The left is dead
The city that calls itself the compassionate one. The "progressive" council. This is what the costume costs the people who live under it.
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City Hall · D. Benjamin Miller / Wikimedia Commons / CC0
01 / 16
The costume
The manager who wins
"There is no right-wing way to clear snow off the streets. There's no left-wing way to cut our grass. We just have to work together as humans."
Andrew Knack, mayor-elect, 2025
The dissenter who loses
"The capital class who have for years dominated city politics got bounced last election. They're coming back with a lot of money."
Michael Janz, campaign launch, 2025
It looks like the left only next to the province. Neither man who wears the costume is even the most progressive person in the room.
City Hall interior · Darren Kirby / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0
02 / 16
Two faces, one dead end
The dissenter who loses
Michael Janz
Casts the most consistent police-restraint vote on council. Loses every one, then signs the budget anyway.
The manager who wins
Andrew Knack
Bends to capital and the police. Moved the funding escalator himself. Won the mayor's chair.
Two ways of losing the same argument.
Portraits: Mack Male / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA
03 / 16
The machine
He moved it
Andrew Knack
+$97M
in seven years
≈26%
growth on a formula
15.4%
of the whole city budget
A funding formula that never has to be voted on again. Knack moved it himself. It carried 9 to 4.
Police HQ · Mack Male / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.0 · portrait Mack Male / CC BY-SA
04 / 16
Dissent on the record, consent on the money
The dissenter
Michael Janz
Then the hinge
He voted Yes on the final budget that funds them anyway, and owned the tax hike inside it. The two-step is the exhibit.
Portrait: Mack Male / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA
05 / 16
The ceiling is the whole room
0 / 9Andrew Knack. Wrote the escalator. Now the mayor.
0 / 9Tim Cartmell. Ran for mayor. Lost.
0 / 9Sarah Hamilton. Gone in 2025.
0 / 9Aaron Paquette. Self-styled progressive. Re-elected, third term.The last council's four longest-serving members. Zero restraint votes between them. The ceiling did not fall in 2025. It rose: the man who wrote the escalator is the mayor now.
Portraits: Mack Male / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA
06 / 16
A zero-sum budget
The police line grew on a guarantee. Everything that keeps people alive fought for scraps. The library grant has been frozen since 2015. Transit fares up. Rec fees up.
Police HQ · Mack Male / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.0
07 / 16
The bodily toll
Frostbite amputations, Edmonton zone. By 2022-23, unhoused patients were 58% of them. The city cleared the last winter camp at −24°C.
Winter in Edmonton · Heidi G / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0
08 / 16
What compassion costs
$225,000
of chain-link, bought in nine months of 2024 to fence the poor out of the parks they used to sleep in. Up from $3,400 the whole year before.
$250
to pitch a tent
$250
more to sit in it
3,819
camps razed in 2024
Bylaw 20700. A state that criminalizes the poverty it refuses to end, in a progressive costume.
River valley in winter · Heidi G / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0
09 / 16
The food they won't fund
A two-bedroom rent climbed 14% in two years. The thing actually feeding people runs on mutual aid, on no city money at all.
Edmonton's Food Bank · Mack Male / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.0
10 / 16
The body count
91%
of the people Edmonton police killed were in a mental-health or addictions crisis. The exact people a funded crisis response is built to reach.
39 dead in police encounters since 2000. Second only to Toronto.
1 officer charged across the whole tenure. A man shot 12 times was cleared.
Police HQ · Mack Male / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.0
11 / 16
The deadly exchange
The same police trialled Israeli face-recognition on 6,341 Edmontonians. The chief flew to Israel to study the surveillance of the occupied.
Two years of demands in the streets: a ceasefire, divestment, a city that will not buy from the occupation. Council brought none of it to a vote.
The one thing it fought for was in court: the right to keep clearing the camps. It razed all eight on Treaty 6 land anyway.
8,412
motions in the term
0
progressive: no ceasefire, no divestment, no halt to a single sweep
Criticism of a state and its policing, never a people, never a faith.
Solidarity march, Edmonton · Jason Woodhead / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0
13 / 16
The silence has an off-switch
The commission chair approved the chief's Israel trip alone, with no public discussion.
Two dozen residents used their five minutes to condemn it and call for his resignation.
His answer: he is considering ending the public-feedback portion of the meetings altogether.
Structural complicity is not a metaphor. It is a chair with his hand on the microphone switch.
City Hall interior · Darren Kirby / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0
14 / 16
Long live the left
The living left never entered the chamber. It is the Coalition that sued the city and paid the costs, Food Not Bombs, Water Warriors YEG, Bear Clan Patrol, the Edmonton Renters' Union, the People's University for Palestine, Idle No More, Migrante Alberta.
Every one does the thing a motion that loses 9–4 cannot. It directly keeps someone alive. Outside the chamber, doing the work the state refuses.
Solidarity march, Edmonton · Jason Woodhead / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0
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A duty to replace
They fund and command the police that clears the camps here on Treaty 6 land and studies the occupation abroad. If they stand with colonizers, the progressive wing of this city has a duty to replace them. Not to lobby them. Not to wait them out. To run against them and vote them out. Cartmell's $1M campaign, the most expensive in city history, already lost. Big money is not invincible here.
Conviction wins.
The costume loses.
@HANDLE · full sources in the research repo · THE LEFT IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE LEFT