1/This week, our provincial government managed to dismantle a globally recognized emergency dispatch service, destroy parents' confidence in the public education system & obtain their #yyccc fiscal policy updates from a faithful scribe at the Sun. Can't accuse them of being lazy.
2/Terminating the contract for EMS 911 dispatch with the City of Calgary is a headscratcher. The existing service provides call response in 6 seconds, less than half of the 15 second standard. Dispatch time is 45 seconds, also well below standards. Why "fix" something not broken?
3/On the education front, I agree that the old curriculum needed some work - getting back to basics with times tables & phonics for example. But by focusing on literacy & numeracy with no critical thinking or exploration, what's the end game? And that press conference... oof.
4/If you can't articulate changes to a curriculum in a press conference, how are you the head of education? Comparisons to used car salesmen - are you kidding me? That's the best meaningful life skill you could come up with?
5/And possibly my favourite, our minister of municipal affairs reminding #yyccc that he's in charge, again. Yet, did he actually read the recommendations in the report he criticized for being all about more taxes? Here's a link: calgary.ca/cfod/financial…
6/Reading just the executive summary would demonstrate that only 2 of 35 recommendations talk about taxes and fees. At least a dozen recommendations describe ways to improve transparency, spending discipline, predictability and align budgets with economic circumstances.
7/Wasn't it this government that asked for spending restraint? Are they interested in seeing how we're revamping our processes to do that? Or is it just easier to have a protagonist to turn into the villain, assuming people won't educate themselves with the facts?
8/If you've plodded along for the last couple of years hoping for more, wake up. You'll keep getting more of the same if you don't speak up. One way or another, you're impacted negatively by these decisions. Time to start informing yourselves on what's happening.
9/And if you're tired of politics being a pendulum swinging from extreme to extreme, do something about it. If you feel there's a balance that can be achieved, start calling for it. Don't be a sheep draped in your party colours. That doesn't work anymore. Challenge the system.
