Edmonton Minute: New Year, Travelling Politicians, and New Hope For Businesses

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

This Week In Edmonton:

• Happy New Year, Edmonton! We hope you've had a relaxing holiday break and found a way to enjoy yourself while saying good riddance to 2020. The next municipal election is this fall so we have a lot of work to do in 2021! If you'd like to help, you can sign up to volunteer, while donations to support our work are always greatly appreciated too.
  
  
• Thanks to revelations at the provincial level, we suspect the news this week will be dominated by speculation about Councillor's travel schedules. A few Councillors have confirmed they didn't travel over the holidays, but that still leaves questions about other Councillors and about travel earlier during the pandemic.
  
  
• Speaking of breaks, there are no Council meetings scheduled for this week or in fact, until January 25th. Council's Committees do resume their work this week, however, with an Emergency Advisory Committee meeting scheduled for 1.30 pm on Thursday.

Last Week In Edmonton:

• Despite COVID restrictions, many Edmontonians found ways to celebrate New Year's and spread holiday cheer, including through several heartwarming events such as a turkey drive in North Edmonton or virtual music concerts for those who can't get out.
  
  
• In other positive news, more than 4,000 new businesses opened in Edmonton last year, despite all the challenges 2020 brought. Just goes to show what Edmontonians can achieve given half a chance. We're looking forward to fighting for a more business-friendly environment here in Edmonton this year, to help new businesses survive and grow.
  
  
• COVID restrictions do continue to cause controversy though, with one business owner posting defiant signage that said "No Mask, won't ask" instead of the government required signage. We can't imagine these kinds of arguments will be going away any time soon, given the recent news about politicians' travels, however (see above).

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