MiBlog

2010 YYC Municipal Elections

Despite Ric McIver’s status as our incumbent mayor, I have a few thoughts on the goings-on that will culminate in a vote on October 18th.

One thing that continually strikes me as I peruse through each candidates’ website is how overwhelmingly economy-centric they all are. It’s actually quite difficult to find a paragraph that doesn’t end with or include some version of “x needs to be improved since improving x improves $!”

I guess common sense is less prevalent than business sense—which is odd—considering how the business end of the job will work itself out (I guarantee it 100%: this is an oil town, and the amount of money here would never let the business politics get out of its control anyway).

Which leads me to my main point: arts and culture are so fucking important, it physically hurts to see them get so beaten up and neglected by the economy’s thugs. Unfortunately, in the YYC, such rhetoric is only rhetoric: money trumps culture every damn time.

And yet, look at any international city you can think of that merits a visit, and you’ll realize it’s worth seeing not because of its government’s fiscal responsibility, nor its streamlined beaurocratics, but because of its character, its ‘atmosphere’—a direct derivative of its arts and culture scene, IMO.

But like I said, take a quick gander at the candidates’ platforms, and all you’ll find are statements like “I believe in leading and running government like a business” and “The core of my campaign vision statement is to make Calgary the economic heart of Canada.”

Whatever—I say, fuck it: let’s ArtsVote anyway.