Speaking Municipally

Troy Pavlek: The news is hot as chili pepper spray. This week council was forced to listen to a lot of useless talk about spicy things.

Mack Male: Plus the mansion tax might not be in the cards for Edmonton.

Troy Pavlek: Hi, I'm Troy iMac and we're speaking municipally

we'll come back to speaking honestly, Episode 208. And with the conclusion of Chinatown dining week Mack, I feel like I don't have anything to say off the top. If only there was a way that I could know
what was happening at any given point in time.

Mack Male: Well, I might have a solution for you. You could subscribe to taproot. You could read the pulse and you can read our roundups. And if you subscribe to taproot, you'll also get all the other
great things that we send out to people, including, you know, this episode and speaking minutes play episodes, but also sometimes we ask for input. And this week, we've actually been looking for some
input on the idea of an events calendar for Edmonton. I don't know about you try, but we hear a lot from our readers that how do I find out about events, or I found out about an event that I might be
interested in, but it happened already. It's too late. We think we can maybe do something about that, you know, caveat, caveat, caveat, most event calendars suck and don't actually solve the problem.
But you know, we think we have a way to to address that. Anyway, we're looking for some feedback, some input from people. So put the survey link in the show notes that if you feel compelled to tell us
what you think about event calendars, we'd be very

Troy Pavlek: grateful. Now this might be a Mac mail deep cut here. But this sounds a little bit similar to share Edmonton. Yeah, this

Mack Male: website I built more than a decade or my goodness, we're getting on 15 years or something ago. And it was an events calendar. It was more than that it would try to be this aggregator for
all kinds of local information. And there's a few key things that I learned through that process that I think will make, you know, anything taproot might do here around events much, much better. So
very quickly. One of them is like, I tried to include literally everything in that event calendar, it was way too noisy. One of the things that taproot does really well as you'll know, is curation. I
think that'll be really critical for any event calendar to be successful. But secondly, Sherman was the thing that nobody knew about. So I had to get people to find out about it, and then have them go
there. And, you know, getting people to make a habit of a new website is difficult. taproot already has of course, pretty good distribution 1000s of readers and subscribers. So if we do an event
calendar, it's gonna have a little bit more legs right off the start. So there's a few few more reasons but those are a couple that make us think like we might be able to do something different this
time.

Troy Pavlek: We don't do anything different. At the start of each episode, though, we do the rapid fire segment this week, a local Edmonton man showed up at Edmonton City Council eating a chili pepper
in order to prove that climate change is not a huge issue. After the public and councils time was wasted Council will now be debating a new policy to restrict speakers that explicitly waste Council's
time. This would include comedians the 30 speakers at public hearing, sharing the same speak notes and points and the downtown recovery coalition. Winter Bike to Work Day

Mack Male: was this morning, with the city inviting all four of the winter cyclists in the city to stop by the lamppost near the high level bridge and enjoy some complimentary drinks and snacks with
their complimentary roadway space paid for by hard working drivers and their gas tax money.

Troy Pavlek: The Edmonton police is requesting a $17 million budget increase through a new service package presented Deadman City Council. The service package they say is needed to support emerging
priorities like setting up roadblocks and checkpoints to enforce citizen containment within 15 minute communities

Mack Male: speaking municipally as a proud member of the Alberta Podcast Network locally grown community supported. This episode is brought to you by the well endowed podcast from the Edmonton
Community Foundation. It's hosted and produced by Andrew Paul and Lisa Pruden. And it explores the impact of passionate people who are working to make Edmonton a strong vibrant city to live in. The
ECF helps people create endowment funds, and the podcast tells the stories of how those endowments intersect with the community. Episode 140 looks at how Edmonton Food Bank, the very first food bank
to open in Canada goes beyond food to support community members. You can find the well endowed podcast wherever you get your podcasts or at the well endowed podcast.com

Troy Pavlek: We're not going to be the first people to cover this next story this week Mack and did every media outlet covered it. But my hope is we will be the last to ever talk about this ever
again. And that's the chili pepper guy at Edmonton City Council.

Mack Male: You know, I go through the agendas every single week we produce a thing for taproot called on the agenda. Here's what's coming up. And when I saw this come up during the week I was like why
there was nothing on the agenda about climate change what is going on here? So Troy why randomly did we have a comedian and I'm using air quotes here. Show up at city council to eat a chili

Troy Pavlek: pepper a guy self identifying as a comedian showed up at eminence city council. He ate a chili pepper making the joke that even though the chili pepper was heating up, it's not the end of
the world and saying this means climate you Ain't not a big deal. This was presented through the frame of an obviously satirical series of comments about how we're not supporting our oil and gas
workers enough and how we need to give more support to those boys in the patch now saying this quickly and succinctly in the 20 seconds that I did, it actually sounds kind of funny, right on the crux
of it. This is a silly waste of time, but an okay funny joke, the execution of this was absolutely trash. Not funny at all. The guy completely bungled the execution. Like you said, there was nothing
about climate change on the agenda. He even mentioned in his comments about how he was searching through agenda items to find one to present to he clearly just wanted to eat a chili pepper in front of
Edmond and city council and waste everyone's time. And Mac I'm not a stranger to going in front of Edmonds city council and making jokes I actually find if you're legitimately presenting to counsel,
including a couple jokes, and making counselors laugh, really does help get your point across. Yeah, they're there for 12 hours. They're so bored. They want a reprieve or reprieve should not be taxing
or reprieve should not make you want to go back to hearing about assessment and taxation for another seven hours. And yet every counselor was averting their eyes just saying, When can this be over?
Guy, you're not succeeding, move on. And media media as well stop glorifying this. We get the Parks and Rec is funny. Parks and Rec was a funny show. This would be a funny bit on Parks and Rec, like
this guy was not funny. Let's not give them credit for being so

Mack Male: when Councillor Sarah Hamilton offers to help you get to the punch line. Might want to go back to the drawing board.

Troy Pavlek: The bravery of Councillor saver Hamilton, you know, having undermined Council quite on the regular for the past couple of weeks to tweet about wasting Council's time and abandoned council
meetings. Absolutely. incredibly brave kudos to her for really standing up and putting on that cognitive dissonance shield. Totally.

Mack Male: Props to you, Councillor Hamilton, you mentioned that this self identified comedian said he had searched through agenda items did find something climate related and failed to do that. Is
that do you think a commentary on how infrequently climate change of ongoing crisis actually comes up before City Council

Troy Pavlek: fats a funny joke to make mac you've identified another lane of comedy he could have gone for. Let me just say quickly, this comedian could have totally made this a lot more funny. Like
let's just workshop his joke a little bit. First, the satirical Beaverton article. No one thinks about the oil patch. Yeah, kind of tired. Totally. What if instead, he went there with the climate
change isn't a big deal thing ate the pepper. And when it started heating up, he pivoted and he's like, Oh, geez, climate change is real. I'm dying, the world is dying. Let's act about this. That
could be funny and meaningful at the same time. This guy's not a comedian. I'm a podcaster, who writes three bad jokes a week that people tell me to cut from the episode. And yet, I'm still funnier
than this guy. That's, that's my claim here, Mac. And that's all I'll say on it. We love your jokes, try to keep it up. Let's talk about some real stuff this week. And the first we won't spend too
much time on this. But there was a report that's coming up in the next couple of weeks about 102 Avenue. And this is what we've been keeping an eye on the closure of the vehicle space to make one or
two have a pedestrianized corridor along the new Valley line LRT. This was of course supposed to happen several months ago, when the train opened. The train did not, in fact, open. So the road has
been in this sort of barrier rised no man's land, we're uncertain if it's opened or closed, if there's access if there's no access, when it snowed, who's supposed to clear it? Is the bike lane even
open. These were all questions that we had. And now there is a report coming forward for councils consideration to kind of solidify some of these questions.

Mack Male: Yeah, so this will come up in public hearing on February 21. This is in response to a motion that council made in June last year, about a pilot project for this closure. So 100 and Second
Avenue between 100 and third and 99th street. They requested that administration, bring forward the bylaw changes to do that and also work with the downtown business association and other stakeholders
to try and activate the space. This report actually says that administration does not support the bylaw. So administration, at least doesn't want to see this go forward. It can however, start as soon
as it passes third reading at city council and it will expire a year after that date. So the longer this goes on, the more in limbo, that stretch of road is going to be but there's a very real chance
that after February 21. We could have a one year pilot

Troy Pavlek: or indeed a road opened if administration convinces Council not to support this bylaw, a brief refresher of the last time this came up at a council it is not a shocker to see
administration attempt to sabotage this thing because they tried to do it. I counsel some of the chair his quotes when this came up for council debate before, was Adam Laughlin getting up in front of
Council and saying we need the traffic lanes open, because cars will protect pedestrians from the train, which is the most absurd line of thinking I can think of. So we will be covering this in the
next couple of weeks. But I wanted to highlight it because just like the last time we debated this, this is something that we're going to need proactivity from both counselors in the community to
avoid administrative sabotage. And this report is rife with administrative sabotage, because like I talked about at the top, it's not clear going down there, whether the road is open or closed,
whether the bike lane is open or closed. There's still barriers everywhere

Mack Male: that I have to move frequently because they've been moved. Because you know, what happens is you get sort of maintenance people that come in there, they move the barricades, barricades,
they drive away, and they don't put them back. And then cars just drive through there. It's crazy.

Troy Pavlek: Yeah. So I wasn't even certain if I was allowed to cycle through that area, because we've never really gotten a solid answer of does the city control the space? Or does transit still
control the space because the train is closed? There's a subheading in this report coming to city council called Space activation. And it says interest from community stakeholders to activate the
space has been limited and there have been no formal events or activations of any kind as of January 2023. So they're saying there have been no formal activations of the space with barricades saying
keep out, some of which until recently said keep out or we will prosecute you for trespassing. I don't want to activate it that space.

Mack Male: Shocker also in the middle of winter with lots of snow and all kinds of other contributing factors there. My favorite part of this report Troy is the decline in foot traffic and business
activity in this area has contributed to an unsafe environment, keeping the lane open to vehicles would create more natural surveillance and likely improved safety with more eyes on the area. Yeah, no
hard no, this vehicles will make it so much more unsafe than it currently is.

Troy Pavlek: I would like to remind city administration about the 100 crosswalks that we are upgrading because of the lack of safety that we needed to expedite because of demand from across the city.
Roads without cars aren't unsafe. You don't need crosswalks. If the road doesn't have cars, we will definitely follow this over the next couple of weeks as it comes forward. But Mac sometimes I just
read the agendas, and it gets me going.

Mack Male: If you're as upset about the report, as Troy is, you know, might be a good opportunity to let your counselor know about it in advance of that public hearing that's coming

Troy Pavlek: up in the next couple of weeks. But council did here this week, an update about homelessness and more specifically, a homeless discount from home or trust.

Mack Male: Yeah, there was a verbal report, Dr. Chris Sikora, who's the chief medical officer of health for the Edmonton zone was at city council. We heard a lot from doctors Acorah through the
pandemic, but not recently so much. But he came to give an update on homelessness and the impact that a lack of housing has on health, actually. So one of the bits of information we got is, as you
say, an update on the homeless count homeward Trust says that as of this week, there were more than 2800 homeless people in Edmonton and about a third of those people are sleeping outdoors, about half
or maybe provisionally accommodated, which means it's temporary or is unsafe housing that they're in. But the other thing that we heard about and the primary reason that Dr. Zucker was there was to
talk about how having housing can lead to a really significant drop in both emergency room visits, and addictions and mental health related EMS events, which, you know, should be a significant focus
for all kinds of policymakers. But in this case, city council, what can they do to, you know, increase the security and availability of housing, not just because people to have dignity deserve dignity
and a house and a roof over their head, but because it can also have a real dramatic impact on on our health system?

Troy Pavlek: Mike not to sort of undersell or make light of this. But did he present any new information that we haven't heard constantly for the past eight years.

Mack Male: I mean, this is a this is a thing we've heard from experts in this field, as you pointed out, so that's not really new. He did have some relatively updated information, some recent studies
that were done at the University of Alberta, for example, that found you know, in the 2019, to the early part of the pandemic, homeless people in Edmonton made 5800 visits to the emergency room. And
the causes for this were poisonings falls, environmental factors, like cold and violent. So there was some new evidence to support the idea that if these people were housed if they had stable housing,
that that could have a material impact on their health. But as you say, this information is not really new to anyone who's been paying attention. And counselor Karen Tang kind of picked up on that and
said, in the past year and a half, we've been putting disproportionate attention on the public safety aspect of things criminalizing homelessness and poverty. And she's hoping that this conversation
at can Maybe we'll maybe shift the conversation a little bit to what are the other solutions that we should be putting in place here. Of course,

Troy Pavlek: I think it is not a surprise to anyone on city council that housing is an appropriate and effective measure. We hear Council talk about it all the time. This report was approved by
committee for oh, and we'll go to Council, which point Council will likely accept it for inspiration. But Council has built housing. There was a lot of acrimony just a couple of years ago, when
council had built housing and the units sat empty because the province wouldn't fund the supportive aspect of the housing. We have to deal with fear who, when asked questions about housing, he often
times de emphasizes the housing aspect, he controls a disproportionate amount of the city budget through the police commission. So I'm hopeful that we will see something positive out of this and that
we will see more housing built and homelessness decrease and disorder decrease because of it. But you know, I have watched history, and nothing about our past indicates to me that anything will change
based on this report.

Mack Male: No, not based on this report, potentially depending what happens in the upcoming provincial election. But that remains to be seen. Counsel did receive this information. And then they passed
the follow up motion basically asking for doctors coroner's office to provide a report on deaths related to unhoused populations. So this information was mainly about its impact on the healthcare
system and emergency events. They want to get more information about the deaths of dealing with homelessness. And then they also asked HHS to provide a report on mental health and addiction issues
within the city. So we should have that come back to committee at some point with some more information about that ongoing crisis as well.

Troy Pavlek: I mentioned chief Dale McPhee and his I won't call it lack of support for housing but his less than full throated support of housing as a solution. Because often with the Edmonton police
service, we find discussions tend to relate to things that would increase their budget and don't through an evidence based process actually have provable impacts on safety improvements. And I think
there was no better microcosm of that than the discussion this week where EPS came to Edmonton City Council requesting a series of bylaw changes related to pepper spray and bear spray more
specifically, to further restrict access to pepper spray on open streets.

Mack Male: Yeah. Are you not a little bit shocked that they didn't ask for like a budget service package to deal with pepper spray incidents and bear spray incidents like that they went and requested
bylaw changes, it's kind of shocking to me.

Troy Pavlek: I think the better way is to request the bylaw change. And then once the bylaw comes into effect. They say well, you have this new bylaw that has so much more arduous burden put on us we
need budget to do what you asked.

Mack Male: Yeah, that's probably true. Well, this report said that, you know, incidents of pepper spray or bear spray so there's only a resin capsicum is the scientific name, I suppose of the spray
has been trending up since 2015. And the report points out that a concerning percentage greater than 66% are within 100 meters of a bus stop. So there's a lot of these incidences apparently in the
last six years and as a first step I suppose you know the police think that some sort of nuisance type offense for negligent use in public spaces and then also some rules for businesses who sell this
they've might have to say record who buys the spray could be some changes that might you know help them start to address this

Troy Pavlek: and in a vacuum a lot of this sounds okay. Perhaps you don't want to get pepper sprayed at a bus stop. I can get behind that. Yeah, this of course all flies in the face and Councillor
Michael Jan's brought this up in discussion. When I was listening at city council, the Solicitor General of Alberta wrote to the Attorney General of Canada, asking for fewer restrictions on pepper
spray, because he said Edmontonians should all carry pepper spray for safety, to see the EPS talk about pepper spray as a need to restrict with such a stark disconnect at the provincial level.
Councillor Michael Jones asked the police service are you disagreeing with the Solicitor General? And to what extent do you support this illustre General's comments? And he couldn't seem to get a yes
or no answer. There was a little bit of a kerfuffle with Councillor Tim Cartmell trying to rule the question out of order though in my read it seemed pretty in order. Yeah. And we didn't really get an
answer other than some hemming and hawing. And then moving on. It all seemed to me like the EPS was coming forward with this issue. That wasn't really an issue seemingly coming out of nowhere. We're
talking about safety and security on LRT in Chinatown, and in many ways that are top of mind and this doesn't really have anything to do with that. It seems to me like an EPS attempt to change the
channel that only ended up with a bit of an own goal on them. Yeah, you

Mack Male: would hope that the Justice computers in our province and community could have a little bit more consistency in terms of what they recommend. Go forward. Committee just received this
information. So that means there will be some draft bylaw changes that come back at some point that council would need to review and approve. So this unfortunately, will not be the last time we hear
about pepper spray at city council.

Troy Pavlek: Yeah, of course, when the legislators and those that are enforcing the legislation don't quite agree on what the rules are, that can lead to a lot of jurisdictional uncertainty. I think
we might see a little bit of that coming up next week with the report from Councillor Michael James's mansion tax coming back, you'll recall, this is a proposal from Council, Michael Janz, that would
add a new assessment subclass for properties that are valued over $1 million, those properties might pay a higher property tax rate in a sort of tax, the rich pay your share type scheme, the report
was published this week. And there was some coverage in CBC and other outlets, essentially saying that the city has no legal jurisdiction to implement such attacks,

Mack Male: or at least that they're concerned about potential legal issues, I have to imagine they're worried that all of the people who have houses greater than a million dollars in value are going
to band together and sue them for discrimination or something if they, you know, go and and create a new subclass for them. So the report kind of dances around this right and a few different ways,
right? I mean, the report is not really about the million dollars, it's more that administration was asked to look into options for making municipal property taxes, more progressive, and throughout
the report, the administration kind of give some input about how it could do that, but also at the same time seems to suggest that it couldn't actually make it more progressive.

Troy Pavlek: Yeah, there was one line in this report that really stood out to me, and it said, quote, as there is no legislative flexibility in the assessment of properties, setting different tax
rates for property classes, and subclasses is the primary tool available for the city to address property tax, incidences, Mac when I read this, I had to stop and think and stop and think again, and I
came out of it saying it was that a councillor Tim cartmill statement. That didn't seem to say anything. And if you

Mack Male: read the rest of this paragraph, it paraphrases the Municipal Government Act, which I know you went and looked at. But it explains that the city can come up with different subclasses. So it
can set different tax rates for different property classes subclasses of property. That sounds to me like legislative flexibility in the assessment of properties. Not really sure why it's qualified as
we don't have any legislative flexibility. As I said many times in the report, it says things like, you know, these are inadvisable due to legal risk or practical constraints, although the practical
constraints aren't really spelled out, beyond people might complain. Right? That seems to be the thing they're mostly concerned about. There doesn't seem to be a legal limit to what they can do

Troy Pavlek: here. Right? Yeah. And indeed, the MGA is quite explicit about this. It's in Section 297, subsection two, it says, quote, a council may by by law divide class one, those are residential
classes into subclasses. On any basis, it considers appropriate. And if the council does, so the assessor may assign one or more subclasses to Properties in class, one residential class, any basis it
considers appropriate is not legal risk, in my mind that the word any is pretty broad, I would say.

Mack Male: I think that's pretty expensive. Yes. I mean, the other thing the report says is that there's a legal risk if they make an improper subclass. I'm not really sure what would be improper
given what you've just read to us.

Troy Pavlek: This all reminds me of the time I spent discussing with city council and advocating with the Yag Corazon for speed limit reductions in the city of Edmonton. And I recall the city lawyers
saying in no uncertain terms when we were in council chambers, that it would not be permitted under the municipal government act for us to sign the edges of the city and say, within city limits, the
maximum speed is 40 kilometers an hour unless otherwise posted. And Mac, I've mentioned this before, but if you recall, that is what we did. And that is what we've done. And that is what the city
lawyer said is okay. I always pause when I hear the city lawyer say we can't do this, because reasons when they don't quite itemize the reasons. See lawyers seem quite risk averse. And they also do
work for the city. And as we talked about, with the 102, AV closure, Mac, I wouldn't be shocked if there was a lawyer suddenly saying something like, well, we can't do this for legal risks. It is
very, very easy to say some nebulous, legal risks because as is the case with the justice system, everything you do even things explicitly permitted by law do contain an element of legal risk. A judge
can always rule against you for extenuating circumstances. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't pursue things that are explicitly permitted by the municipal government act.

Mack Male: Yes. Now, we are not lawyers. So of course, you and I are not up to speed on, you know, case law related to this.

Troy Pavlek: Mac, I'm a podcaster. I do believe the

Mack Male: report says there's very limited legal precedent for different subclasses. But it's possible that it's perfectly allowed under the MGA and that there's, you know, case law out there that
would maybe suggest that it's not as easy to do as it might at first seem. But we don't know, because the attachment that has detail about the legal requirements for these new subclasses is
recommended to be kept private, and so hasn't been released. So we don't know. But what's not private? And just last thing on this, I think we should just maybe share the numbers, right? Because one
of the questions I had when I heard about this mansion tax originally is, well, how many houses are there, and it turns out, we have a number now. So there are more than 4800 properties in Edmonton
that were assessed at a million dollars of value or greater. And so what that works out to if, you know, the tax went ahead, and there was a 10%, higher tax, let's say, for those properties. That
means everybody else's taxes, all the people who have houses valued less than that their taxes could go down by 0.3%, which is not insignificant, actually, you know, it's much smaller of a decrease if
we only look at houses worth $2 million, or $3 million. But I thought it was interesting, we finally got some numbers to to see just how many properties might be affected by this.

Troy Pavlek: And of course, this is not necessarily about reducing the tax burden for those with lower value properties. So certainly, that is a positive impact. This is more in my mind about a
recognition that we've chosen progressive taxation systems all over Canada. And to an extent, even within Alberta, we love our flat tax, but we do have a slightly progressive system, because that is
more just that is more equitable, we understand the benefits of progressive taxation, and the benefits they have on people who are the most in need of financial assistance. Property tax is a very
regressive system overall, granted, sure the amount you pay does scale with the value of your property, but so to do income taxes, and yet income taxes are progressive. So I think laying the
groundwork for making this taxation system more equitable, more progressive, that does have value doesn't mean that later we might pursue things like wealth taxes, like land taxes, that incent
development and bring the value of your entire community up. Yeah, these are all things that we can pursue. But this, in my mind is the first step to that. And that's where the great value comes in,
not necessarily on the $5.3 million of tax shifts that we would have,

Mack Male: yeah, 100% this is about getting this conversation going making it okay for counselors to ask these questions and for, you know, causing the administration to really dig into it and
actually see what's possible.

Troy Pavlek: And in Edmonton, anything is possible, and especially if you're Java, because Java is a little bit of the unsung hero, you talk to someone on the street about think of an Edmonton company
that's achieved success, especially in the tech space. And you're likely to hear Bioware, the game company, or you might hear until a couple of weeks ago, Deep Mind as perhaps an example. But very
rarely, almost inexplicably, do you hear about jobber, who just closed $100 million US of series D funding this week?

Mack Male: Yeah, there's a huge round of investment for job or it comes at a time when all kinds of tech companies are doing layoffs. So it's a really good vote of confidence in this homegrown
company. And it's, I think, a recognition of the runway that they've got, I mean, certainly of the great company, that sampler and forest Eisler, the co founders have built based mainly here in
Edmonton, but also the runway they've got they think there's 6.2, more than 6 million businesses in North America that could be using Java. So Java makes software for home service businesses. So the
people that might come and fix your furnace, or come and wash your windows or those kinds of things, cut your lawn paint your garage door, they make the software that can help those businesses run
more efficiently, because a large number of them are still operated on notebooks and paper and post it notes and things like that. And so Java makes all of that, you know, much more efficient. And
maybe that's partly why we've not heard as much about job or because they are not so consumer facing as they BioWare was where they're making the games that, you know, people are actually playing or
you know, even Shopify, which also makes software for other businesses, but it's a little bit more connected to the end user to the customer, like use the Shopify app, for example. You see Shopify
when you buy something, Java is much more, you know, behind the scenes for a lot of people and so maybe that's part of a part of what it is. The other thing I suppose is that Bioware, of course, had
an exit, they got bought, they got their money out. And lots people were made very rich, raising money like this is a great thing for job are. But it's also money that investors hope to get out at
some point, right. So they've still got a lot of work to do to, you know, turn the 100 100 200 million in debt they've now received roughly and total of investment into a return for those investors.

And the more you raise, the more the return has to be right. So if Jabra gets to that point, they go public, or they have a big sale or something like that, maybe they'll become a little bit more of a
household name. But even still, in the meantime, pretty darn cool that a company like this that has had such an impact and is got such runway is coming right from Edmonton.

Troy Pavlek: And of course, as a software developer, who you know, keeps appraised of the job opportunities that might come across my desk job or is there all the time, it's very exciting to see a
company growing rate here because I don't want to move to San Francisco. But you know, opportunities wise, that's where the opportunities are in software and in tech and the University of Alberta has
a really nice computing science program. We have this tech and innovation ecosystem in Edmonton, it's nice to see the ability to stay here for your whole life in that tech and innovation ecosystem,
and get opportunities that rival those that you might see in Silicon Valley, or in London or in Dublin or places like that. So I'm excited. I'm optimistic and it's always nice to see an Edmonton based
success story. It's always great to have that thing to say, did you know they're from Edmonton? Like no, I didn't? Well, they are

Mack Male: two guys who met for coffee used remedy as their early office space. And now they've turned it into, you know, this pretty, pretty impressive large company. Customers across 50 different
industries, dozens of countries, more than 13 billion in revenue on behalf of their customers. Like it's really impressive. This podcast

Troy Pavlek: isn't sponsored by genre, but you're welcome to reach out. We started this podcast in a coffee shop as well. So like the parallels here on can't reach out to Kenny Yeah, totally. But of
course we do have actual ads to read from the Alberta Podcast Network and this episode is brought to you by Edmonton Public Schools, which is entering Open House season. You know what you love it

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Troy Pavlek: Well, Mack that's all for this week. So you the listener doesn't know that we edit out the awkward silence after I say that's all for this week and expect you to just come up with
something off the cuff. Yeah, that's it. Try a spicy week in the books. Until next week. I'm Troy, and I'm Mack, and we're speaking municipally.