Article content Mr. Sohi goes to Paris. If that sounds like a bad movie, that’s probably because that’s how it will turn out.
I can’t imagine what Edmonton Mayor Amarjeet Sohi is going to learn at an international conference on homelessness for big cities mayors to be held in the French capital this week. The cost isn’t exorbitant — a total of less than $9,000 for both the mayor and an assistant. It’s just that I can’t see what the conference — mostly put on by the UN and a partner organization, the Ruff Institute of Global Homelessness — will teach Sohi that would justify the cost to Edmonton taxpayers.
Politicians should be allowed to travel without being criticized every time. So long as their travel style isn’t outrageous (like the $6,000 a night Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spent on a suite at one of London’s swankiest hotels to attend Queen Elizabeth’s funeral) and so long as there is a legitimate expectation of a benefit to their voters, it could be worthwhile. But what is Sohi going to learn about solving homelessness in Paris? UN-Habitat, one of the two hosts, describes its goals as “reducing inequality, discrimination and poverty.
” Those are worthy aspirations, but it is not immediately obvious how such platitudinous aims will help prevent encampments of fentanyl addicts from being set up in our city. UN-Habitat is more a human rights organization as it is a homelessness fighter. If its approach to homelessness is mostly about tackling w.