After some negotiation, a Letter to the Editor related to the Calgary Metropolitan Regional Board (CMRB) by a group of 11 concerned Cochrane citizens was eventually accepted for publication after removal of portions of the letter which the Editor and Publisher of the Cochrane Eagle deemed to be “speculation”.
Reproduced below is the original letter as submitted with the portions that were removed for publication being in red lettering.
Those who live in glass houses should not throw rocks
According to your recent (May 20) editorial, “The province has left Cochrane between a rock and a hard place with CMRB”.
The idiom ‘between a rock and a hard place’ means to have to choose between two equally undesirable choices. In the current situation, that is a misapplication of the meaning of that idiom.
The reality is that when it comes to the Calgary Regional Metropolitan Board (CMRB) our Mayor, Jeff Genung, along with a supporting role by the Town’s Administration, has been a strong supporter and advocate of the CMRB.
When it comes to “the province” supposedly creating such an untenable situation for Cochrane, it should be mentioned that the CMRB, a top-down centralized planning structure, was created by an Order-in-Council (that is, not through debate in the Legislature) by the Notley NDP government in 2017,
most likely at the behest of Calgary’s Mayor, Naheed Nenshi.
Mayor Genung has expressed satisfaction with the CMRB and its voting structure, whereby the outnumbered rural municipalities are put in a situation where they are forced to play ball with the urban communities. One just has to watch any of the CMRB Board meetings (accessible at the CMRB website) to see how those dynamics play out. For a vote to carry, the voting mechanism requires two thirds, or seven of the elected representatives on the Board, along with the vote by Calgary, which has veto power by virtue of its overwhelming population.
The common pattern that one observes at those meetings is that the seven urban municipalities along with Calgary line up to vote against the three rural communities. No wonder that at the penultimate CMRB Board meeting on May 21that the three rural communities were outvoted when it came to accepting the CMRB’s Growth Plan for the region.
That contradicts your Editorial’s assertion that the CMRB, which mandates participation by the 10 municipalities represented, was “designed to minimize conflict between municipalities”.
The very first question in the CMRB’s survey conducted as part of its Third Phase Public Engagement makes it very clear as to the primary objective of the CMRB’s Growth Plan for the region, “One of those choices is to prescribe where development happens in ‘preferred growth areas’ if it results in the benefits shown above rather than allowing development to happen in an entrepreneurial way across the region. This means that those areas that are not ‘preferred’ (which are all in rural municipalities) are not likely to see the development that municipalities and community members may have been hoping and planning for.”
Noteworthy, that the plan limits development in the rural municipalities which goes along with the UN’s Agenda 21/2030 plans to concentrate the population into urban centres. Limiting land and water consumption and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, also go along with the UN’s sustainable development goals, something which Calgary is committed to as an obedient member of ICLEI (Local Governments for Sustainability).
Disappointing that our Mayor along with the support of the Town’s Administration and four of the six councillors have put our Town on this centralized-planning pathway which has profound long-term implications for our community and very limited, to no opportunity, for our community to have a say.
Submitted by, Deborah Murphy, Ron Voss, Barry Blick, Jacques Tredoux, Len Danard, Lori Donison, Diane Beynon Arsenault, Lorilynn Pidsadowski, Carla McPike, L. (Tex) Leugner, and Jen Michaluk
One would think that speculation or opinion is something that would be expected or tolerated in a Letter to the Editor.
The June 10th issue of the Cochrane Eagle had extensive coverage of the supposed finding of the unmarked graves believed to be that of 215 children at the Kamloops Residential School. On June 12th, I sent an email to the Editor of the Cochrane Eagle, Chelsea Kemp that there were at least three instances, including in her Editorial, “Reckoning With Residentials Schools”, where the graves were referred to as “mass graves”, thus eliciting a greater emotional response from the reader, suggestive of a holocaust. Citing a report, “The Full Facts Are Needed on the Kamloops Discovery”, by Candace Malcolm with True North, I pointed out that Chief Rosanne Casimir of the Kamloops First Nation confirmed that ‘this is not a mass grave. These are preliminary findings.”
https://tnc.news/2021/06/07/malcolm-the-full-facts-are-needed-on-the-kamloops-discovery/
In a two-page spread by Kemp about the memorial created in Cochrane’s Historic Downtown about the Kelowna finding, she mentioned Gloria Snow the Town of Cochrane Equity and Inclusion Committee’s Indigenous Adviser as being “on hand for the ceremony marking the observance of the 215 students found in the mass grave in Kamloops”. Snow makes the unsubstantiated conclusion that “it’s actual proof that these atrocities were committed”, a highly speculative statement, but such inflammatory speculation having no basis in fact was permitted by Kemp in her article.
I suggested to Ms. Kemp, that before jumping to conclusions, that is speculating, it would be wise to follow Candice Malcolm’s advice that, “we should wait for the official report to be released.”
I ended by asking Ms. Kemp if she will be issuing a correction in the upcoming issue of the Cochrane Eagle? I received no reply from Ms. Kemp nor was there any correction in the subsequent issue, that is, the lies were left to stand.
Separately, I had noted that the May 31st News Flash, “Town of Cochrane mourns residential school children”, posted at the town of Cochrane’s web site, stated, “The Town of Cochrane has lowered flags to half-mast in recognition of the 215 children whose lives were taken at the former Kamloops residential school.”
https://cochrane.ca/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=686
On June 12th, I sent a note to mayor Genung, pointing out that the reference to their “lives were taken” suggests that they were murdered, painting this residential school as if it were some kind of a death camp. I asked him to please share my thoughts with the department or whoever was responsible for preparing this communication. I also suggested that the Town follow Candice Malcom’s sage advice, “before politicians jump to enacting policy conclusions, we should wait for the official report to be released.”
I never received any communication back explaining why they used such a choice of words or if they considered it appropriate.