Land-use and House
The meeting was not unusual. A boardroom at the downtown campus of Grant Macewan College with 14 or so interest groups interested in land-use policy. The Canada West Foundation was contracted by the provincial department of Sustainable Resource Development to initiate thinking about what a comprehensive land-use policy framework should look like. The focus group facilitator called it ”policy architecture”. I told him that I will steal that phrase and use it from now on to describe policy- negotiating multi-stakeholder organizations like the Clean Air Strategic Alliance and the Alberta Water Council.
“What issues should a land-use policy framework address?” he asked. “If it was in the middle of the room under a sheet and we revealed it, what attributes or characteristics would it have?”
I told him that there are 9 issues and they are listed on page 6 of the 1991 Vision Statement of the Alberta Round Table on the Environment and Economy (ARTEE), unanimously adopted in 1992 by the Alberta Legislature.
I told him that the dragster under the sheet has two parts: a policy-making architecture like CASA; and an implementing authority which, in this case, would be a consortium of the departments of Sustainable Resource Development, Alberta Environment, and Community Development.
I have the ARTEE document as .pdf, and a discussion document on the need for a land-use multi-stakeholder organization.
Will it be unusual in the sense that the initiative we’re ostensibly taking today will result in something meaningful? As often as not the product is a report that gets filed with a minister and forgotten. At a minimum, it’s given something for the AEN Forest Caucus to talk about.
After the meeting, I spoke with PaulS who had recently declined the invitation to serve as Prairie Jamie’s alternate on the Oil Sands Strategy working group. Prairie Jamie asked me if I’d act in that capacity - which made me wonder if Paul had understood the fact that AEN would cover his costs and that he could act as a primary representative if there was a topic that he was best to speak to.
Paul told me that he is past the whole episode over the delegate selection to the OSS and is comfortable that danwoy can cover off everything but the protected areas. And ultimately he had no objection to me serving as Prairie Jamie’s alternate.
[Update: received an e-mail from PaulS this morning saying that he wants to be the alternate on the OSS. The guy is giving me whip-lash!]
I phoned Jasmine at United Cribbers yesterday. According to a fax from Pete Theodore dated August 27, United Cribbers (UC) was installing my foundation forms on the 28th which were to be poured today. UC told me that my order was in “the outbox”, it was the next order that was going to be delivered (August 29th)
When I rode by the hole after work yesterday, there were no forms.
It’s raining today. It strikes me as strange how I receive no correspondence or communication from Pete Theodore - he won’t even answer my phone calls - but when rain is forecast I’ll receive a fax or e-mail saying that “the concrete will be poured tomorrow”. I can predict the transactions will my builder based on the weather forecast.
It’s a registration day at Grant Macewan College (GMC) where this morning’s land-use policy framework focus group meeting was held. Hannah works at the GMC library so I’m sitting in the main lobby waiting to meet her for lunch.
We’re doing astonishingly well living together in the confines of her mother’s condominium bedroom, I believe due to the advancements of technology. Our headphones plug into different machines playing different digital media. Hannah was watching something on tv last night while I watched Season 3, Episode 8 of The Wire. I can imagine how it must look: two people, side-by-side on a four-poster bed, each reacting to their different inputs at different times, who don’t register each other’s presence until the head phones come off when it is time to sleep.
“What issues should a land-use policy framework address?” he asked. “If it was in the middle of the room under a sheet and we revealed it, what attributes or characteristics would it have?”
I told him that there are 9 issues and they are listed on page 6 of the 1991 Vision Statement of the Alberta Round Table on the Environment and Economy (ARTEE), unanimously adopted in 1992 by the Alberta Legislature.
I told him that the dragster under the sheet has two parts: a policy-making architecture like CASA; and an implementing authority which, in this case, would be a consortium of the departments of Sustainable Resource Development, Alberta Environment, and Community Development.
I have the ARTEE document as .pdf, and a discussion document on the need for a land-use multi-stakeholder organization.
Will it be unusual in the sense that the initiative we’re ostensibly taking today will result in something meaningful? As often as not the product is a report that gets filed with a minister and forgotten. At a minimum, it’s given something for the AEN Forest Caucus to talk about.
After the meeting, I spoke with PaulS who had recently declined the invitation to serve as Prairie Jamie’s alternate on the Oil Sands Strategy working group. Prairie Jamie asked me if I’d act in that capacity - which made me wonder if Paul had understood the fact that AEN would cover his costs and that he could act as a primary representative if there was a topic that he was best to speak to.
Paul told me that he is past the whole episode over the delegate selection to the OSS and is comfortable that danwoy can cover off everything but the protected areas. And ultimately he had no objection to me serving as Prairie Jamie’s alternate.
[Update: received an e-mail from PaulS this morning saying that he wants to be the alternate on the OSS. The guy is giving me whip-lash!]
I phoned Jasmine at United Cribbers yesterday. According to a fax from Pete Theodore dated August 27, United Cribbers (UC) was installing my foundation forms on the 28th which were to be poured today. UC told me that my order was in “the outbox”, it was the next order that was going to be delivered (August 29th)
When I rode by the hole after work yesterday, there were no forms.
It’s raining today. It strikes me as strange how I receive no correspondence or communication from Pete Theodore - he won’t even answer my phone calls - but when rain is forecast I’ll receive a fax or e-mail saying that “the concrete will be poured tomorrow”. I can predict the transactions will my builder based on the weather forecast.
It’s a registration day at Grant Macewan College (GMC) where this morning’s land-use policy framework focus group meeting was held. Hannah works at the GMC library so I’m sitting in the main lobby waiting to meet her for lunch.
We’re doing astonishingly well living together in the confines of her mother’s condominium bedroom, I believe due to the advancements of technology. Our headphones plug into different machines playing different digital media. Hannah was watching something on tv last night while I watched Season 3, Episode 8 of The Wire. I can imagine how it must look: two people, side-by-side on a four-poster bed, each reacting to their different inputs at different times, who don’t register each other’s presence until the head phones come off when it is time to sleep.