Ric McIver, left, and Naheed Nenshi.  By Markham Hislop, editor 

Labour Day weekend is generally considered the official start of the civic election campaign, even though most candidates have been making the rounds for several months now.  But the mayor’s race may have gone from simmer to low boil early with Naheed Nenshi’s fiesty response yesterday to Ric McIver’s recently released vision statement for Calgary. Continue Reading

By Markham Hislop, editor

Alberta is getting tough on drunk drivers, the police tell us.  The RCMP and Sherrifs will be cracking down on drinking and driving throughout August.  But will all that extra attention actually produce results? Continue Reading

By Markham Hislop, editor

As if the race to replace Dave Bronconnier isn’t crowded enough, a new challenger for the mayor’s chair leapt into the fray Wednesday: ex-CTV news anchor Barb Higgins.  Higgins is certainly popular and will have plenty of name recognition.  But is she a game-changer and can she shake up what has been a fairly quiet campaign thus far? Continue Reading

By Markham Hislop, editor 

The City of Calgary is short $60 million for next year’s budget.  City Hall has been asked to tighten its belt, with a five per cent reduction to all departments.  Here’s a question for all you voters out there: should the police department be part of the cuts?

That question was the basis for a brouhaha this week when five organizations (Calgary Chamber of Commerce, Calgary Crime Stoppers, the Calgary Downtown Association, the National Energy Security Professionals, Penn West Energy) bought a full page ad in the Calgary Herald opposing any cuts to the Calgary Police Service budget.  The ad predicted that less money for CPS will mean fewer officers, which will lead to more crime.

Given that Calgary is in the run up to the October civic election, the ad attracted a lot of attention.  As it should.  How the City allocates taxpayer’s money is an important issue.

And that is the real heart of the debate.  How does the City of Calgary decide where to spend money?  Or to make cuts?

Alderman and mayoral candidate Ric McIver says the City’s budget process is badly broken.  That’s why he voted for a motion earlier this month that asked Council to pre-approve the police department’s 2011 budget. 

“Public safety trumps everything else,” he said in an interview.  “I’ve always said our bogus budgeting process is the problem.”

Faced with a projected shortfall for 2011, City Manager Owen Torbert sent a letter to all department and agency heads asking them to consider what a five per cent budget reduction would look like in their department.  According to McIver, the “what if scenario” request was taken as a directive by most of the City departments, including the police commission, which is responsible for CPS’s budget.

Police Chief Rick Hansen’s answer is, the loss of 120 officers.  Calgary already has one of the highest ratio of police officers to number of citizens in Canada, one per 630, ranking ninth of out of 11 major cities, according to the department’s business plan.  In fact, a number of mayoral candidates have told me they support adding another 500 members to the CPS ranks.

It’s easy to see why organizations and corporations concerned about public safety would jump on the bandwagon.  But not everyone thinks the CPS should get what it wants.

Ron Kneebone, economics professor at the School of Public Policy, says he would have preferred the City Manager ask all departments, including the CPS, to contemplate budget cut scenarios of five, 10 and 20 per cent.  This would allow senior management to properly determine which departments can be cut deepest while maintaining acceptable service levels.  Ralph Klein conducted a similar process in the early 1990s, he says, and it worked very well.

“The idea that the CPS might take no cut is an invitation to budget laxity,” he said.  “I simply don’t believe that every nickel is spent wisely.”

Corporations undertake this kind of budgeting process all the time and Kneebone commends City managers for taking the initiative.  He says it bears some resemblance to zero-based budgeting, which has been pooh-poohed in the past by City Hall management. (In 2008 then City Treasurer Eric Sawyer explained to me in great detail why zero-based budgetting was a bad idea for Calgary.)

Susan Quinn thinks zero-based budgeting is the way to go for the City, even though it will be ardous and if done properly could take a year or more.  She is an associate professor at the Bissette School of Business and she says the process requires managers to justify every expenditure in their budget, eliminating those that are wasteful and looking for innovative ways to stretch resources as far as possible.  Contrast this with current budget processes, which simply assume existing spending and tack on a percentage increase.

Not surprisingly, McIver has long been an advocate of zero-based budgetting.  He says if he wins the mayor’s race one of this first priorities will be fixing the City’s busted budgeting system.

Most days there might be a half dozen people in Calgary (Kneebone and Quinn among them) who care a fig how the bean counters at City Hall do their job.  But now the arcane topic of accounting and budgeting has real world consequences: the possible loss of police officers on the street.  And citizens should be concerned.

I’ve been hearing for months now how crime is down in Calgary.  The stats, however, suggest otherwise. 

There have been some areas of improvement.  Murders are down from last year, as is aggravated assault.  But many other types of person crime are up, often with double digit increases, as are some property, vice and other crimes. 

Clearly, this is not a time to be taking police officers off the street.  Ward 6 alderman Joe Connelly, also running for the mayor’s chair, let loose a two-page volley on the subject that rolled into my inbox late yesterday afternoon.

“Can your children, parents, family and friends wait six months for common sense to be restored in the name of public safety?  Can we afford to disrupt the successful momentum our Police Service has worked to build over the past two years? I am not willing to take that chance.  Public safety does not happen overnight,” he said in his release.

The only way to reconcile the concern for public safety with the need to balance the books is to reform City Hall’s budgeting process. 

Zero-based budgetting is no fun for managers.  Every expert I’ve talked to says it’s a lot of work and takes a long time.  But once the process is in place the administration should be able to prioritize spending cuts and know where spending can be reduced and efficiencies achieved.

If that keeps police officers in their patrol cars while balancing the books, I think we should do it.  And that means all the departments, including the Calgary Police Service.  The CPS shouldn’t be exempt from having to justify how it spends taxpayer’s money.

By Markham Hislop, editor 

The federal government is endangering the lives of Calgarians by not taking simple, easy and inexpensive measures to stem the flow of stolen weapons into the hands of criminals.  Instead of regularly reviewing Calgary gun stores, the agency responsible only investigates when there is a complaint or charges are laid.  That’s simply not good enough.  This is a case where an ounce of prevention is worth a ton of cure.

Last year it was Wholesale Sports on Heritage Drive, where a female employee was passing handguns out the back door to a male accomplice.  A total of 56 handguns were allegedly stolen by the pair.  Store management didn’t have a clue the guns were missing, even though the thefts had been occuring for seven months.  It took the recovery of two of the guns by police to bring the operation to light.

The Chief Provincial Firearms Officer investigated and identified a number of deficiencies in the way Wholesale Sports managed its firearms inventories.  The retailer remedied those deficiencies at its Heritage Drive store, as well as other stores throughout the province. 

When the thefts were uncovered, the Calgary Police Service called for all Calgary firearms retailers to be audited.  If crooks (likely with gang ties, since one of the stolen handguns was recovered in Edmonton after a gang-related offence) targetted one gun store it only made sense they would target others.

Now, it appears likely they have stolen weapons from another retailer.  We just don’t know which one yet. 

On June 22, plainclothes officers were tipped off that a weapons deal was taking place in a southeast parking lot.  During the bust and subsequent investigation, which included a house in Edgemont and another vehicle, police recovered 16 weapons, including a 9 mm semi-automatic machine gun and eight handguns. 

Four men are facing a total of 104 weapons-related offences.  Two of those men have ties to a local shooting range and gun store, The Shooting Edge.  Four year employee Mikkel Rydstrom-Poulsen, 25, is described by Cox as an excellent employee.  Andrew O’Neal Cox, 30, no relation to the owner, is a former employee charged with one count of weapons trafficking.  As well, Anthony Stephan, 33, is charged with 55 weapons-related offences, and Ahmed Zaghloul, 24, has been charged with 24 offences.

J.R. Cox, CEO of The Shooting Edge

J.R. Cox, CEO of The Shooting Edge, says the Alberta Chief Provincial Firearms Officer has conducted its review of his business and given it a clean bill of health. 

Cox seems to be the poster boy for responsible gun retailers.  He speaks passionately about the need to reassure the public that retailers are doing everything possible to keep guns out of the hands of criminals.  He points proudly to the many checks and balances in his inventory management system that are designed to ensure every weapon is accounted for.

But even Cox admits he tightened up a few things after the debacle at Wholesale Sports sent shivers through the local industry.  And he agrees that retailers who aren’t managing their firearms inventory properly should be punished.

“If a retailer isn’t looking after their inventory, then maybe they should be losing their business licence for a certain period of time, not (be) allowed to  have certain firearms on the premises,” he said.

The problem is, how will we know if a retailer is properly managing its inventory or not?  Under the current system, the CFO only reviews a retailer’s operation if there is a complaint.  CFO Morris Sawchuk told me during an interview that he simply does not have the resources to conduct regular reviews.

I asked the RCMP in Ottawa why more resources couldn’t be allocated for regular audits by the CFO.  Their answer was classic bureaucratic bologne: CFOs aren’t required to conduct annual reviews under the Firearms Act, but the RCMP always makes sure enough resources are available to protect the public.

Yeah, right.

So I asked Jason Kenney, Harper cabinet minister, to take it up with his colleagues.  He wrote then public safety minister Peter Van Loan in June, 2009 suggesting that this was an issue warranting some investigation.  Van Loan never responded. 

In August Van Loan appeared at an unrelated Calgary press conference and I asked him about CFO funding and annual reviews.  The minister initially thought CFOs were provincial jurisdiction!  When I reminded him they were governed by federal legislation and administered by the RCMP, under his jurisdiction, Van Loan huffily replied that I should take it up with the RCMP.

Talk about passing the buck.

My point then, and now, is that extra funding for the CFO to conduct regular reviews costs very little compared to the cost of hiring extra police to cope with the consequence of stolen weapons in the hands of criminals and gangs.  Regular reviews are the low hanging fruit, the easy stuff. 

J.R. Cox agrees, he just doesn’t want retailers like himself, who have good inventory management practices, to be burdened with extra red tape.  He argues that stores that don’t meet a minimum set of standards should be reviewed by the CFO more regularly, perhaps even every six months.  If the CFO targets the poor managers, then far fewer new resources will be required.

That makes sense to me.  But with the current level of funding the CFO can’t provide even that minimal level of oversight.  For all Calgarians know, there could be dozens of other retailers who have been targetted by criminal organizations and hundreds of weapons stolen that haven’t yet been identified.  And would the retailers contact the police if they did discover a theft?

Those 16 guns police seized on June 22 had to come from somewhere.  Given the complete meltdown of Wholesale Sports’ firearms inventory management it is quite conceiveable they came from a Calgary gun store.  Maybe they were stolen from a retailer with lax inventory practices that hasn’t discovered the theft yet.  Or a number of retailers.  The police are looking into it, but won’t comment on an active investigation.  

Aren’t more reviews by the CFO a small price to pay to keep illegal guns off the street?  How many police officers have to be hired to deal with the 56 handguns (several of which police have already tied to gang activities) and now the alleged weapons ring represented by the recent charges?  How much do they cost?

Why are we spending hundreds of millions of dollars for new police officers and we refuse to spend thousands to do the easy preventative work?

If there was ever a case to be made for an ounce of preventation avoiding a pound of cure…

If you want to read a thorough discussion of this issue, search Wholesale Sports on the Beacon.  I’ve written a dozen news stories and opinion pieces, but so far no one in Ottawa seems to be listening.  Jason Kenney appeared to be supportive, but the issue seems to have slid off his plate.

Call or email your MP.  A small change in policy and a few more dollars can make our community a safer place.  More audits of guns stores isn’t as sexy as hiring more cops, but it makes sense and doesn’t cost a lot.

By Markham Hislop, editor 

Quebecor’s application to the CRTC to turn SunTV into a 24-hour news station, dubbed Fox News North by Canadian wags, is generating a lot of negative commentary, some if it in the Beacon, and most of which I would usually agree with.  But in this case, I must reluctantly dissent.

Fox News is an odious facsimile of a real news organization.  Much of the current rancorous American political culture can be traced back to the poisonous crap that passes for news and editorial opinion on Fox.

Some of my American friends on Facebook regularly post links to Fox News video clips, often with an inflammatory title that “proves” something outrageous about President Obama or the like.  Occasionally, I’ll watch.  More accurately, I used to watch.  In every case what was presented as news turned out to be a vacuous rant that had little or nothing to do with the topic at hand. 

I recall one in particular.  The news story was supposedly that the American government was opposing laying charges against TARP officials for corruption of some sort.  The Fox talking head never explained the facts of the case, but used the supposed story as the launch pad to claim it was “proof” that Obama was lining the pockets of  his friends and his own as well.  It was the furthest thing from news I can imagine.  But held up as gospel by those who commented on it.

During the five years I spent working in the U.S. oil patch, I got to see first hand the effect of Fox News down in the trenches.  My buddies, knowing I was Canadian and not your garden variety Republican type, loved to debate politics over lunch.  Their favorite source of information on all things political?  Fox News, naturally.

Later on I would read up on the issues in reputable news sources and discover that the Fox perspective was incorrect, skewed or just plain made up.  Kind of like my example from the Facebook story.

And don’t get me started on the Glenn Becks and Bill O’Reillys.  I like different ideological perspectives if the analysis and argument is intelligent, thoughtful and well researched.  The clowns that pass for editorialists on Fox are, well, clowns.  They practice political theatre of the absurd.  It’s slick, pushes all kinds of cultural buttons and appeals to a great many Americans, but it also degrades polical discourse and cheapens the democratic process.

So, do I want Ottawa to approve Fox TV North?  Absolutely not.  And I’m not alone.

Beacon tech columnist Greg Johnston, opined in a letter to the editor that “we can anticipate info-tainment, with inflammatory rhetoric and partisanship baked right in to the reporting, so every news story can be seen as a chance to joust and skewer opposing views and amplify conflict and disagreements. That might make for good ratings, just like “reality” TV manages, but it is hard to argue it makes for better quality political discourse amongst citizens, or in our houses of government.”

Murray Dobbin, the left-leaning rabble rouser, said in a Beacon column that if the CRTC approves the application it will be ”another giant leap” in the Republicanization of Canada. 

I think both writers are correct.  Canadian news may well be “boring,” as the new channel’s organizer, Kory Teneycke, describes it, but it’s generally credible, accurate and unbiased, at least compared to Fox News.  Degrading news to info-tainment is not a good thing for Canadian civil society.  And importing more Republican-style ideology into Canada isn’t necessarily a good thing either, though judging by the National Post’s continual financial travails there is a limited market for right-wing analysis.

But as much as I might agree with Johnston and Dobbin, as the publisher of the Beacon I find myself in a quandry.  Do I want a quasi-independent government body deciding what news is allowable in Canada and what isn’t? 

I started the Beacon 20 months ago as an independent news source covering local and community news in Calgary.  I simply created a web site, recruited columnists, found a news wire, sold a few ads, and began writing news stories.  The Beacon now attracts almost a thousand readers a day during the week and our readership is growing steadily.  We seem to have found an audience.

Should Quebecor be denied the same right?  Should the CRTC deny Quebecor’s application just because some Canadians, maybe even a majority of them, don’t like the political tone of the proposed station?  (Assuming that it even turns out to be Fox News North.  Most critics are working on that assumption, but I haven’t seen the details yet.)

The scale is different, of course, but the principle is the same.  Should government be in the business of regulating news?  It might be a stretch, but the CRTC does have some authority over the Canadian Internet.  Here’s an interesting hypothetical: What if the CRTC had told me it wouldn’t approve the Calgary Beacon because it didn’t like my politics?  Or some Calgarians had complained about my political leanings, which were then used to deny my application?

Arguing my own self-interest, I don’t want the CRTC anywhere near independent media.  The Beacon should be allowed to sink or swim on its own merits. 

There are two conditions the Beacon needs to meet.  Can we produce a product Calgarians want to read?  And can we create a value proposition for advertisers so that we can generate revenue and be financially viable?  If we meet those conditions, and we have, then government should keep its nose out of our business.

If the argument applies to the Beacon, it’s pretty hard to suggest it doesn’t apply to Quebecor. 

I loath the idea of Fox News North.  Fox News has damaged, perhaps irreparably, American civil society.  But if I have to choose between the evil of excessive government control of Canadian media and the risk posed by Quebecor’s new TV channel, I reluctantly support the latter.

The best case scenario would be for Quebecor to get its approval, launch Fox News North and then have so few viewers that the enterprise is deemed a bust and it goes off the air. 

I just pray the Canadian market for idiot talking heads is a small one.

By Markham Hislop, editor 

Wednesday evening the committee appointed to find an operator for the $70 million S.E. recreation centre held its first meeting since Ald. Linda Fox-Mellway’s motion two weeks ago drastically changed its mandate.  Chair Stephanie Campbell says no one resigned, though apparently more than a few considered doing so.  Continue Reading

By Markham Hislop, editor 

Long weekends are supposed to be relaxing, but I just can’t help getting worked up about stuff.  Pity my long-suffering wife.  Next month it will be 21 years that she has been enduring my fulminating and kvetching.  Continue Reading

Murray Ost, Glanbrook Community Assoc. 
Markham Hislop with Anjali Aman 

The land is owned by the City of Calgary, the City planning department is assessing the development application and the developer is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the City.  Did it not occur to anyone at City Hall that the residents of Glenbrook might think tearing up part of their dog park to build condos is a gigantic conflict of interest, and that said residents might organize public protests and start Facebook pages to protect green space in a community that has far less green space than most established communities?  Continue Reading

So who is right about BFI Canada’s landfill in Chaparral?  One side says the company hasn’t fixed the problems with birds and garbage and the City should deny it a permit extension, the community association says BFI is doing everything it can and a promised $1.75 million trust fund from the company will be a big benefit to the community. Continue Reading