In this episode of The Cory Mendoza Show, I talk about why your next mayor should be an engineer, and why you should vote for someone who's an engineer. I also talk about the government's new plan to bring high-speed internet service to rural areas of Alberta.
00:00:29.440welcome to the cory morgan show so we're moving our way into spring got a bit of a taste of it
00:00:34.960though i'm certain our news editor will give me crap for the upcoming bad weather that's coming
00:00:38.160along shortly that's just part of the weekly complaining routine i complain for a living
00:00:43.120seems to work out well you guys like listening to it for the most part but we got positive things
00:00:47.360and stuff to cover and things happening out there today my guest a little while it's a fellow named
00:00:51.680greg wilson he's an engineer and he'd written a great column on why your next mayor should
00:00:57.120be an engineer sounds pretty self-serving and maybe sounds a little bit dry but that's kind of
00:01:00.880the point uh we we we vote for the flash rather than the substance sometimes and well we're playing
00:01:08.160they've seen the consequences of that uh with calgary uh you know a city of what getting towards
00:01:12.640two million people that has gone through two different phases of if it's yellow let it mellow
00:01:17.680not exactly uh points of pride in in local infrastructure lots of other things to cover
00:01:24.480as well but i'll get things going with my prime complaint of the day so this was uh inspired the
00:01:31.440other day i saw a surveyor measuring the extent of my acreage from the uh outer edges there and
00:01:36.240i got a soft spot for surveyors i was one for 20 years so i wasn't too concerned could be for a
00:01:41.520future road upgrade or something in the area i was curious though so i made some inquiries
00:01:45.680turns out the area is being surveyed for a potential broadband internet provider
00:01:49.680and they're checking the home locations for potential relays i couldn't help it roll my
00:01:53.760eyes our community has had companies come and go offering new internet systems almost
00:01:58.320annually since i moved out to the country 14 years ago and none of those came to fruition
00:02:03.200for a number of reasons so why do these companies keep doing it though they they never get enough
00:02:06.880people signing up to get them rolling but they still keep going through these processes town
00:02:11.120hall meetings surveys measurements well because taxpayers are getting soaked by them through
00:02:15.120government high-speed internet schemes my wife and i understood when we moved out to the country0.59
00:02:20.080we're going to be sacrificing some conveniences. And that meant we wouldn't at that time have
00:02:24.740ready access to high-speed internet options. That's fine. There was a local broadband provider
00:02:29.720at the time. They offered service. It was marginally better than dial-up and their support
00:02:33.700system was on par with your typical phone provider, which is to say terrible. Then the
00:02:37.940TELUS hub came along and for a while, you know, we switched to it for a while. It provided better
00:02:42.080service than that broadband provider. But as all our neighbors all started switching to the hub as
00:02:46.300well, the tower became overwhelmed and the hub became useless. Finally, in 2021, we heard that
00:02:51.300Starlink satellite internet service is going to become available for our area. We put ourselves
00:02:55.920on a waiting list and spent $750 for the hardware. It took a year before the service arrived, but
00:03:01.320when it did, it was a true game changer. We had ready access to service far superior than any
00:03:06.680local options. Since then, speeds have only increased and the costs have come down. There's
00:03:11.980no longer a waiting list and a person can now get a dish for a couple hundred bucks.
00:03:15.880Nearly every home in our area has a Starlink dish on the roof.
00:03:18.460Drive in rural areas, you see them everywhere.
00:03:21.180The rural internet service issue has been solved.
00:03:24.300Not willing to let a good but slow-moving concept go to waste, though,
00:03:27.460the federal and provincial government of Alberta are still blowing a billion dollars
00:03:30.480to bring outdated technology to rural homes throughout the province.
00:03:34.140I understand that fiber optic internet provides faster service than satellite,
00:03:38.040but it's only feasible in areas where there's a degree of home density.
00:03:41.500Running those lines out to rural homes costs a fortune.
00:03:43.800Not only is the government plan sinking a fortune into fiber optic lines, but it's subsidizing crappy broadband services too, which are even worse than the satellite that's being offered.
00:03:52.120Nobody's going to switch to these services, but the taxpayers get to pay for all that setup and hardware all the same.
00:03:57.320In my area, the latest government-funded proposed internet provision incarnation is called Mage Networks.
00:04:02.840They've been given $4.421 million tax dollars to service a potential 695 homes.
00:04:09.520Like I said, we're not going to sign up for them.
00:04:11.180That's going to cost about $6,400 a home to offer services that nobody wants.
00:04:16.200Did I mention everybody already has Starlink?
00:04:18.340It doesn't matter when the government backstops your venture, though, does it?
00:06:56.960a piece of history in downtown calgary a cool building and they had these these gargoyles
00:07:01.280actually they're called something else these things i forget what it is again uh that got
00:07:05.560saved from the building before they tore it down and stored in a warehouse forever in the city of
00:07:10.980calgary and finally they're putting them up for auction and they're really cool looking i mean
00:07:14.360they have the typesetter and the news editor and all sorts of things but they're 750 pounds each
00:07:21.540And my wife, who loves impulse buys and auctions, I do fear I'm going to roll up to the house and see a picker truck unloading a gargoyle onto our front lawn at some point.
00:07:30.480Well, you can put several on there and turn yourself into, like, what's that island?
00:15:41.440And it was a few months ago that I decided to start speaking about it publicly and writing about it and having these kind of conversations with people like yourself publicly.
00:15:52.360To me, municipal governments touch our day-to-day life,
00:15:55.980and we need to have the right people in place making the right decisions.
00:16:00.220And unfortunately, to date, that largely hasn't happened.
00:16:03.760Yeah, well, and I mean, it's sort of just the nature of politics.
00:16:06.320Our politicians, particularly municipal, look, everybody wants to leave a legacy.
00:16:10.980They want to have a ribbon cutting or a park that's been named after them,
00:16:13.640or even a rail line, you know, or light rail or something where they can say they've really helped things.
00:16:19.440nobody thinks about sewage or water supplies though that's really the the basis of a municipality
00:16:26.780those are some of the most important core areas and we never hear about it. Absolutely and I think
00:16:31.660a big problem in Canada as large is we are solely dependent on the the social systems and we just
00:16:39.000assume that these systems are always going to be working for us and that's not always the case
00:16:45.500And so we need the right decision makers, like I said, in place.
00:16:49.080But I think a lot of people are just complacent that the water just is always going to run
00:16:54.380and that your toilet is always going to flush.
00:16:56.980And in cases like Calgary, where that hasn't been the case,
00:17:00.120it becomes hugely problematic very quickly for people.
00:17:03.360And it can lead to very serious societal problems, too.
00:18:35.320You know, in Edmonton, where I live, a lot of the infrastructure was built, you know, 100 plus years ago in some areas.
00:18:42.700And, you know, a huge build out happened in the 60s and 70s.
00:18:45.840So the water pipe is aging every on all levels.
00:18:49.960And it was found out that PCC pipe in Calgary, that was the issue.
00:18:54.760That was a problem sort of decade from 1972 to 1984.
00:18:59.080before all of that pipe throughout North America was massively problematic for both water and
00:19:05.160wastewater. You know, the city of San Diego in the States, too, has had massive ruptures and
00:19:10.160issues with their water, both water and wastewater distribution system. So this isn't a Canadian1.00
00:19:16.560problem. This isn't a municipal problem. This is a massive North American problem that's been
00:19:21.540overlooked, largely. And it's something that's so critical. However, in Canada, like I said,
00:19:27.260it's even more critical because we as a society in our socialized country depend solely on it.
00:19:33.140We don't have other suppliers to provide us water or wastewater. And when wastewater goes wrong,
00:19:38.920it goes very wrong for our watersheds. Absolutely. Well, I mean, on a micro version of it,
00:19:44.160I live on an acreage and I have a septic system that I had to spend a lot of money to rebuild
00:19:48.420because when that failed, it wasn't pretty. That's just to say that. And that's just one
00:19:54.000households. So if you get a million houses suddenly flooding, uh, an area with that,
00:19:57.680it could be bad getting onto the solution in the things though, I guess, I mean, part of what you
00:20:02.700covered is, is this has been reported, you know, the, the Calgary, uh, investigation found that
00:20:08.760they've been, there've been warning flags put up. They've talked about this over years or in
00:20:12.660Waterloo, you pointed out, you know, they've been running right on the edge of capacity
00:20:15.980for a long time. And again, the guys in the plants and so on, I think are telling city officials,
00:20:21.880hey guys, we got something coming, but they aren't being listened to. Is there ways we could
00:20:26.680change policy maybe to make it so that this reporting is public or something to force the
00:20:31.160issue to happen? Absolutely. And I think there's a huge misinformation. And my interview that I
00:20:36.720included in the article with Tim Cartmel, who is a former councillor here in Edmonton and ran for
00:20:42.120mayor last year, pointed out that generally council is full of generalists. And like you said at the
00:20:46.640outset, they want to cut ribbons. They want to name buildings after themselves and pat themselves
00:20:51.720on the back. And they don't, I think a big part of it is they don't understand what they don't
00:20:57.360understand. And it's easier to glorify these passion projects than it is to talk about maybe
00:21:04.620things that they fully don't comprehend or that are truly out of sight, out of mind. So I think
00:21:10.380it's many things. I think we have to educate the electorate. And that was really what I wanted to
00:21:15.040do with this article is to have people understand that it's a very complicated system to get water
00:21:19.680to your tap. We also have to make sure that we are, with that information, we are making the
00:21:25.380correct decisions at the ballot box. And unfortunately, the election in Edmonton last
00:21:30.980fall did not, I don't think, go very well for the city of Edmonton and for future and for our
00:21:36.040infrastructure. And then it has to be hugely a massive sort of like public disclosure of the
00:21:43.280of the systems that we have and the right people managing those systems yeah and then some of it
00:21:49.680also kind of ties in and it always does in politics or in that world with a little bit of ideology
00:21:54.640going on densification has been a big push for most municipalities they want to take down the
00:22:00.400old houses stick in some infills keep building upwards but often they aren't expanding the
00:22:06.320underground infrastructure to be able to handle that denser intake and we've got some politicians
00:22:12.560well motivated on never wanting to put up any roadblocks that might stop any of that densification
00:22:16.400uh is there ways though that are cost effective to upgrade i guess those utilities in those older
00:22:22.380areas that are densifying how can we avoid over pressuring existing stuff it's a huge problem and
00:22:28.920i think a lot of this um infill scope that came out i mean it's it's pushed by cmhc and the federal
00:22:35.620government and all levels and it has massive ramifications for municipalities and the citizens
00:22:41.340that live in them like i said in the article you know these cities and municipalities were designed
00:22:46.540in the past for growth for expansion but not for one house in a single family neighborhood being
00:22:52.380turned into 10 properties which is happening just down the street from me and so that kind
00:22:57.180of densification has massive ramifications and all of this infrastructure is below our houses our
00:23:02.780roads, our waterways, too. So it's very challenging to address it and to improve them. And also,
00:23:12.340too, for wastewater specifically, if you have too large of a pipe that doesn't have enough
00:23:16.560flow through it, it actually is worse in some cases because the H2S and the methodologies
00:23:23.160within the wastewater can actually deteriorate the concrete faster. So we have to size things
00:23:27.660up properly and fix things properly. But it is a huge money taker from our budget. And I think
00:23:35.640a big solution potential is to maybe do more localized treatment facilities, wastewater
00:23:40.880treatment facilities. Instead of relying on this massive distribution system, we rely on a much
00:23:46.800smaller distribution system that's maybe community driven. So one of your solutions, that's kind of
00:23:53.060the base of your article in the title though, is getting engineers or at least people with some
00:23:57.220knowledge of these items to get in and run for public office you made clear that's not where
00:24:00.960you're looking to go uh but i mean there's one of the challenges i see that in the oil field too we
00:24:05.720got engineers they hit the top levels of oil companies engineers are a special breed i mean
00:24:10.640we appreciate you guys you you do very important things that are fantastic but at that same time
00:24:16.340you're not necessarily the most outgoing folks i don't want to throw stereotypes there's all kinds
00:24:20.920of engineers but uh or people that are interested in going into elected office you don't get your
00:24:25.920degree in engineering with an intent of going into those sorts of positions so how do we I guess
00:24:32.040bring in some of those people into our councils how do we encourage them to come in and put their
00:24:35.840names forward so we can get a better skill set in there absolutely I think that's a huge problem
00:24:40.860and I think there is this notion I think I'm a relatively atypical engineer I see the gray area
00:24:48.080a little bit more in my softer skills too but I think at the root of it engineers are problem
00:24:53.340solvers, and that's who we need running municipalities and these governments. And we
00:24:57.760need people who are driven by rationality and not passion to run these systems. And so I think a
00:25:04.980part of it is having engineers at a consulting level that can educate and inform properly,
00:25:10.640having maybe the management and ownership of these infrastructures, like sort of a system like
00:25:15.280EPCOR does here in Edmonton, where the experts are in control of the day-to-day running of it.
00:25:20.060But still, even at the decision making level, we need people who are informed and whether that's an educational piece, a consultant who is there for counsel to answer questions, to explain things to counsel, to urge and make them understand the importance of these things.
00:25:36.480That's really what we need to go back to. And I think we really need to go back to the basics.
00:25:39.920I mean, we got so far in left field in the recent years with sustainability and DEI measures that took massive funding away from our critical infrastructure.
00:25:49.680And we need to refocus that immediately to get back on the right track.
00:25:54.080Well, I think part of that could be making sure with these utilities, the politicians can't get their grubby fingers on it in the first place.
00:25:59.920You pointed out, again, showed with Calgary, the water utility, people pay their water bills and it's led to surpluses that the city of Calgary has been quietly siphoning out of there over $100 million a year for a decade.
00:26:14.260You know, people are in shock now at the cost of what it's going to cost to fix that infrastructure.
00:26:18.100Well, if we'd have been spending that $100 million a year on keeping this stuff up, we probably wouldn't have seen geysers in the middle of Bonesse in the middle of winter.
00:26:26.300but of course then they wouldn't be able to dedicate that money as you said to weird DEI
00:26:30.220projects and vanity projects. Exactly but what would we be without bike lanes you know and that
00:26:36.680hundred million dollars a year could have gone to massive improvements and upgrades and everything
00:26:43.340necessary. I mean Waterloo like you pointed out they basically have no more water and they knew
00:26:47.600that their water treatment facility was aging you know so they should have been spending the money
00:26:51.740there and when you see these things um come out like like in this article that calgary has been
00:26:56.380siphoning off a hundred million dollars a year from this critical infrastructure to other things
00:27:01.260that's the problem and that's the piece that we really need to have people woken up to and really
00:27:07.260hold the councils and the mayor's feet to the fire to make sure that they're making the appropriate
00:27:12.940decisions i mean i see like the sustainability thing is a massive passion project for me to
00:27:18.620educate people on the risk that it presents and the amount of money that it has taken away from
00:27:25.360our critical infrastructure is incredible. So somebody broke out of the mold and you
00:27:31.700showed a positive example in Regina. A mayor has been elected with an engineering background and
00:27:38.060as his campaign has been to address these sorts of issues, has he been making good progress on
00:27:43.920that so far? He has generally and we had a great conversation while I was writing this article
00:27:48.600And it was great to talk to someone who is an engineer and has that kind of mindset, but also his managerial skills, obviously, to be a mayor.
00:27:56.200I mean, he took his project management skills to a much broader scope, being the mayor of Regina.
00:28:03.840And it seems like they're on the right track.
00:28:05.620And they just released a few months ago a new policy and strategic growth plan for the city of Regina that really addresses a lot of this scope, that they are only doing infills and upgrades to apartments and other densification in key areas where the infrastructure already exists or can be easily accessible to upgrade properly.
00:28:29.640And I think that's a perfect example of the practicality that engineers and the mindset of engineers bring to a municipality.
00:28:38.820So one other element, just to kind of wrap things up, you didn't cover too much in this, but you can speak to as an engineer.
00:38:13.240No, he's going over to get some poor young woman who's been arranged as a marriage so he can, I don't know, do whatever he's going to do to her.0.98