $25 fine for public drug use. And, you know, that's kind of an example of that criminalizing poverty, targeting vulnerable people. So there was a couple of amendments here and there that councillors on the committee recommended to council. Council will make the final vote at a future time. Some of the changes include narrowing the harassment prohibition to address a more precise and targeted definition. And then also a regulation prohibiting megaphones and speakers and stuff like that within 10 metres of a doorway, a bus stop, or in transit facilities. And they had kind of some — because the issue with this is that they want to differentiate between people that are, like, doing a protest or, you know, exercising their right to free speech, and then also people spewing hate on corners, which we have some of those in Edmonton. So that change is kind of all aimed at addressing that. So about this $25 fine, though, council had kind of asked for more information. Like, is it gonna be effective? Is it worth asking these people who, like, probably don't have $25 to spend to pay this $25 fine? Or is it even a big enough fine amount to dissuade the behaviour? And administration basically said, let's just revisit this in a few months when we talk more about a community court program. Now, they have that in Calgary, and it's essentially like, instead of having to pay a ticket, you go to a court and then you work out a better way to deal with the problem. You know, if it's for public drug use, go into treatment, to put it very simply. And a report is due before the end of the year on a community court. But Parveen Parmar, who's the director of advocacy at the John Humphrey Centre for Peace and Human Rights, said that they should not wait to remove these fines or reduce them for what she called survival-related conduct. And I thought that was a really interesting term because that includes, you know, loitering in a transit space, panhandling, unpaid transit fares, sheltering. Studies that they've done and data shows that more than 80 per cent of tickets for loitering in a transit space went to people with no fixed address. And nearly 90 per cent of warnings were related to those daily survival activities, like the unpaid transit fares, sheltering. And the centre has been conducting interviews with people facing these bylaw fines all across the province. And the organization found that they are accumulating debt, hitting barriers in accessing justice and basic services. And some are ending up incarcerated, despite this intention for these fines to not be a pathway to jail.

Mack:
I think this is a really tricky one, right? We wanna have some teeth behind our Public Spaces Bylaw. We wanna be able to enforce the rules there. If we've got a bunch of people maybe come down for an event and then they go outside the event and they're causing a nuisance, they're doing drugs outside, whatever it is, you know, that's a problem. We want to have the tools at our disposal to say that's not okay. You're not allowed to use public spaces in that way. But we don't want to unfairly penalize people who don't have another option here. And it sounds like that's what's happening a little bit, right? These fines are for drug use, but also for this sort of temporary sheltering that you mentioned, right? And the data in the reports are really interesting. The use of transit space for an unrelated purpose, which would be this like temporary sheltering, right? Number of tickets went from 223 to 563 over the course of this time period. So like an increase, but not massive. But warnings went from 4,000, about 4,079, to more than 18,000. So a lot of warnings, right? Which I think reflects the fact that the folks who are getting all of these warnings, we're not expecting them to be able to pay the $25 fine anyway, right? And so it just makes me wonder if there's a better way to solve this than, you know, coming up with this community court system and the circumstance that's gonna go around that. I don't know. Like I said, it's a tricky one because we don't wanna remove the ability for us to enforce the fine and follow up on it, but we've got to find a way to balance the reality, which is that people in our community often don't have anywhere else to go and they're using these facilities for these purposes and we don't want to make things worse for them, right? We wanna enforce the rules, but we don't want to make things cascade into an even worse situation.

Stephanie:
Yeah. I mean, the solution is that they had somewhere else to be. And the city can't really do that. Or just a place to hang out. Yeah.

Mack:
Yeah, housing, you know, living wage supports. Yeah.

Stephanie:
Yeah, so these nominal fines, like you said, they're for drug use, controlled substances is the official term, temporary sheltering and panhandling on a roadway. Yeah, again, all of these fines that I don't think they really expect to get any payment for. I don't know if panhandlers get $25 in their cup when they're on the road.

Mack:
You mentioned that there was also some changes about, you know, the people that stand on their little soapbox outside with the megaphone and make a whole bunch of noise. What specifically are they trying to address there? Just that you can't do that within 10 metres of a doorway. So doorway, bus stop, or in transit facilities, which I don't know, Stephanie, I thought we already had that rule, to be honest.

Stephanie:
Yeah, I'm not really sure. I think that it's hard to find the exact right wording in a bylaw to make it so that it is the least restrictive on someone's right to free speech while also protecting everyone else's rights to not hear hateful rhetoric. Right? Yeah.

Mack:
No, definitely there's a free speech argument there, but there's a bit of a nuisance in our public spaces issue that I think has been brought up consistently enough that I'm glad to see that we're trying to do something about that, you know, through the Public Spaces Bylaw. And then another big change, which connects into what we mentioned about City Centre Mall, is how places like City Centre Mall or the malls, you sort of — kind of public, kind of private spaces, right? Tell us about that.

Stephanie:
Yeah, so administration proposed a new definition to distinguish privately owned public spaces, like malls and like lobbies of buildings and stuff like that, from municipal public spaces that are directly owned and controlled by the city of Edmonton. And this also applies to the part of the bylaw that regulates temporary sheltering. So the report said that limiting certain regulation to municipal public spaces avoids the risk of unintentional overbreadth, provides clarity to the public on the extent of regulation and ensures minimal impairment of activities that may have expressive or other protective aspects. So this was really interesting to me because the first thing I thought when I read this was about City Centre Mall. You know, there's no denying that this mall has struggled with real or perceived safety issues, disorder. As I understand it, I'm not 1,000 per cent sure, but I'm pretty sure this means that like, enforcement officers wouldn't necessarily be able to enforce the Public Spaces Bylaw in City Centre Mall or, you know, in the pedways that kind of connect all of these private buildings. I thought that was really interesting because, you know, it's quite concentrated in there.

Mack:
Yeah, my read on this is that the previous wording in the bylaw was just potentially a bit too broad and covered spaces that the city didn't intend to cover. And so this narrowing of the language is for cities or spaces that are owned or managed by the city. And then they also have some other places like school properties, you know, public utility lots, stuff like that. But these broader, you know, public spaces would still have some of the other rules like physical behaviour, obstruction, obstructing entrances and stuff like that. But in these privately owned public spaces, the city wouldn't be enforcing, say, harassment or temporary sheltering is my read of this, right? Which is an interesting change.

Stephanie:
Well, and, you know, it makes me think of like, you know, if you were doing something against the bylaw in the LRT station, for example, and you started getting chased by an enforcement officer, you'd be just running through the pedway to another building and then go, "You can't get me here." Ha ha ha. Like, is that how it works? I don't know.

Mack:
I don't know. Like, this is bringing up that there is such a range of spaces in your typical trip, right? Downtown, especially, right? But in other places too. But downtown it's very acute, right? So it is really complicated, right? And this one Public Spaces Bylaw to rule all public spaces is pretty challenging, I think, to break down those rules.

Stephanie:
Yeah, but everyone, listeners, have no fear because there will be no funny business in Edmonton City Centre Mall, not after Westrich Pacific implements their new security measures. So co-CEO Richie Lam was speaking at the International Chinatown Conference earlier this week. And he said that in the mall, at every entrance and pedway, they're going to put four security guards, a police officer, a metal detector, and a bag scan at every entrance. He kind of likened it to airport security. And he said to these people, if you look, you know, normal, like any of the people at this Chinatown conference, you'll be waved through no problem. But if you look like you aren't spending money, working or providing a service, like you don't belong here, you will not be allowed. And I'm literally quoting him almost verbatim. I'm not even exaggerating. This is what he said.

Mack:
I have many thoughts about this, Stephanie. One is, like, why do people have to make it so hard to be supporters of them? You know what Westrich Pacific is doing downtown with the investments they've made and the buildings they're building, like I want to support them and say they're, you know, really invested in downtown. They're gonna help make a real difference. And then he goes and makes comments like this, which are highly questionable, really disappointing, actually. Now, that's the first thought. Second thought:
What is there to go to in City Centre Mall currently? I mean, the theatre and Dollarama are the only two things that I've gone to in recent —

Stephanie:
It's literally —

Mack:
Years. Like, I'm not really sure what we're protecting there with these, you know, supposed beefed-up security measures or whatever. So maybe once they build out the mall, there'll be greater activity inside. And then I would suggest you might not need all of this advanced security because you'll have more people and more activity. And as we know, those things address this perception of security for sure. And usually also address the real actual security threats that might take place in somewhere like the mall. So that's the second thought. And then the third thought is, yeah, there's no way this is going to happen. I just cannot see how —

Stephanie:
No, that was one — I agree.

Mack:
Putting a metal detector or a bag scan at the entrance and having the rules be something like, "If you look like you belong, you're good to go." How will that pass any human rights complaint? Like, there's just no way. That just smacks of discrimination and racism and all of the worst things, right? Like —

Stephanie:
Seriously, sorry, poors. You can't — get out. You're not spending money? Get out. You're poor.

Mack:
Not going to happen. And then a police officer at every entrance? Like, are they gonna pay for that?

Stephanie:
That's what they said. So good luck. Yeah, I agree.

Mack:
I am excited about what could happen in the mall. Stuff like this just makes it hard to want to support what they're doing. Like, this is just a ridiculous take, in my opinion.

Stephanie:
Yeah, I 100 per cent agree. I don't think that it's actually gonna happen. I think that he was talking to a very specific audience at this conference, and someone was recording it, probably really innocently, because it was an interesting conversation. But now there's all these news stories going out about how they do not want a certain population in their mall. And I totally agree with what you say, the human rights complaints, because that's, like, insane. But the thing is also is that if they want more people to go to this mall, I do not think that having it turn into, like, a police surveillance state is the answer. Like, today, I'm now working downtown in my little office and my best friend also works downtown. So we met up and we went for a little walk and we got a sweet treat at Cookies by George and got a little coffee. It was nice, just a nice little stroll through the mall. If I have to submit to a cavity search to get into City Centre Mall, I will not be going there anymore. Like, it's humiliating to — I mean, but maybe I wouldn't be because I look well-off enough. I look — I'm just a nice young woman going for a coffee in the mall. Maybe if I came in on a day off and I didn't look — I didn't have, like, a nice coat on, I would have to be searched. But yeah, I don't know. Like, I don't think it's gonna happen. It's like a humiliating thing to subject people to. And yeah, I agree with you, Mack.

Mack:
Yeah. It seems to run counter to the whole idea of we're gonna invest in this place and make it a place that people want to spend time. Like, nobody loves going through metal detectors. We have to do it in certain places because of other security rules, but it's not the thing we think about when we're like, "We're gonna go to this place for an enjoyable experience." I should quickly say there's lots of other things I have done in the mall. Of course, there's coffee shops and Winners and, you know, vehicle registration and other stuff, but compared to what it used to be, and compared, I think, to what the vision is, you know, there's a lot less reasons for activity in the mall today. So that's one thing. I have one other thought to share about this, Stephanie. I haven't done it for a number of years now, but I used to volunteer for the homeless count quite frequently. And I would be one of the people that would be walking around the street asking people the questions that are part of the count survey. And what they teach you, the volunteers, is not to make assumptions based on someone's appearance because you never know. Somebody might look well-off. They might be wearing a nice suit, but they don't actually have a place to call their own that night. And it was a really eye-opening experience to be, you know, one of the people walking around just asking everybody you run into in your designated, you know, route about their housing situation. And it really reinforced for me that you can't judge a book by its cover. And, you know, I really don't think this is a healthy idea that Richie Lam has raised here for City Centre Mall.

Stephanie:
And I have one last thing I want to do too. Didn't a big part of their business plan, isn't it, activating the streets and putting doors along all the outside, like where the Bay is and like making more entrances out onto the street instead of it being that closed-off mall, mall, mall feeling? So are they gonna put — like, are each of those stores gonna have a metal detector? You know, I think about the Shoppers Drug Mart that opens out right onto the street and lets you into City Centre Mall. Is that gonna have, you know, "Security brought to you by Loblaws," like —

Mack:
And I'm all for more street-facing interfaces. Like, I think it would make that whole experience of that mall much more positive, right? So yeah, it's not feasible to outfit all of those with security, I don't think. Okay, well, downtown security is always a hot topic. Another hot topic these days is data centres. And it seems like the data centre debate has finally made its way to Edmonton. We, of course, heard about the big Meta data centre in Sturgeon County recently, but now I understand we're talking about a potential data centre within City of Edmonton limits, right?

Stephanie:
Yes. So this would not be the first data centre, period, in Edmonton, but we have many smaller data centres, server rooms, stuff like that. But this is a much bigger proposal. Walton Global Investments, an American company, has submitted an application that would enable a data centre campus in the Edmonton Energy and Technology Park, which is north of Anthony Henday Drive and west of Manning Drive, up kind of near the Horse Hill neighbourhood. So the company plans to facilitate a master-planned, hyperscale-ready digital infrastructure project in the city of Edmonton, designed to become one of the largest data centre and compute-oriented industrial districts in North America. This park is part of the Industrial Heartland's designated industrial zone, as is the Meta AI data centre that you mentioned. So how do we know this is happening? Well, Walton has applied to amend the area structure plan for the EETP and switching around some of the zoning rules. There's a couple of different zones. Two of them are the medium industrial precinct and the petrochemical precinct. So the company proposes adding data centres as a permitted use in the medium industrial precinct and then switching some of the petrochemical land to medium industrial. I'm not 100 per cent sure why this needs to be done because you can already do a large-scale data centre in the petrochemical area. And I emailed Walton and Stantec, which is an Edmonton company that wrote the application on Walton's behalf. They did not get back to me. And then I emailed the city and they said, "Ask the companies," and I said, "Please help me."

Mack:
Presumably might make some of the requirements for the zone relaxed or a little bit easier to deal with. I don't know. Hopefully they'll get back to us and we'll keep you informed.

Stephanie:
Yeah, I think it has just something to do with like land assembly, bringing like needed infrastructure to where it needs to be, whatever. But yeah, so city council — Edmonton city administration is seeking online feedback on the proposed changes until Oct. 25. We'll put the link in the show notes for you. And then as with all plan amendments and rezonings and everything like that, it will go to a public hearing for debate and a vote by city council.

Mack:
And I think if you look currently, all the feedback is pretty negative, as you would expect, given the current public discourse around the world really, but especially here in North America on big data centres like this. I have a lot of thoughts about this one too, Stephanie. But first I just want to ask why the EETP, the Edmonton Energy and Technology Park? What does the application say about why they want to do it there specifically?

Stephanie:
Yeah, we're gonna get real nerdy here, you guys. So I love talking about industrial investment. I think it's so interesting. To back up a little bit, the city has identified a need to increase industrial investment in the city of Edmonton itself because they can tax those properties more, and then typically, generally, they consume less services. Not sure if that's the case with data centres. It's kind of up in the air. But anyways, yeah, it seemed to be a boon for city finances because yeah, you can tax them a little bit higher. But the thing is that Edmonton has been losing its share of the regional industrial investment. You know, companies go out to Acheson, which is in Parkland County. So Parkland County gets that share of tax revenue. They go to Leduc County, Nisku. They get so much industrial revenue per capita. Or they go to Strathcona County, up to Fort Saskatchewan. All of these areas get much more industrial investment. And there's lots of reasons for that. One reason that I learned when I was reporting on this a few years ago is that literally the soil is just better in the region compared to Edmonton. And then we also don't have that many big spaces for large — you know, large serviced land with infrastructure hooked up to it. And yeah, we're just a little bit more limited here. And then another reason is maybe because they say we're not as, quote unquote, "business-friendly." So with that in mind, there's the Edmonton Energy and Technology Park. It's up in the northeast, and it was originally envisioned as this, like, eco-friendly petrochemical plant. I guess the reason why it was eco-friendly is that with all of these companies clustering together, it was going to have less of an impact on the environment. That's as far as I understand it. But this application says that the EETP has not developed as it was originally envisioned when the plan for it was approved in 2010, because demand for petrochemical facilities has decreased in the region. And then because these lands have been undeveloped, it's kind of been a spiral of like no development. So there's no interest, even less development, etc. So the application says that a significant data centre campus is a, quote, "critical opportunity for the city to ensure it capitalizes on a multibillion-dollar investment to kickstart development in a historically underdeveloped area." This park is the city's largest amount of unserviced industrial land, and stakeholders have indicated that the park likely won't see investment until the appropriate infrastructure is in place to attract companies. And so I think what's an important distinction to make here too is that Walton does not build data centres. They build the infrastructure that makes them possible. They just recently or in the last couple of years or so, they have sold big tracts of land in Texas and in Virginia to builders of data centres. So it's not like Meta, which is building the actual data centre, they're just making the infrastructure.

Mack:
Okay. So this is an area of the city that I actually have done quite a bit of reporting on in the past, right? And part of the discussion about 12 years ago now was about the Horse Hill ASP and what we should be doing there. And the EETP was a part of that conversation. And a lot of the debate at the time was if we're gonna get all of these people working in the EETP, if this is going to develop as this industrial area, they're gonna need a place to live. We're gonna have to build more housing over here. And there's a big fight, right, about losing the agricultural land that is up in the northeast part of the city. We had class 1, class 2, class 3 soils up there. We lost a lot of the class 1 soil. Like this is really, really a unique area of our region for agricultural activity. And, you know, people were understandably quite upset about the potential loss of that for development, right? For urban sprawl, essentially. And so this debate was taking place around do we want to continue this spiral where, you know, we don't have enough industrial, so we got to build more, but then those folks need a place to live, so we build more housing and we just keep sprawling and sprawling and sprawling, right? Neither of those areas, the residential or the industrial, have really fully developed. But there's a winner here, Stephanie, if this happens. And that is the land speculator that is Walton, right? This is what they did. They bought up a bunch of this land over the years, and they were the ones pushing for this development to take place up here. That EETP was envisioned as a bit of a, "We're gonna catch the byproducts of the petrochemical refinery stuff that is nearby, like what's happening in the Industrial Heartland. We can, you know, capture some of the byproducts of that and turn it into an industrial area." Has not developed that way for some of the reasons like you mentioned. But Walton still owns a bunch of that land. They still want to get some return on that investment. Who's spending a lot of money on land these days? Data centre developers. I guess this is their plan to exit it. So I don't think the city of Edmonton should be going, you know, going out of its way to change the rules here unless it actually makes sense for the land use of that part of our city, right? That is what city council gets to decide on, is how is this land going to be used? What are the rules by which it is going to be used? There's provincial bodies that regulate power generation and electricity hookups and all the rest of it. I think the city should focus on the things that, you know, it is responsible for deciding. And I don't think we have any obligation to land speculators to help them exit their investments, whether it's Walton or anybody else, right? And so I'm not keen on this data centre, but not for the reason that a lot of people are opposed to data —

Stephanie:
Ha ha ha.

Mack:
Centres. I see in your notes that there's more to come on this as well. So it's not just the decision about this proposed rezoning. It's also we've got a report, maybe, or a motion coming from a city councillor about data centres.

Stephanie:
Mm-hmm. So Councillor Ashley Salvador, and I know that she's also working with a couple other councillors on this motion, but she's set to introduce a motion on Tuesday at the council meeting asking for a report on regulating and restricting large-scale data centres, including an analysis of land use and environmental impacts of the facilities. It would also include information about jurisdictional authority, regulatory framework and governance, and options to remove data centres from standard industrial zones. The motion will also ask for information about how data centres in the wider region could impact the city of Edmonton. Crazy timing that, you know, this company is trying to make it much easier to build them, whereas council is, like, trying, maybe gonna potentially try to limit them. But yeah, that discussion is coming up next week.

Mack:
And Edmonton would be on side with an increasing number of jurisdictions around North America if they decided we don't want these here, right? Like the opposition to data centres, in most cases, I think is not actually about the physical buildings themselves, but is about this wider public backlash to artificial intelligence, to the environmental impacts of these structures, right? Another interesting thing to think about with the EETP, that park, as I mentioned, was envisioned as having quite a bit of employment. So much so that proponents were arguing we needed to build all this residential right across the freeway. Data centres are not known for high employment. They take very few humans actually to operate, and probably the number of humans required is only going to go down over time. And so, as a, you know, use — you know, this argument about kickstarting the development of this area, I'm not sure I'd buy that as a strong case for why we would want to allow this change to go forward. Though as you say, I guess technically they could already build the data centre anyway, right? Which really begs the question, why even take this to the public where you're gonna get this kind of public response that's gonna be quite negative, right?

Stephanie:
Exactly. There's no way that they were going into this. Like, "We can't wait for everyone to come and support our data centre." Like, come on, be for real. But then the thing is, is that, like, this was a few months ago, but this is, like, a really deep cut. Like, if you read every tech roundup and regional roundup, you will understand who this is. But Mark Plamondon, who is the executive director of Alberta's Industrial Heartland Association, he said something like, "I don't understand what the blowback is. I don't get why people hate these data centres so much. They're awesome." And I'm like, yeah, the guy who gets paid to promote this sort of development is gonna say that. But yeah.

Mack:
I mean, they're awesome for areas like the Industrial Heartland, which he's responsible for. Like, makes a lot of sense. But for everyday impact on people who live around there, maybe not so much. I mean, it's questionable.

Stephanie:
Yeah. Yeah. All of the comments are pretty much unanimously against these. There's a handful that don't mind them. And then another thing that I just wanted to point to is I'm gonna link to a really good post or article from Culture Alberta. And they point out a lot about the unanswered questions because it's just the infrastructure and not the actual centre itself. There's, you know, there's no published figure on how much power it would need, how much water it would use, what it would cost, how many buildings there would be, how many permanent jobs it would create. And then it also goes into the chain of approvals for data centres, which I find really interesting because in my reading about data centres, it seems like a lot of them are being fought on the municipal level. Like, of course, there's the provincial level that's, like, we're gonna — we wanna attract $100 billion of data centres in the next five years. But on the municipal level, if the, you know, if the town, city, county, whatever says, no, you can't build this here, then —

Mack:
It is my understanding that most of the regulations that apply to data centres are, in Canada, provincial or municipal, right? And the province, there's the Alberta Electric System Operator. They're gonna say whether or not you're allowed to hook up to the grid, right? There's the Alberta Utilities Commission, which is, you know, really regulating those things like power generation. Lots of these data centres aren't just the facility where the computers run, they're also associated power generation facilities. The province needs to approve that. There's the Alberta Energy Regulator, which might be required to approve things like if there's a natural gas hookup, for example, to the data centre for part of its power generation. We know in Alberta, the province is unlikely to say no. They have a stated data centre strategy to build and attract the world's data centres. The municipalities, what do they get to do? They get to regulate what should be allowed on the land and under what rules. And so that's the place where you're more likely to run into opposition because municipalities, it's questionable if they're going to benefit from the existence of these data centres, given the lack of jobs that they create, the uncertainty around the amount of property tax they might be able to collect for those things. You know, the benefits to a municipality may be quite a bit more minimal than they are to the province. And so it makes sense that we would see opposition at that level. We'll see how this plays out.

Stephanie:
Yeah. Yes, very complex. Go ahead.

Mack:
So we'll expect back a motion from Councillor Salvador and presumably that'll have some information coming back from administration at some point on that. When is this amendment to the rezoning expected to be considered?

Stephanie:
It's not sure because it just says there will be a public hearing in the future. You know, these timelines can be pretty long or they can be short. It just kind of depends. But yes, we'll put a link in the show notes if you feel like giving your feedback. And yeah, I'm sure we will keep hearing much more about this.

Mack:
Yeah, and stay tuned to On the Agenda for when that does come up at public hearing. And Stephanie will bring you all of the information you need to know about that. Okay, we have one other item we're gonna talk about this week, Stephanie. This one is about the Transit app, which is gonna be discussed by executive committee when this episode comes out. So we'll have to follow up on what they ultimately decide. But tell us what they're looking at related to this application.

Stephanie:
Right, so executive committee will review a proposal to offer the premium version of the Transit app — now, the name of the app is just Transit. It's kind of confusing if you're not reading it — but Transit app to all Edmontonians. So currently about 85,000 riders use the third-party app to plan their transit trips in Edmonton. And administration is now seeking approval for a four-year contract with the company that'll cost up to $2.5 million. That would provide free access to the premium version of the app to all Edmonton region riders. Now, Mack, I understand you would benefit from this deal. Is that correct?

Mack:
Well, I suppose in that I'm a user of the Transit app and I quite like it. I use the free version. There's a few different ways you can use the app if you've never seen it before. So one is it'll show you nearby routes, and it gives you the real-time information about when the next bus is coming. This is the thing that I find most useful. It's like I'm standing there on Jasper Avenue. It tells me how long until the next 2 or 5 are coming down the street, right? And you can look on the map and you can see it. There's another feature where if you tap in and you say, "Now I'm on the bus," it'll kind of give you reminders about like how many stops away you are from your destination. If you do that, it'll ask you questions about your trip, like, was there a garbage can at the stop? Was there a bench? Was there a shelter? How's the bus? Is it full? Is it clean? Do you feel safe? You know, these kinds of questions. So they collect this data from riders. I'm usually riding routes that I'm very familiar with. So I don't usually start the GO feature, which is the one that asks you all those questions. I just look for when the time is coming, right? And you could use Google Maps to do the same thing. You know, I just find the Transit app interface quite friendly. So I guess yes, in that way I would benefit because then I could use some of the premium features, which are things like scheduling in advance. You get to look at more routes and data options than you can in the free version. But I don't know, Stephanie. My hot take on this is that we already know ETS gets some of this data. Carrie Hotton-MacDonald has told us in the past that they have access to some of this data. I'm all for the city of Edmonton paying something to get additional data or better data from the company. Like the company's operating a service here, there's fees associated with that. I'm okay that the city is going to pay something to get better data back, you know, in a more formal relationship with the app. I think that's a positive thing overall. Buying premium access for riders, I don't know about that. This feels a little bit like the city picking winners, which I don't think we should get in the habit of doing. I think we make the data available and we let people build a variety of experiences with it. And then the market can decide if there's a popular app and whether or not people want to pay for it. I'm not sure that we should have the city of Edmonton subsidizing this. It's like if we're gonna subsidize premium version of the Transit app, why aren't we subsidizing premium versions of some of the parking apps that exist or premium versions of — you know, there's lots of other things we could be doing to buy people premium versions of. Why not get everybody in the city of Edmonton a premium Taproot membership if we're gonna do this? You know what I mean? Like, I don't —

Stephanie:
True.

Mack:
I feel like it's a bit of a line that I'm not sure we should be crossing. What do you think?

Stephanie:
Well, also, how many low-income Edmontonians could $2.5 million pay for their monthly transit fare? Do you know what I mean? Like, I'm sure — it's reminding me of — I know some arguments against e-bike rebates are it's only helping people that can already kind of afford an e-bike, and instead use that $2,500 rebate to buy 25 $100 bikes. Do you know what I mean? Just put that money towards improving transit instead of giving this app access to like people who have a phone, because not everyone does. And also the thing is that I was like looking into this app a little bit more. First of all, yes, you can access almost all of those premium features. I can access them using Google Maps on my phone. Second of all, if you can't, there's a little thing there that says, hey, if you can't afford the Royale version of the app, just send us an email and we'll set you up with the free, like the premium version for free. So if you really do want the premium version and you can't afford it, then there's an answer there. Yeah. $2.5 million is a lot of money for this.

Mack:
$625,000 a year that could be going to something else, right? So I understand that ETS says this isn't gonna increase, you know, the tax levy or anything like that, that there's already money available for this in some way. I don't think it changes what you're saying, which is we could invest that money on other things. I guess what I would wanna know is how much of that fee is for both the data and how much of that fee is about the Royale version. You know, if at the end of the day, you know, because they already essentially will give it away if you ask, they're essentially just throwing in Royale for a negligible fee, then I guess fine. But I'm just worried about that precedent that, you know, we're gonna pay to get a premium version of something for everybody. It's like if we're gonna do it here, why not in all of these other areas, right? And I don't love that. So —

Stephanie:
Yeah. And also it's for all Edmonton region. So those dirty, stinky, non- —

Mack:
Which is like, you know, even more questionable.

Stephanie:
Edmonton freeloaders that just use Edmonton's services. Just joking.

Mack:
I'm wondering what Councillor Paquette thinks about this, right? Quite vocal about free riders from surrounding municipalities, you know. Yeah.

Stephanie:
Yeah, and Mr. Janz and yeah.

Mack:
Which also makes me think that maybe the Royale is actually not what we're paying for here. And like I said, I think if we're paying for a more formal relationship with the company to get better data, I can understand why that would be a beneficial thing for us to do. Okay, well we'll find out what executive committee decides. That'll be probably in the next On the Agenda. And if not, we'll bring you a little update too on the podcast next week. Startup Week is gonna be fun. There's lots of stuff going on. I know several of the Taproot team will be out and about. If you are at Startup Week and you see us, come and say hello. We'd love to talk to you. Love to hear what you're up to these days. If you like our show, please tell a friend, send it around, give us a rating on your platform of choice. Let us know if you like the video version, if you use the video version. We're seeing lots of people downloading this or watching it on YouTube. So that's interesting. But if you have any feedback for us, you know, hit reply when you get the email to this or send us a note. hello@taprootedmonton.ca. We'd love to hear from you. Okay, Stephanie and I will be back with another episode next week. Until then, I'm Mack.

Stephanie:
I'm Stephanie.

Mack:
And we're...

Both:
Speaking Municipally.