Keith Gerein

Keith Gerein: On Edmonton’s density or an MP’s defection, there is an art to breaking political promises Edmonton city council is sticking with eight-plexes after promises to reduce the infill limit, while MP Matt Jeneroux should have done more consultation before joining the Liberals.

My latest, on council's decision to stick with density limits, and Edmonton MP Matt Jeneroux's move to the Liberals.

edmontonjournal.com/opinion/colu...

Conservatives built the Alberta separatist movement. Now they have to break it Former Alberta premier Jason Kenney spent years whipping voters into a frenzy against Ottawa. Now, at least, he's doing something to put out the fire he helped start. Will any of his Conservative coll...

Conservatives spent over a decade feeding the insatiable appetite in Alberta for anger and alienation towards Ottawa.

Now, like Jason Kenney, they need to step up and slay the beast they helped create before it does even more damage. #cdnpoli #abpoli

www.nationalobserver.com/2026/02/11/o...

Province broke its own access to information laws in withholding Alberta Next survey results The Alberta government wrongly withheld hundreds of pages of results from its Alberta Next surveys an adjudicator has ruled.

An adjudicator's ruling merely confirms what was already obvious. The UCP gov't broke its own laws and went to great lengths to avoid disclosing politically unfavourable public records. Taxpayers paid for these records; they do not belong to a party. #ableg

edmontonjournal.com/news/politic...

This morning marks the beginning of a landmark trial in BC where @amberbracken.bsky.social and @thenarwhal.ca are suing the RCMP.

The CAJ continues to stand with Amber and The Narwhal.

Full statement: https://loom.ly/C9tqr00

If you haven't seen it, Coun. @aaronpaquette created an interactive tool on his website that allows Edmontonians to see the city's current financial picture and how various things — spending, inflation, debt — can impact it. Kinda fun, actually. #yeg
aaronpaquette.ca/tax-calc

Edmonton city council has finished its budget by adding some justifiable spending for Explore Edmonton, transit and traffic safety, but also leaving residents with a higher-than-expected 6.9% tax hike, and questions about worse financial risks in future years. #yeg #yegcc

Edmonton election 2021: Amarjeet Sohi elected mayor - Edmonton | Globalnews.ca Mayor-elect Amarjeet Sohi is a familiar face, having previously served Edmonton both municipally and federally.

By this time in the evening in 2021, we knew who was unofficially elected as mayor.

globalnews.ca/news/8266564...

That's very possible. There are a lot of questions to be asked in the days ahead, because there are a lot of fingers being pointed in a lot of directions.

Good question. I don't know what it takes to actually put together a new list. In the past, I remember showing my voter card, having my name highlighted or crossed off a paper list and that was it. Today, there was a lot of fiddling on the laptop, and not enough people doing the fiddling.

With the postal strike, the lack of voter cards, the lineup at the voting stations, a campaign where it's been hard to differentiate some of the contenders, and the Blue Jays playing tonight, I do wonder if one of the major storylines of this election will be poor voter turnout. #yeg #yegvote

I finally got through the line to vote after an hour and three minutes. The election workers are doing the best they can, but there just aren’t enough of them, and unfortunately, I saw a few voters get pretty upset with them. I hope it’s going better at other polling stations. #yegvote #yeg #yegelxn

There are just three election workers with computers processing the crowd and handing out ballots. That better improve later or I can only imagine what the lines are going to be tonight. People will turn around and go watch the Blue Jays. #yeg #yegvote #yegelxn

For those #yeg folks planning to vote today, get to your polling station early and expect a wait. I showed up at mine at 1050 — normally a non-busy time and was met with a line 75 people deep. It’s not moving fast. #yegelxn #yegvote

Keith Gerein: My final analysis of a fascinating Edmonton mayor's race — it's about leadership Edmonton's mayoral race with Tim Cartmell, Michael Walters and Andrew Knack has provided plenty strong debate on issues such as infill, taxes and public safety

My final kick at the can in Edmonton's civic election. #yeg #yegelxn

edmontonjournal.com/opinion/colu...

Keith Gerein: Party politics have proven to be strange experiment in Edmonton's civic election The one major municipal political party in Edmonton has offered mixed messages on what it stands for, and how party dynamics might play out at city council

My latest on Edmonton's civic election. #yeg #yegelxn edmontonjournal.com/opinion/colu...

Keith Gerein: Edmonton's money woes need more than wishful thinking Despite promises from contenders in Edmonton's municipal election, the city's financial issues will take years to fix.

Latest from @keithgerein.bsky.social — "The city is dealing with a trifecta of torment — high tax hikes, high levels of debt, and a long-term structural deficit in which its overall costs chronically outmatch the municipality's revenue."

#yeg #yegcc #yegvote

edmontonjournal.com/opinion/colu...

Other than that, there were jokes about vintage video games, and it was generally pretty civil. Anyway, that’s it. Just 10 days to go now. Students make up about 10% of Edmonton’s population, so they could absolutely have a big impact on the result. #yeg #yegelxn 13/13

Jaffer asked Cartmell about his ideal Thanksgiving dinner. Cartmell, smiling, answered with a long list of heart-attack inducing breakfast and dinner foods impossible for any one person to consume in a single day. #yeg #yegelxn 12/13

Knack didn’t quite say he renounces the endorsement but did say he thinks third party advertisers shouldn’t exist, and called out WFE for attack ads on Walters. Knack said he is the only mayoral candidate to release his full list of donors, not just those up to July 31. #yeg #yegelxn 11/13

Cartmell also aimed at Knack, asking him renounce an endorsement from 3rd-party advertiser Working Families Edmonton, and demand they release their full donor list. Cartmell accused Knack of getting the advantage of being backed by a de-facto party but without the same rules. #yeg #yegelxn 10/13

Knack answered that he made the motion to start a conversation. The province definitively answered “no” to doing more to help the homeless, so the city now has no choice but to step up, he said. #yeg #yegelxn 9/13

The most interesting moments came late when the candidates asked questions of each other. Walters chose Knack, asking him why he made a motion last year to have the province own up to its responsibility for health and housing, but is now vowing to have the city do more on those fronts. #yeg #yegelxn

Jaffer took a swipe at Knack and Cartmell for the city’s failed electric busses and also expressed some disdain for the $100-million bike lane project as coming at the expense of other infrastructure. In that room, it didn’t get a great response. #yeg #yegelxn 7/13

Walters went after Knack at one point for choosing not to put more money into overdose response and encampment response teams over the last four years to better deal with homelessless. Knack didn’t really respond to that (or else I missed it). #yeg #yeglexn 6/13

All four said they supported the idea of expanding the leisure access pass to post-secondary students, though Jaffer said he hoped that it could be paid for through sponsorships rather than coming out of the city treasury #yeg #yegelxn 5/13

They agreed on a lot. One area of difference was on infill, where Jaffer/Cartmell leaned into putting more focus on Blatchford and other big open spaces, Walters emphasized more density around transit, and Knack warned against straying too far from current density plans. #yeg #yegelxn 4/13

There was no clear winner. All four candidates had good/less good moments. No one stood out. As it was at U of A, a lot of the questions were on topics of interest to students — transit, affordability, housing, youth employment, etc. Climate change was even mentioned a few times. #yeg #yegelxn 3/13

Overall, there wasn’t much of note from the debate, because all of the candidates have answered pretty much every possible question multiple times over at this point. Indeed, this is something like their 8th or 9th debate, and frankly, they all came across as a bit tired. #yeg #yegelxn 2/13

I have just returned from watching the latest Edmonton mayoral debate, this one at University of Alberta in front of about 200 people. Michael Walters, Tim Cartmell, Andrew Knack and Rahim Jaffer were the participants. I have a thread on what happened. #yeg #yegelxn 1/13

Keith Gerein: Alberta's malnourished restaurant inspection system has become indigestible Alberta must make upgrades to its restaurant inspection system to improve transparency for diners and impose stricter enforcement on bad eateries

And here's @keithgerein.bsky.social with his take on what we've learned from the three-part series

"An archaic consumer protection system built more for the protection of businesses and the convenience of the system itself, rather than the needs of the public"

#yeg