Edmonton Minute: Juniors Cancelled, Emissions Decreasing, and Extremely Cold Weather

Edmonton Minute - Your weekly one-minute summary of Edmonton politics

This Week In Edmonton:

• Welcome to the first edition of the Edmonton Minute for 2022! The City Council and all associated committees are mostly still on break, although there will be an Agenda Review Committee meeting tomorrow at 9:00 am. Other committees won’t get back to work until the week of January 17th.
  
  
• A project aimed at throwing sand-filled tennis balls at coyotes to scare them off is looking for new volunteers. No, we haven’t had too much to drink; this is apparently real. Accosting the coyotes is supposed to make them more fearful of humans. There are approximately 500 to 1000 coyotes in Edmonton at any given time.
  
  
• The Province announced that all schools will delay reopening until at least January 10th to deal with the surge in Omicron COVID-19 cases. Originally, Edmonton Public Schools were set to resume January 3rd and 4th, but Superintendent Darrel Robertson claims "this temporary extension should also help mitigate further spread of COVID-19".

Last Week In Edmonton:

• It was oh-so-ridiculously cold last week, with the morning of December 27th having a temperature of -41.6 C recorded. That makes it the coldest December 27th since 1992. It was, in fact, so cold up here that the City stopped plowing snow. Frankly, we would not want to be working outside in -41 C either.  Thank goodness we have returned to somewhat more moderate temperatures.
  
  
• It was, sadly, announced that the World Juniors will not be handing out medals this week in Edmonton and Red Deer.  The tournament has been cancelled due to COVID-19 and a trio of forfeitures. Imagine skipping Christmas with your family in Austria, coming to Canada, being trounced 11-2, having any games you had half a chance in cancelled, all the while experiencing some of the coldest temperatures the world has to offer. Not a great time.
  
  
• It was revealed that greenhouse gas emissions had dropped two years in a row in the City of Edmonton, and the City is studying why. Total emissions had been around the 18 million tonne mark for about 4 years, before tapering off to about 15.7 million tonnes in 2020. The City says that the decrease is due to its climate plan. Maybe? Maybe it’s market forces and COVID restrictions at work? … Which do you think is more likely? Which do you think the City report will claim it was?

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