Long straws and a “wet dream”: How politicians reacted to Calgary’s single-use items debate

Did Premier Danielle Smith ask someone to find her the longest straw they possibly could yesterday?

It certainly looks that way.

Shortly after Calgary City Council narrowly voted in favour of a motion that effectively kicks off the process to repeal its single-use items bylaw — which only existed for exactly two weeks when Council voted — Alberta’s premier took to X and told (and showed) everyone how she really felt.

“Calgary is one step closer to getting free napkins, cutlery, condiments, and bags back… next, plastic straws!” Smith wrote next to a picture of her sipping a Canada Dry with a mile-long straw.

She hasn’t held back any feelings regarding the policy implementation for either Edmonton, which came into effect last July, or Calgary.

Smith previously asked Rick McIver, Alberta’s minister of municipal affairs, to see if either municipal government overstepped.

At a press conference on January 25, she made her point clear while also advocating for cleanliness during messy meals.

“I can tell you I’ve heard there was near mutiny on wing night in some restaurants because you have to ask whether or not people want napkins; I mean, some things are just so obvious that you need napkins when it’s wing night, so I think there’s a little bit of ideology getting ahead of common sense here,” the premier said at the time.

In a statement sent to Daily Hive Urbanized, Minister Rick McIver said he thinks the City made the right decision.

“Calgary City Council is moving in the right direction by starting the repeal process for their single-use items bylaw that wrongfully adds costs to consumers and doesn’t effectively manage waste,” his statement reads.

“We continue to look into municipal plastics bylaws and their impact on residents and the business community.”

Smith wasn’t the only politician to criticize the policy or repeal it as a whole.

One Calgary city councillor took opposition to the idea of the process of walking back the bylaw, noting that it’s redundant and unnecessary.

“Some of the comments on social media are pretty entertaining around the idea of ‘what am I going to do without a bag at the drive-thru in McDonald’s … in my emails, it’s the one tangible example that [keeps] people keep bringing up,” said Ward Eight Councillor Courtney Walcott.

“I can’t support [the motion] because we have almost everything that’s in this list. And then the only thing that we’re actually having a conversation about is whether or not we have a bag at the drive-thru that you can still get for pennies.”

Another councillor went a little further, criticizing the new bylaw and seemingly taking a shot at the City’s climate change focus all at once.

Ward Four Councillor Sean Chu took the debate portion of the meeting to ask Council to get back to doing what they do best: things like fixing potholes.

Then, he went on and said the bylaw makes no sense and that Council is playing into “woke” ideologies.

For his final act of the meeting, he took things to a new level and said that Council should “stop chasing this green Utopian wet dream with no consideration for Calgarians.”

Chu was immediately asked to stop talking and apologize for the “sexualized” remark by Mayor Jyoti Gondek following his comment.

The single-use items bylaw remains in place for now until a public hearing is held, which is expected to happen sometime in the spring.

With files from Laine Mitchell