ABmunis panel tackles difficult social issues

Last week’s panel discussion on Real Talk explored a wide range of challenging social issues faced by municipal governments across Alberta and talked about the impact they have on residents of small and mid-sized communities.

President Cathy Heron, Vice-President Cities up to 500,000 Tyler Gandam and Vice-President Villages and Summer Villages Angela Duncan spoke candidly and compassionately with podcast host Ryan Jespersen for an hour about homelessness, a lack of affordable housing, drug poisoning, racism and hate crimes, and reconciliation on Friday, July 15.

The biggest takeaway from their discussion: these persistent and complex social issues affect ALL Albertans, not just those who live in our province’s largest cities. Whether you live in the Village of Alberta Beach (population: 864), the City of Wetaskiwin (population: 12,431) or the City of St. Albert (population: 69,789), you will be hard-pressed to go a day without seeing the signs and symptoms of at least one of these social issues.

“Our challenges are no different than (the ones) we see in the larger centres,” said Alberta Municipalities VP Villages and Summer Villages Duncan, who is also the mayor of Alberta Beach. "The key difference is that we don’t have a lot of attention paid to us, so we don’t talk about it very much,” she said.

Many Albertans may be surprised to learn that homelessness, affordable housing, and drug poisoning (a health issue) are primarily the Government of Alberta’s responsibility. Time and again, local governments have stepped up to deal with these issues because the provincial government was either unwilling or reluctant to act. Provincial funding for many of the social supports and services needed to improve these issues has either been slow to materialize or has been reduced over the past three years.

“These are issues across all of Alberta, and the system is definitely broken,” said President Heron. “The solutions are there; everyone understands them. We just need to work together to fund those solutions,” she said. 

To hear more of what the ABmunis panel had to say, watch the full July 15 discussion. The segment starts at the 47:23 mark.