St. Albert residents have a clearer picture of the racist, discriminatory, and denigrating comments made by residents throughout the public engagement sessions for the municipal naming policy project after the city made the report public.
“When I learned of the hurtful comments we received from some members of the community, I was sad, appalled and extremely disappointed,” St. Albert Mayor Cathy Heron said in a news release. “This is not the St. Albert I know.”
“These comments reflect the ignorant, bigoted and ill-informed views of a minority of survey respondents but reveal the uncomfortable truth that racism and intolerance exist in our community.”
In February, when the municipal naming policy was first presented to council, the Gazette reported that city staff as well as the project consultants had estimated about 10 per cent of all public feedback contained racist and discriminatory views.
The report released today includes verbatim comments made during in-person engagement sessions as well as emails sent to the city and the consultants about the municipal naming project.
Many of the comments include slurs, residential school denialism, misinformation, transphobia, as well as a multitude of responses that denigrate city staff, including a respondent who said city council and administration “smacks of crybaby weakness.”
An email from one resident, who said they were unable to attend an in-person engagement session because they lived in the United States during the winter months, said Indigenous people “were conquered by a technologically and culturally superior people.” The resident also used a slur to refer to Indigenous people throughout the email.
Another resident said in an email that Indigenous people of Blackfoot and Kainai Nation descent were “enemies of the residing (sic) in the Edmonton area.”
The names of residents whose comments were included were withheld from the report, which is 45 pages long.
The last time the draft municipal naming policy was in front of council was the Feb. 14 committee of the whole meeting, which resulted in the committee deciding to have the draft policy have clarified definitions and more concise language.
As well, in February the committee learned that Coun. Shelley Biermanski intended to put forward 22 separate changes to the policy for debate. When asked in February, Biermanski told the Gazette she preferred to wait until the policy was debated again to disclose what changes she was seeking.
The Gazette submitted a FOIP request in February to try and obtain the drafted motions Biermanski had shared with her council colleagues before the first committee debate, however the city denied the request.
When reached for an interview on May 8, Biermanski said she now had just five changes she wanted to make to the draft policy, all of which were intended to clarify definitions included in the policy.
In response to the report released by the city on Monday, Biermanski said she didn't want to condemn any resident for what they said.
“I would not condemn anyone for what they say without totally understanding that person,” she said. “I just think we made some mistakes in the process of getting feedback from the community.”
The Gazette will have more coverage to come of the upcoming committee discussion of the draft municipal naming policy.
