This recently proud and vibrant city is currently engulfed in unremitting chaos, and there appears little hope this will change anytime soon
What’s next? Is anything else falling apart in Calgary? Or have we finally reached rock bottom?
The future of transit is in a state of chaos, the water supply’s been hit and miss all summer, the budget’s a financial boondoggle into which we’ve paid half a billion more than necessary, while the new zoning regulations are causing a citizen revolt on a scale unknown in our city.
And now our libraries have become the plaything of hackers.
No doubt some city councillors are clinging by their fingertips to the convenient view this is simply bad luck: that it could have happened to any city, anywhere. Therefore, nobody’s really to blame and, certainly, no one should be held to account. But those of us who face navigating the real world — one where responsibility isn’t some unmentionable word — cannot help concluding things are far from perfect at city hall and someone should be held to account.
This recently proud and vibrant city is currently engulfed in unremitting chaos, and there appears little hope this will change anytime soon.
Heaven knows what will happen with our library service following a cyber breach on the weekend. But be prepared for the city’s default response, which is to treat citizens like mushrooms — kept in the dark and fed manure.
About a year ago, Toronto’s library service was also subject to a cyber attack in which hackers subsequently demanded a sizable ransom before they’d restore the system to working order. After this odious blackmail attempt was rejected, it then took an agonizing four months before things were even close to fully operational.
Today, libraries are far more than simply a quiet place to browse and borrow books. Calgary’s system hosts myriad programs and, for many citizens, it is the only place available to access vital services such as computers, internet, Wi-Fi or complimentary printing.
If that wasn’t headache enough, there’s the not inconsequential issue that much of your personal data could have been sucked up by these hackers.
This is no minor inconvenience.
Was our system checked or upgraded after the Toronto attack and, if so, why did it still fail? If we didn’t bother with a security review, why not?
Don’t hold your breath for an answer. You may as well ask if anyone on the civic payroll wondered why water pipes of similar age and construction to those beneath Calgarians’ feet kept bursting across North America during the past decade. The automated reply you’ll receive is there will be an investigation sometime next year. My guess is there’ll be an investigation into the library hacking as well — probably in 2025.
But, as the wonderful Leonard Cohen wrote: There’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.
Maybe we’ll finally get a partial lifting of that dreary civic blackout curtain, thanks to a move by councillors Sonya Sharp, Andre Chabot and Terry Wong, who sense ordinary folk are not being heard, despite the endless blather promising citizen engagement.
“A lot of people feel we come to these information sessions with a bunch of postcards that say: ‘Read this and tell me what you think,’ as opposed to asking a question (such as), ‘What’s top of mind for you? What’s keeping you up in the middle of the night? Is this the right direction we want to go?’ ” Wong told CBC.
Bingo. But, of course, in true city hall fashion, any investigation wouldn’t take place until next year and would require an outside consultant.
A quicker and cheaper move would be for council to demand access to all replies resulting from those stage-managed engagement processes that administration orchestrates — not just the selected comments that survive a filtering process seemingly gleaned from the pages of George Orwell’s 1984.
Maybe council itself enjoys the mushroom treatment? One thing’s certain: we’re sick of it.
Chris Nelson is a regular columnist.