Medicine Hat Minute: Valentine’s Day, Population Lags, and Vaccine Passport Dead

Medicine Hat Minute - Your weekly one-minute summary of Medicine Hat politics

This Week In Medicine Hat:

• We’d like to wish our readers, including those at City Hall, a wonderful Valentine's Day! Council isn't taking a break though, with two meetings this week.
  
  
• Today there will be a Public Services Committee meeting at 8:00 am. At this meeting, Council will receive a transit overview, an update from the Managing Director about pandemic-related items and the Monarch Theatre Expression of Interest, and more.
  
  
• On Thursday, there will be a meeting of the Energy and Infrastructure Committee at 3:30 pm. No agenda has yet been uploaded.

Last Week In Medicine Hat:

• The Restrictions Exemption Program ended Thursday night when the clock struck midnight, while K-12 masking rules are set to expire today. Some local businesses are already reporting an increase in customers. With the program gone and the masking rules for kids eased, it appears we are beginning to return to normal. Do you think this will be short-lived, or do you think we're open for spring?
  
  
• According to the 2021 federal census, Medicine Hat's population has only grown by 11 people in five years. With numbers that low, there’s a good chance you may personally know all of them! Just kidding, it's obviously just a net change of 11. But, with your help - and with better public policies - maybe we can drastically increase these numbers by the time the next federal census rolls around?
  
  
• The City of Medicine Hat is now accepting proposals for a carbon capture and storage system. The bidding process opened up on January 31st and closes on March 1st. While the idea of carbon capture is fine overall, taxpayers shouldn’t be paying for these kinds of speculative projects. Here’s an idea - Council should ditch the wasteful subsidies, save taxpayers money, and unleash the power of the free market and if carbon capture is economically viable, it will flourish and create jobs naturally.

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