Interview with the Councillor
Edmonton’s city council recently committed to funding the Chinatown Healthy Streets Operation Centre, a $15M hub meant to deploy additional officers into Chinatown. The vote passed overwhelmingly, with a number of councillors expressing valid opposition but voting in favour anyway.
We had a chance to interview Edmonton city councillor Michael Janz about the decision, hear about his “insider-outsider” theory of change, and question whether meaningful progress can be achieved from within the structure of city council.
Death of the Gondola and Capital Interests Co-Opting Accessibility Issues
🎵 Intro Music – “Not Alone” by Melafrique
Oumar Salifou (Host)
Hey, welcome back to the podcast. Thank you for tuning in today. We are really excited for this episode — I have the opportunity to interview a city councillor here in Edmonton, and I’m joined with Nicholas today to chat more about those things. And we also have some really exciting news as well!
So Edmonton’s mayor has a special ability. Only the mayor can unilaterally proclaim a day. So when I was in university, he proclaimed Saxophone Day to be some random day. So he should use this power to proclaim whenever the gondola got killed as “Fuck the Gondola Day” in Edmonton. I think that’s a great idea.
Nicholas (Producer)
Oh, yeah. I don’t know if we actually talked about earlier this year when Sohi proclaimed National Cat Day or something like that.
Oumar
Yeah, that’s true.
Nicholas
Anyways, I remember we were saying something about how it took them 100 years to proclaim Black History Month and then like the next year they proclaimed National Cat Day.
Oumar
Damn. What’s the saying? “What’s next? Guy is going to marry his cat or dog or whatever. If we expand people’s rights, we’re going to end up in tyranny.” Pretty funny, though, that those things came right next to each other.
Nicholas
Yeah, that’s really funny. But yeah, I feel like proclaiming a day related to the gondola is… If you can give politicians a way — like an easy thing, like proclaiming a day that will make you happy with them, they’ll take it. I’m sure if we gave a list of our demands to the mayor and he had to pick one of them, that would be the one that he would do.
Oumar
Prioritized. You would filibuster that through very, very quickly.
Nicholas
Anyways, I think we’re all glad to not be living in a city where there will be an expensive gondola going from Whyte Ave to downtown, built on a gravesite and with private profits.
Oumar
And somehow justified as some mode of public transportation? Like, I think I heard a lot of arguments around that or accessibility, when those issues should be addressed for what they are — not through a vehicle of a gondola.
Nicholas
Yeah, that’s a funny one. Because I also hear the same argument always used to justify the funicular project as well. Whenever you’re like, “why were millions of dollars spent on this vanity project amid the city saying they don’t have money for really important things that would affect people in the city, like housing, or any kind of health supports that they supposedly say they just need money from the province for?” Any time there’s that kind of criticism on vanity projects, it’s always diverted to some kind of surface level way that this maybe marginally makes things better for some kind of underrepresented group. In the case of the funicular or the gondola, it’s “making the river valley more accessible” or “providing accessible transportation.”
I don’t know. It contributes to this idea of representation not meaning anything, or representation being a kind of elite discussion point. Or the idea of diversity being bullshit. That’s what fuels that idea, is when you use it to argue for or support a vanity project or something that’s just very clearly meant to appeal to elite people.
Oumar
No, for sure. And I feel like it’s within the perfect topic of optics, and how optics can really be weaponized to advance interests, to move money around, to pass motions that are largely unpopular or are even spoken about in reality that they don’t make sense, but are still pushed through.
Chinatown’s New $15M Police Hub Paid for by the City
Oumar
So it’s a good segue to talk about the Chinatown centre and the “Healthy Streets” initiative that’s going to be renamed eventually. $15 million, going straight to the police after their complicit action in seeing two people murdered in Chinatown, along with the RCMP who dropped off the person who ended up doing this.
So the money breaks down, that was approved past Monday, which is $10.3 million for police, constables and equipment. $4.9 million for peace officers, community safety liaisons and firefighters for two years, 2023 and 2024. And, like you mentioned before, Nicholas, these asks are never viewed through the lens of other things that can very easily be downplayed. But the police asking for resources is really positioned in a way that it’s impossible for the city to say no to, even under the circumstances where they’ve asked the province, the city of Edmonton has asked the province to give them $18 million to essentially cover the program for another two years.
And the province hasn’t even answered. The province hasn’t said anything, yet the city is completely fine with advancing their own funding. But yeah, like we said before, it’s very interesting to see when the city can justify moving forward without provincial funding and when they can’t justify moving forward without provincial funding.
And what we really see when we look at the cases is that justifications can be made for police at any moment, at any time, for almost any amount of money. But when it comes to housing, when it comes to mental health supports, when it comes to addiction supports, you gotta shrug your shoulders because the province isn’t pulling their weight and the city can’t make any exceptions — unless it comes for police, like I said before.
Nicholas
Yeah. And the interesting thing… As you said, council approved a $15.2 million, two-year budget for this centre in Chinatown, which is essentially a new police hub in Chinatown, just a few blocks from where they already have a police station. Originally, this was budgeted at $18 million, but over four years. So initially it was supposed to actually be a smaller budget than they now just approved. And when they initially set the budget at $18 million, that’s when they asked the province for $18 million towards the centre.
Now, the province actually hasn’t gotten back to them in the two months since they sent that request. But apparently, in that time they’ve also increased the budget for the Chinatown centre to now be $15 million over the next two years. Which, if you extrapolate that conservatively, that’s $30 million over four years, much higher than the $18 million that they budgeted for. And obviously, as we see with the police budget, nothing stays linearly the same costs each year. So if it’s $15 million for the first two years, it’s probably going to be higher for the two years after that.
So now we’re looking at a $30+ million dollar budget that basically we’re committing to, at least for 2023 and 2024. We haven’t heard back from the province about the money that was requested, but even if the province gives that money, the city is still committed for more than that.
So we’re now essentially in a situation where council confirmed the budget for this centre and we might get a little bit of it funded by the province, but we’re for sure going to pay, as a city, for some of it. And potentially — probably — we’ll end up paying for all of it. And now remember, this is already after we increased the police budget back in June by $20 some million. And that is already after the police budget was increased in December by another million dollars.
So yeah, police are getting a lot of handouts here. And we spent a little bit of time watching the council meeting, and just going back and looking at some of the things that councillors had said. I think what’s really interesting is that a lot of them made some pretty good points that we’ve talked about here on the podcast. You know, the Chinatown community or the Chinese community is not a monolith, so it’s wrong to equate a centre like this or more police presence in Chinatown as “supporting the community.” You know, the tragedy has been used for personal gain by politicians and by police.
These are all great points. But all the councillors saying these points, and some of them quite emotionally and apparently with a lot of conviction, just ended up voting in favour of giving this $15 million towards the centre.
And just to name names here, we’re talking about Andrew Knack. We’re talking about Aaron Paquette. We’re talking about Sarah Hamilton. We’re talking about Karen Tang. And of course, we’re talking about Mayor Amarjeet Sohi here. All of these councillors voted in favour of the centre. And in fact, the vote was 10 – 3. Only three councillors voted against it. And this is supposedly the most progressive council that we have ever had.
Actually, one of the councillors who voted against it is Michael Janz. And this is a councillor who is regularly critical of police. And actually there was this thing where — you know how we always keep saying that we’re “known critics of the police”? Basically, how this came about was… was it the police association going after Michael?
Oumar
Yeah. It was the police union, police association. This is a question, I guess, is there a difference? I think the EPA is the police association that was going against him, and I think that’s one in the same with the union. They just don’t call themselves a union, but they’re the same thing. But it was Michael Elliott who was going after Janz specifically, and who named us in the report among a few other people as well.
Nicholas
Yeah, okay. But there was basically some kind of screenshot where they were criticizing Janz for interacting with known critics of the police and saying that no one on council should be able to interact with critics of the police. And the screenshot was like Michael Janz retweeting us from I think from the last… well actually two budget increases ago in December when they gave the police an extra million dollars. So anyways. Oumar, you had a chance to talk with Michael just yesterday. What can we expect from this interview here?
Oumar
So I’ve been in contact with Michael probably since the beginning of this year, maybe a little bit before that when council was talking about police funding late last year. And we’ve been talking because he’s a pretty big critic of police. He’s definitely been on the forefront of really saying things publicly in the position that he’s in, that not many people are saying, and obviously paying the price given the fact that he’s been the subject of a lot of official complaints.
So I was really hoping to have somewhat of a like-minded conversation with Michael. But also to really explore his position as a councillor and how that fits within the current dynamic that we have, where things are either regressing in a negative direction when it comes to policing and safety, or there definitely is a guarding of the status quo and making sure we’re doubling down on what’s currently going on.
So here’s the interview with Michael. We’ll see you on the other side.
Michael Janz: What Safety Actually Means and the Insider-Outsider Theory of Change
🎵 Intro Music
Oumar
For listeners who may not know who you are, Michael, do you want to introduce yourself and the kind of work that you do?
Michael Janz (City Councillor)
Sure, my name is Michael Janz. I am the city councillor for ward Papastew in the city of Edmonton. That’s the area around the University of Alberta and Southgate Mall and everything else north of 34th avenue.
Oumar
And the police have recently gotten $12 million, to my deep disappointment. Do you want to explain maybe what happened, how was this proposed, and how was it steamrolled through council?
Michael
Sure. I think it’s important to go back a couple of steps to begin. And there’s been a number of challenges in Edmonton over the last number of years, and across Canada, about this broader question around how do we have a safe community for everybody? Edmonton pulled together the Safer For All report, which I think is a very effective blueprint about looking at police cost, police conduct, police tasking, like what are the things that we need police to be doing? What are things that police should not be doing?
So it’s all of this. This blueprint was pretty well handed to our council. And I was pleased that when we were first elected, we made the decision to reduce the proposed police funding increase by $10 million. But unfortunately, this month it looks like that decision was effectively reversed, and greater funds will be going back to the Edmonton Police Service.
And I think it’s important to clarify right off the top that the Edmonton city council does not have any jurisdiction to direct the police. Like if the chief of police wanted, he could have 100 officers in Chinatown immediately. He just has to snap his fingers, put out the radio call. They will go. City council can’t direct the police downtown. City council has no purview over directing police.
Now, what we do have purview over is budget. And it’s unfortunate that in this environment whenever we ask for something, whether it’s dealing with the convoy, whether it’s dealing with bicycle theft, whether it’s dealing with officer conduct or technology or anything else, it always seems to be paired with a budget ask. It’s kind of the worst stereotype conservatives throw out about government, about always asking for more money. It’s never possible to do less.
So here we are. There’s been, a tragic murder of two individuals in Chinatown. Unfortunately, we haven’t even had a chance to get to the bottom of the responsibility chart here in terms of the RCMP, the Edmonton Police Service, and others. But council made the decision to go ahead and vote to fund this… they’re calling it the Healthy Streets Operation Centre for Chinatown. And that funding will come partially from the funds that were held back from the EPS to go towards anti-racism initiatives and fulfilling the Safer For All blueprint.
Oumar
You mentioned how every ask… So, council can’t direct police, only the chief can. The police decide how they want to do things, but council still has all these asks. The convoy, Chinatown, all these different things. But you mentioned directly how this is always coming with a price tag.
Why does council not just say no? Why is there a seemingly 100% success rate when it comes to the police asking for for more money and getting it, when all you’re asking them to do is basically do their jobs that they’re already very well funded to do?
Michael
So I think this goes back to a… across North America over the last century, there’s been a very effective manufacturing of a narrative that the police keep us safe, when we know that all evidence to the contrary is that actually it’s protective factor factions… sorry.
There’s been this manufactured narrative across North America that the police are the ones that keep us safe. But we know that if you look at criminal justice studies, etc., it’s that the police respond to crime. It’s the protective factors like early childhood education, sports programs for youth, elimination of poverty, elimination of hunger, elimination of homelessness. These are the things that actually keep people safe. We know that investments in the social safety net and preventing crime pay off far greater dividends than a reactive investment after the fact.
And we’ve seen that. Crime in Edmonton has actually gone down 17% over the last three years, and crime across Canada is going down. So it’s important to remember that, despite attempts to portray danger in the news and in the media and all these other places accordingly, Canada is getting safer. And if we want to be even safer, even more… If we want to be even more safe, we need to continue to invest in these pieces.
So the part that was frustrating for me about the Chinatown debate was that we could have 100 more police officers in Chinatown tomorrow if the chief wanted to position them. He could send them there, he could take resources from other areas. But they decided not to. They decided that this had to be additional resources. This had to be new money. And I don’t believe that that was properly interrogated by council. If the chief was unwilling to move resources to Chinatown, then that’s a different conversation that we need to be having.
Oumar
What you laid out there, I think it makes a lot of sense empirically. I feel like if you explain to anyone that childhood poverty, sports programming, building a sense of purpose and community prevents crime from increasing and should lead to a decrease in police resources. That seems like a very tried and true argument.
But again, I kind of return to what we were talking about a little bit before. Why, in this specific context, isn’t it working on council? And I’ll maybe lay it out a little bit differently too, where we have this progressive council or a so-called “progressive” council where a lot of councillors talk the talk about funding community or putting police funding into check. We have a lot of councillors that are very pro progressive urban planning, thinking about how we’re using space accessibility. A lot of these different things. But not necessarily all of them are walking the walk when we look at the voting patterns that are happening.
So given what you were mentioning before, how it seems like this is pretty clear and on table — not to say that you need a clear argument or you need to make sense for systems to change or people to get to where they probably should be — but why this stark divide? Why do we have all the facts on the table but, the so-called progressive council, at least in a somewhat of a majority, is still dragging their feet, or actively funding police, or reversing these decisions that would have been seen in a progressive light as soon as the police are actively complicit in these murders in Chinatown or this supposed escalation in crime?
Michael
It’s a really good question and one I’ve wrestled a lot with. And one challenge, I think, is that many of the social movements who are very active in terms of calling for police reform, or re-tasking the police to other areas, or investing in community — whether it’s the defund the police protests, or some of the other anti-racism groups, or groups pushing for Indigenous rights — many of these groups are stretched, are over capacity or facing challenges. And absent that strong accountability from community and strong accountability from social movements, council is left with the police lobby.
And the police lobby is very loud. They have a lot of money. They have expensive consultants, they have high priced political operatives. They have the ability to really manufacture and construct a narrative around this whole question of safety, this question of Chinatown. We got letters from powerful development interests, powerful land interests, landlords, downtown business groups, others, all asking for more police downtown in Chinatown. But they never really interrogated the question, “why don’t we have police there now? Who made these decisions? Where does that accountability lie?” And really, council is being blamed for it.
But we know the problems of Chinatown — the 2,700 Edmontonians who are sleeping without shelter right now or are on the street — we know that’s because of provincial government cutbacks. We know that’s because of federal government cutbacks in the 90s, because of housing, an absence to provide housing, shelter, support for all these all these neighbours. That’s what got us into this mess.
But the levels of government accountable, the province and the feds, are not taking responsibility and then leaving it to the city who are left with a choice. Do we spend the money on enforcement? Do we spend the money on housing? Do we spend the money on Free Footie for kids? Do we spend the money on one additional squad car? And so I’ve been trying to push — council was very supportive when I made the motion of adding an additional $10 million to our 24/7 crisis response. Right now it’s on a shoestring budget. It’s only $2 million and only a few vans. But I wanted to scale that up five times, because it’s those sorts of services that actually take the burden off police.
I think if we’re talking about having police respond to the right crime… if we want to make sure when it comes to… sorry. If we want to ensure that we have the right service at the right time, at the right place, responding to crime, preventing crime, helping make sure we all feel safe, we need to make sure that we’re adequately investing in these protective factors that help our whole city.
Oumar
(pause)
Michael
Can I jump in?
Oumar
Yeah.
Michael
So I guess when it comes to police… It’s funny because the mildest criticism for me has some people calling me anti-police or that I don’t like the police or something like that, which is absurd because I have friends and family who are police. Like, I understand the need for police. I’ve called the police. I’m not an idealist in these scenarios. I’m looking at this just from a very practical lens that the largest item of our city budget is the police service. And unless you want infinite tax increases, you need to be able to answer the question of how do we keep people safe in a financially sustainable way?
I also want to see bad police held accountable through conduct reform. I don’t think anybody disagrees with this. I don’t think the commission disagrees with this. I don’t think Chief McFee disagrees with this, that we need rigorous police conduct reform in Alberta, and ASIRT owns a piece of this, and the provincial government owns a piece of this.
The third is this question around de-tasking. I want to make sure that the police are showing up to the calls that only the police can do. But if there’s other topics like, say, traffic or other expensive calls for service that we can do through a civilian wing, even better. That’s what happens right now in Fort Saskatchewan. You’ll get pulled over by a bylaw officer, not an armed uniformed police officer with a badge and a gun.
And finally, governance. I want to make sure that we don’t have police investigating police when police get into trouble. I want to make sure that we have rigorous civilian oversight of police services. And I want to make sure that there’s whistleblower protection and security built in, so that if police do see problems, they can say “problem.” And right now, we’ve seen from across the United States, across Canada, when you fail to have these sorts of safeguards in place, that’s where you get major problems.
So this is not a radical agenda. I think this is an agenda shared by many. But the fact that it is perceived by some powerful police interests, be it the unions, be it others, as a threat to their power, a threat to their privilege… that has led to an equally animated response against me, against our council, against others who dare to question “can we do better?” And we can certainly do better.
Oumar
On that point, I think I want to talk a little bit about this idea. I think what you’re speaking on is directed towards optics and how things look. or how people perceive certain messages coming from certain people. And I definitely agree, you’ve been painted as a radical, mostly by people who have every reason to do so, like the head of the police union and things like that.
I think what I’ve really come to understand from the position I’m in is that whether you’re saying “fuck the police” or whether you’re saying “we need practical solutions to decrease the financial situation and make it more sustainable with the police as our highest budget item,” I really think the reaction is going to be similar if not exactly the same, given the simple fact that the power dynamics here give it all towards people who love the police or who really want to reinforce the status quo. They really get to decide where you stand, or how your position is seen, or how they should label you or call you, or where you should fit within this dynamic.
A lot of it is also very dishonest too, because I feel like it’s a one-way street. I don’t get to call the police radicals when they kick in an Indigenous teenager’s head and send him into a coma in the hospital, and the guy who does it is still working at a desk and our tax dollars are paying for it. If I call that radical, I don’t know if a lot of people are going to care. Or I might even get painted as some kind of yahoo. Or if that’s something that should lead to larger systemic change, “ah well, hold the brakes.” So I feel like that’s the problematic kind of thing.
One thing I want to get back to is this idea that council is being heavily influenced by the police lobby and because the momentum of Black Lives Matter or other police-critical voices hasn’t been applying pressure on council the same way it has, things haven’t been going the way people who want things to change want them to go. One thing I want to ask is, is this kind of situation desirable or does it even fit within any of the values that we’d want within the system that we currently have? Because I personally find it very troubling that, in order for us to have a sustainable community, a community built on things that aren’t punitive violence, that aren’t surveillance-based, we have to mobilize in this serious way and really push these seemingly neutral councillors, or at least they are on the surface, to steer in our direction or else some other very well-funded group and very well-connected group is going to steer things in the direction of the status quo or in a direction of more police, more institutional power. So given this situation or given this, I think, problematic dynamic, why are we here and how do we get out of it? How do we escape this situation?
Michael
Yeah, it’s a great analysis. And I think it’s important to realize, like, you can’t stay neutral on a moving train. Like we are… the train is moving towards more police and historic police spending in Edmonton in the next four-year budget. This is where the train is moving. And if people want to stop that train, if people want to hop on and help pull the e-brake, we need powerful social movements to come in and put pressure on council.
Yes, we had 20,000 people at the legislature two years ago. But, politicians have the memory of goldfish, we think in 15-second news cycles. We think about what’s going to be the headline tomorrow. We need constant sustained pressure from community groups, and that’s a really hard ask. That’s many people who’ve experienced trauma, many people who don’t have the same political capital, many of whom are expressing that experiencing the brunt of hardship, of the pandemic, of everything, and now asking them to come in and advocate…
Well, unfortunately, power surrenders nothing without a demand. It never has, it never will. And unless we can help mobilize groups who want to see change, who want to see a more just, more efficient, more effective, safer for everyone… Unless we can do that, the loud, dominant, powerful voices — bankrolled, of course, by the tax dollar — you get the tax money in, you use it to hire comms people, you use it to hire consultants, you use it to justify the expenditure, you go back to the taxpayer and ask for more money to respond to the consultants, da da da da... You see the cycle, how you’re caught in it. And it’s just like the military industrial complex in the United States or many of these other examples of manufacturing consent.
So it’s tough. We need strong social movements. We need people who are your listeners to get involved, call their councillors to talk to people, to make sure their voice is heard, to join with other like-minded folks through organizations, through churches, through community groups. We’ve seen that this is shifting the tide in the United States. We’ve seen this in the bail reform movement, we’ve seen this in the anti-capital punishment movements. And we’ve seen what happens when we fail, when we cede the ground to the right in the reproductive health conversation.
Oumar
So where do you fit within this dynamic of community engaging or pushing or informing council? And this is something that I think is good to pivot on or move on towards — why did you choose to do the work that you do as a councillor and use your skills and your time to invest in this system that we’ve seen time and time again is disappointing for community, doesn’t really meet the requests, or it does in a very small way and then backs up like five feet.
Why did you choose to put yourself in the position to work in this kind of system instead of maybe doing some of the other things that we talked about, of applying the pressure from the community or working through other means? I guess we can start there. And then I’d love to follow up on other things based on your answer.
Michael
So I believe in… My theory of change operates around an inside-outside strategy. That you need people on the inside, such as city councillors, such as police commissioners, such as board members. But you need people on the outside as well, too. And it’s the job of the people on the inside to educate, inform, share information, share opportunity with the outside. And it’s the job of the outside to hold the inside accountable. It’s the job of the movements to do so.
I really recommend to your listeners, there’s a… PBS did a series in Philadelphia and this district attorney who is this public defender lawyer who was elected on a police reform agenda. And he worked with Black Lives Matter and a number of different groups to get elected. And it’s the story, it’s a documentary of his challenges that he faces in the role as the former district attorney, and the challenges that you face in government, and his quarrels with the police union and all the other counter venture forces that were trying to stop him in his quest. So for me, I see my role as a liaison, where I was supported by community, I was backed by community. I’ve worked with many of these communities going back to the school resource officer debate.
But fundamentally, I mean, it’s not only the right thing to do from a moral, philosophical, spiritual level to have greater police oversight and accountability and safety for everyone. But it’s also, Edmonton taxpayers need to realize that the largest item in their budget, the largest item of their property taxes, almost a quarter of their property taxes, goes towards the police. So when we talk about fiscal austerity, when we talk about taxes and affordability and all these other pieces, people need to know that almost a quarter of their budget is going towards the police service.
So would it not make sense that at least a quarter of the time of our councillors was spent scrutinizing, asking questions about, looking at the expenditures, finding ways to work with partners, finding ways to do things more efficiently, effectively, sustainably… Like, really the people who should be leading the charge towards police reform are fiscal conservatives.
Oumar
Yeah… There might be some reasons why, other things in their ideology that would lead them to supporting the police, even if it is this unsustainable money pit, because the police are very important in protecting…
Michael Janz
See me winking. (laughs)
Oumar
Yeah, a little bit. But that’s why I really have a hard time with liberalism because it’s like, in a perfect world ideally these things would work out the way they do. But yeah, people believe things that they won’t always be upfront with or honest about, especially the violence part and really protecting what they have.
So looking forward, you just got elected to council. It hasn’t been a crazy long time. You have, I’d say about like three years to continue the work that you do. What are you looking forward to in the next couple of years? What do you hope to accomplish with the council? And where do you see this issue of policing going when it comes to funding?
Michael
Yeah, it’s a great question. I think I was very clear when I ran, as were many of the councillors, that we want to see the agenda of the Safer For All report realized. That we want to see a city that is anti-racist, a city that is equitable, a city that provides opportunity and creates a welcoming space for everyone. And police reform is absolutely part of that conversation. It’s not the only part of the conversation.
But we know… The last five years before I came to city council, I worked at Big Brothers Big Sisters. And we know that investing in youth, especially young men and especially in the protective factors that reduce crime, that keep people safe, that offer dignity and a place of belonging and and a chance for opportunity. These are the real ways that you eliminate crime in your community. These are the real ways that you do make people feel safe and give everyone dignity.
The fact that there’s 52,000… sorry. The fact that there is 52,000 children in poverty in Edmonton is absolutely unconscionable. And the fact that we can’t do what we can to give them access to opportunity just like you or I is a major issue going forward. And so we cannot have a prosperous, vibrant, resilient Edmonton into the future unless we fix some of these pieces affecting the most vulnerable among us.
Oumar
And so for listeners who want to keep engaging with you or I guess take away anything, do you have any recommendations or things that I guess people can walk away from this conversation from and maybe implement or read up on?
Michael
Yeah, absolutely. A couple of things. So first of all, if you go to michaeljanz.ca/saferforall, I have some more information there about my work around police reform. Secondly, I would invite you to… a former mayor of Toronto wrote a book called Crisis in Canada’s Policing. It was posted post the murder of George Floyd. So it’s very current, and it’s a very, very good book. And I would suggest… it goes into those questions about “what do police actually do? What do we pay them to do? Why is Canada’s policing system broken? Why is the discipline system broken?” And it has an analysis from 40 years in the field that John Sewell has brought forward. I highly recommend this book. There’s five copies available at Edmonton Public Library. You can watch a video where he introduces the book online at YouTube. I highly recommend that book.
There’s also a writer out of the United States who I can’t pronounce his name. Alex… Just give me 1 second.
Oumar
Yeah.
Michael
Well, I can’t find it now. His name is Alec Karakatsanis. Yeah. So there’s also a writer out of the United States called Alec Karakatsanis, which I hope I didn’t butcher his name, but he writes a newsletter at equalityalec.substack.com. And Alec has been phenomenal in terms of raising the level of debate around police accountability and looking into the kinds of stories that we tell ourselves about police, the stories that the police tell themselves about us. He writes a newsletter called Alec’s Copaganda Newsletter, where he goes into many of the big examples of how the police are manufacturing different narratives, and different challenges around the budget, and how we can really work together to invest in the protective factors that keep everyone safe. So I really recommend those resources.
I think it’s important to join with local organizers who are trying to do work in this field, whether it be the John Humphrey Centre for Peace and Human Rights, whether it be Black Lives Matter, whether it be Black Women United. There’s so many different groups that are trying to move ahead here. Frontline harm reduction groups. There’s a lot happening in Edmonton. What we need is just to get involved, even an hour a week, even signing up to these newsletters, even taking a moment to write your councillor, write your MLA. This is how this work gets done.
And I mean, when people show up, results happen. Like we saw that during the school resource officer debate at Edmonton Public Schools. We saw that during the post-George Floyd protests in Edmonton where the Safer For All report came to fruition.
But this… We’re pushing back a narrative of white supremacy and the worst parts of capitalism and the worst parts of oppression, throughout not just Edmonton, but North America. And that’s challenging. And it takes constant vigilance on our part to push for human rights and reform. We’ve seen as soon as we finally achieve public health care, there were voices out there trying to privatize it and break it up and destroy it. Same thing in all of this other work. So it’s important to get angry, get allies, get active, get involved.
Oumar
That’s a great place to end. But I also want to maybe end on a lighter note. How did you celebrate the death of our famed non-existing gondola?
Michael
(Laughs) I… What did I do? Honestly, I think I remember when the vote passed, I was sitting in council chamber and I just felt a huge sigh of relief like “oh good, we’re not going to have to pick up the pieces of this project.” I was really worried about what was going to happen there. So yeah, I think it was just exhaustion and then you kind of collapse across the finish line.
Oumar
Nice. Anything else you want to add, or anything we didn’t touch on that you think listeners should know?
Michael
Um, let’s see. So we talked about resources. Of course, I should mention the Progress Alberta podcast. They’ve done some phenomenal work here. Yeah I do want to say, like the role of critical media. There’s basically Taproot Edmonton and Progress Alberta have been the two who have offered the most oversight in terms of the police service. There have been individual journalists like Janice Johnson at CBC and others, Johnny Wakefield at Postmedia. There’s some individual journalists who have been outstanding on the crime beat. And others I’m sure, I can’t mention now. But in general, what’s sort of missing is part of this broader, cohesive coalition of people who are going to work together to offer a heightened level of scrutiny to policing in Alberta.
And it’s funny because we’re in this provincial conversation about should we have our own police force, or what’s the role of the RCMP? But absent from that conversation as well is this conversation about how is anti-racism going to be integrated? How is cost control going to be integrated? It’s still assuming many of the same things instead of talking about “why do we have poverty?” Why do we have some of these other challenges that are leading to “rural crime,” which we know is often a racist dog whistle.
So I would say… I think there’s enormous work being done already in the social sector in Edmonton. Big Brothers Big Sisters, others helping young people have hope and opportunity. And that’s really where I think we need to continue to concentrate our efforts, because nobody ends up in the remand centre overnight, right? Like it’s a long path, and it’s many many failings of our system over and over and over that end up where a young person is in a gang, and then later on that young person is on the street or that young person is involved in a violent offence.
Like there’s so many ways that… Like you just look at the records, you look at the courts, you look at even the the the murder in Chinatown. You look at how many ways this fellow was failed. Not to certainly excuse his horrendous actions, but how many ways could this have been prevented by us doing our job as civil society to to take care of each other?
Can Change Happen from Within City Council? (Interview Debrief)
🎵 Intro Music
Nicholas
Oumar, that was a really great interview and, I think, a really cool opportunity that you got to finally talk with him. What are some of your… I guess, what were some of your thoughts immediately after the interview? Do you feel like it went the way that you wanted it to? Do you feel you got to ask the things that you wanted to?
Oumar
I think I got to ask the things I wanted to. I don’t think it went the way I thought it would or the way I necessarily wanted it to. I think one thing that definitely stood out to me the second time I listened to it was how focused the interview was on optics and how… like I remember a comment that was made of how maybe it doesn’t fit within the kind of audience that might be listening to the show and how it might be very prepared in a lot of the ways that the answers were communicated.
So I was really trying to ask my questions in ways that would open up the conversation, or that would lead to things that fall outside of what can be offered by a prepared statement or by a political plan, basically. So I’d say that was pretty disappointing in some ways, to kind of almost have these like guardrails to what was going to be said or how it was going to be said, because not only can that be stifling, but I think also it provides so many limitations to what we can clearly see are very complex problems that need better solutions beyond political speeches essentially.
Nicholas
Yeah, it’s weird. I think as someone who is critical of the police, I guess you would assume that he takes a very community-centred approach to his politics and maybe tries to talk to people on a more authentic level. I thought it was weird, there were definitely a few times in the interview where he kind of… maybe thought he was going a little bit off his prepared points and then had to take a breath and start over in order to say the exact word that he wanted to say. And I feel like things that — you often maybe hear that from politicians, and it’s moments like that that really make you feel like, now they’re not really talking to me. Now they’re just trying to stick with their pre-written speech, like you said.
And this is really weird, especially knowing that he’s talking on our podcast. I mean, anyone listening to this, you can let us know if you thought the way that Michael Janz was laying things out really spoke to you. But I mean, I would think that most people listening to our podcast are already coming here with a critical eye for the police and wanting to see some kind of meaningful change happen at at the level that someone like Michael Janz has influence in terms of defunding the police, or certainly not funding things that are going to give $10 million more to the police in a year that we’ve already given $20 million to the police.
So I don’t know why he was so invested in trying to paint himself as someone who isn’t radical or isn’t ideologically opposed to the police, and is actually friendly to the police and has people in his family who are police. That seems really confusing because I don’t know who he really thought he was talking to there.
Oumar
Yeah, I don’t get it. And maybe I’ll get the chance to ask, or after this comes out we’ll kind of have follow ups on it. But this part that also has me thinking is, I guess, the theory of change and thinking around politics through social movements and insiders and the interplay between those two groups. And I think that vision of politics can be pretty toxic, and stifling for people who really need access to the change that these supposed insiders have. Because it makes it so that there’s no systemic critique. It just places it so that there are insiders who can facilitate and help and educate, which already has really negative connotations — supposing that people on the ground don’t already know what they need, don’t already know what they want instinctively, which I do think is true.
But then it also makes it so that there’s an onus on people in social movements to basically push these supposedly neutral councillors and go against what was said to be, well-funded lobbyists. People in positions to own businesses and those kinds of things. And within that context, it’s really setting up for a lot of fatalism, for a lot of essential or built-in failure, because the community doesn’t have the resources to play in a game like that, which is why the game needs to be thrown out the window altogether. At least that’s how I kind of view it.
Nicholas
Yeah. I thought it was really weird how, also as someone who’s often painted as this kind of rogue politician, I was definitely surprised by how… I wouldn’t call it defensive of the system necessarily, but he was certainly avoiding any kind of critique of the system. Like his whole inside outside theory of change — which, funny enough, is actually what we predicted his answer would be to that question — it’s all about relieving him as a member of the system, or the system as a whole, of any kind of responsibility to make things better for people. And his theory just puts all the responsibility on people to have to be influential enough on the system to convince those insiders to do something for the people.
And if you weren’t loud enough with what you wanted, then you’re just going to be beaten out by the interests of those who have money, and marketing teams, and lobbying teams, and existing relationships with those in power. They’re just going to be more influential on council. And that’s no fault of council. They’re going to be influenced by who they’re going to be influenced by. It’s your fault as a member of the community for not being not being loud enough. So if you didn’t get what you wanted, that’s on you.
I guess another example of trying to pass the buck is there’s a lot of talk here about, “we don’t have enough funding from the province to do anything that would get us out of a situation where we need to keep giving police more money.” And in this way, Janz is almost identical to what we hear all the time from mayor Sohi, where it’s just, “oh, we didn’t get enough money from the province, so…”
Well okay, this is actually a funny contradiction here. When it comes to Chinatown Healthy Streets — whatever dumb name they gave it — Centre, their stance is that we aren’t getting money from the province, so we have to fund this ourselves. And here’s a quote from Sohi, he says:
“If the province does not step up, the $15 million will be coming through property taxes.”
And then when it comes to housing or health care or anything that Sohi himself pins as the root causes of the issues here, those are just off the table for discussion because there’s no funding from the province. So yeah, that’s a really dumb kind of contradiction here. When it comes to police, we’re going to make a plan, we’re going to commit to it and we’re going to fund it no matter what. We are going to ask the province for funding, but if they don’t give us funding, we’re just going to fund it ourselves. And what choice do we have, because we don’t have these things — housing and health care — taken care of to the point where we can defund the police.
Oh, okay. Well, why don’t we fund housing and health care? Why don’t we put more support into that as a city? Oh, we can’t do that because we need funding from the province. Oh well, why don’t we go ahead and plan — ? No, no. We don’t have funding from the province. We don’t have funding for the province, so we can’t do that. Here’s the quote from Sohi here:
“Health and housing are provincial areas of responsibility. And right now, our city is suffering from a significant lack of adequate, supportive housing, wraparound services, addictions treatment, support for those released from correctional facilities and mental health services.”
Great! We totally agree with you. That’s what our city needs. So let’s put the money into those things, and take a gamble on those things, rather than taking a gamble on just giving the police more and more money.
Oumar
This is what I wish we had a conversation about, and this is a level of introspection I wish was coming from actual councillors like Michael Janz. I wish that the steps were taken to ask these serious questions about what’s going on internally. Instead, I feel like it’s a lot of theories and ideas that are carried with great weight, and then kind of brought to the table for the community to say, “look, here’s what I believe and, here’s how it fits within this idealized version.”
But I think what we’ve been talking about in these quotes from Sohi, the reality that we see certain decisions being made and certain decisions consistently being rejected. That’s where the conversation is. And unfortunately, that’s not where we were able to get to. I hope that there are more opportunities and it doesn’t have to be with a politician. I hope that even within the platform that we have, Nicholas, or if it’s someone else that we bring on to the show, we can just like critically start to get to the bottom of what’s going on and how we can see council, how we can see political institutions and all the different parts that feed into them for what they are.
And it was very difficult to do that, having an actual conversation with Michael Janz, a politician who’s in the centre of it, which for me was definitely disappointing.
Nicholas
I think in one of our episodes earlier this year, I think it was Tom Engel, who was just talking about a lack of political will. And Oumar, you and I were talking a little bit about this earlier this week. It’s like, why would so many councillors so clearly make statements that acknowledge the issues with giving police more money, and acknowledge that this doesn’t help the problems, and acknowledge that it doesn’t even help the community, and then still turn around and vote for giving more money to police?
And one of the things that we mentioned is this question of “why does anyone get into politics?” And you know, we’re very cynical about politics at this point, probably as all people should be. But, I think a lot of it is just that people who get into politics are almost at a point where you want to tap out from doing any kind of work. So inherently, the will to change things isn’t there. But it’s not really as simple as that. You don’t just want to kick back and do nothing. You also want to tell yourself that you are noble, that you’re doing something good.
You hear politicians all the time saying, “now the work begins” after they get elected. Or they’ll say things like, “we’re doing the work.” Or, “we’re putting a lot of hard work into this” when, in reality, they’re really just there to go to the ribbon cuttings, to be a part of the decorum of the council meetings, to have their name on plaques, and to also be praised or upheld as someone who is really shaping a city or doing something good for the community.
So from that perspective, it’s really important for councillors to acknowledge that they recognize the reality of a situation, or they recognize the different factors at play, and are aligned with the community, and they see the community. Yet they just go and vote in favour of the status quo and giving more money to police like they always have.
And there was one quote that we pulled from the council meeting from Sarah Hamilton, who did vote in favour of the motion. And she opened her statement here saying, “I really appreciate the robust discussion that has happened today and at previous meetings, and the thoughtful approach that I think each of my colleagues is bringing to this, even if the summary isn’t that we all agree.” So I think there you have it. That’s kind of just the epitome of politics or liberal politics in the “most progressive council that we’ve ever had.”
It’s not about making things better for people. It’s not about actually making progressive decisions or moving things in any kind of direction. It’s just about “we have robust discussion and even if we don’t all agree, we were all thoughtful about it. And that’s the takeaway at the end of the day, is that we’re all coming together to have robust discussion. Us councillors are thoughtful and thought leaders and even if we don’t agree, we’re having robust discussion.”
Oumar
That really gets to such a really good analysis, Nicholas. And I feel like the thoughtfulness that can come from someone who is arguing for significantly slashing the police budget can be the same kind of thoughtfulness that comes from someone who wants the police to get as much money as they’d ever want. And those thoughtful debates can exist in the same arena. And we can all come to the same conclusion, which almost always reinforces the status quo, keeps the institutions the way they were. And ultimately, I think the real consequence is neglecting and disappointing working people on the ground who are asking for the change that they deserve.
So yeah, I don’t know what to say. I guess we weren’t excited about politics before, and said openly that we were cynical. And I think I’m basically at the same place, maybe a little bit more cynical, but…
Nicholas
Yeah. Well, I don’t know. I mean, I think this was a good…, if there was anyone in council that we thought would be a good opening, or that we could be more aligned with, or anything like that, I think it was going to be Michael Janz. So I think this was just like a good test of that question. Like what kind of change can you ever really expect to happen within the system?
And I don’t know. I mean, it’s not something we’re going to ignore. I think we'll keep trying to engage with him and with other politicians, and I think that’s what forms… that skepticism is what forms a healthier system. No one wants to just be giving those in power a free pass on furthering the entrenched inequalities in our society.
Oumar, this is also another trope of politicians, asking people to call their representatives. Anyways, I wanted to ask you what you thought about that.
Oumar
It can feel almost insulting at times, because I think that the problems that people are facing are so in your face at this point. At least it feels like that, especially for the most vulnerable. So this constant solicitation for feedback or consultation or trying to understand the issue, it can be insulting. I feel like we’ve moved beyond that. And that can serve a very specific purpose, but its purpose is purely negative for anyone on the ground faced with living and trying to etch out some kind of existence or thriving in the system.
The purpose it serves is only to obfuscate, or to delay, or to pretend like there’s some kind of unknown — like we don’t know what’s going wrong or, we don’t understand. So pushing people to call their councillor to have their voices heard... If anything, it does sound more like a rehearsed speech, or a rehearsed part of something that someone has to say in order to check off a requirement or something that they usually do. Because in practice, I just can’t see how it’s in any way useful or meaningful.
Maybe if councillors were able to solve individual personal problems, or if they had that kind of power to wave a wand and make sure that these problems that people are facing that are hyper specific in their lives were solved. But unless it’s something that’s mundane or directly related to some kind of city jurisdiction, like garbage removal or something like that, I really don’t see how it applies in any meaningful way.
Nicholas
Yeah, I don’t know. I guess I would say on this issue and many others, people have made their points clear at many opportunities. Showing up to council meetings, showing up to police commission meetings, on social media obviously. And saying at this point that people need to call their politicians is really insulting because what it implies is that we haven’t heard you yet, and it still is up to you to make yourself yet more heard by us. And that’s on you. That’s on you as people. It’s not on us as the people with the power to make the change. You just have to be louder. And when you’re louder, and when you’ve become louder at the further expense of your time and energy and resources, we’re just going to say you need to be even louder. It’ll never be enough. That will always be our or our reason for not doing anything.
Oumar
Yeah, that’s exactly what it is.
Nicholas
Okay. Well, anyways, that’s probably a good place to wrap it up. I think we've done a lot of episodes that are a little more scattered. I think oftentimes we come in here with a broad topic that we want to talk about, and then we end up getting distracted by some… or not distracted, but we end up opening with and spending a lot of time on some hyper-local event.
So I think this time, we really wanted to just actually hone in on that and spend more time detailing what's happening with this Chinatown centre.
Oumar
And I think as the city moves into their next budget cycle debates, I think you can look forward to more event-specific or more locally focused coverage like this or analysis from us, because it’s super important. And it can be very depressing at times, but we definitely still want to engage with it and definitely still want to understand what’s going on.
And we’re also probably going to be recording a Cringe Corner based on a few of the topics that we were talking about on this episode. So if you want to listen to that and also support the show, you can head over to our Patreon. It’s patreon.com/isthisforreal.
