I’ve lived in Lethbridge for 22 years. One thing I have heard quite often is that Lethbridge is a Mormon town. Some people even claim that Mormons sit in high positions of power in this city, which is weird considering that—according to my knowledge—no Mormon has been mayor, and I believe only one has even sat on city council.
Further to my recent posts on Lethbridge rent being unaffordable and Lethbridge workers being paid the lowest in Alberta, I decided to research property taxes in Lethbridge. What I discovered was that among all 18 Alberta cities, Lethbridge has the highest property taxes.
Last month, I wrote about rent affordability in Lethbridge. A lot of people agreed with the conclusions I drew from the data I presented: it confirmed their own lived experience.
At the end of December, the Lethbridge Herald published an article with the title “Lethbridge still affordable for renters”. The first sentence read, “Lethbridge remains one of Canada’s most reasonably priced cities for renters.”
Last week, Dr. Em Pijl, a researcher at the University of Lethbridge, presented to City Council “Urban Social Issues Study”, a study into the impacts the Lethbridge Supervised Consumption Site has had on the local neighbourhood.
Yesterday, someone wrote a letter to the editor of the Lethbridge Herald. This person is dealing with drug addiction and was providing some insight from that perspective on the benefits of the supervised consumption site, as well as addressing some myths.
Naturally, the online version of the letter received negative feedback, many with the same, tired myths and rhetoric. I thought I’d address some of them here.
So, a few weeks ago, I wrote a post about the labour history in Lethbridge. I discovered that historical information about labour in Lethbridge is not readily accessible. I intend to change that.
I’m writing a book.
Given its propensity to vote in Conservative representatives, Lethbridge is known as a conservative stronghold. But it actually has a significant labour history going back over a century.
Last week, the Lethbridge Police Service released data for calls to service in Lethbridge. For some reason, they organized that data in reference to the Supervised Consumption Site,
Here are two images for reference.
At city council meeting last week, City Councillor Blaine Hyggen suggested that a third party independently audit the numbers claimed by Arches in their report to city council.
Except Hyggen doesn’t actually care whether Arches gets audited. Hyggen operates on confirmation bias: he seeks out frontline cops and paramedics whose claims support his ideological stance on harm reduction; he seeks out a statistician friend who agrees with his assessment that the numbers can’t be true; he accepts bunk documentaries, like “Seattle Is Dying”, as fact.
And when data or peer-reviewed, published research conflicts with his opinions, he dismisses them.
See, if the data Arches released to city council matched his perceptions, Hyggen wouldn’t be calling for an audit. Because it’s not about how Arches operates; it’s about facts disagreeing with his feelings.
To him, the only possible explanation for the discrepancy between the facts and his feelings is that Arches must be lying. To him, there’s no possibility that he might be wrong.