OLDS — A proposal from administrative staff to obtain two more flagpoles to accommodate Metis and treaty flags in front of the Town of Olds administrative building was opposed by two councillors.
It was eventually approved after a lengthy debate during council’s Nov. 30 budget meeting.
The estimated $18,500 cost to obtain the poles will come from town reserve funds.
Currently, flagpoles in front of the town office building fly the Canadian, Alberta and Town of Olds flags.
Coun. James Cummings objected to the proposal to obtain the extra flagpoles, saying the Town of Olds flag is already inclusive of every resident of the community.
He predicted more such requests for individual flags to be flown there will come forward and questioned where the practice of flying flags for each segment of the community would stop.
“The Town of Olds flag represents every single person in the town of Olds, regardless of their ethnicity, their social group, their cliques, their whatever,” Cummings said.
“This modern concept that we need to identify unique groups within our group, separate them from our group and say, ‘you’re special, you’re going to have your own flag,’ seems kind of counterintuitive to inclusiveness.
“At what stage do we say ‘your group no longer meets our criteria of significantness, so you don’t get your own flag.’ Thirty flags? Thirty-five flags? At what point do we stop,” he asked.
Cummings stressed he’s not saying that various people such as Metis or Indigenous people haven’t contributed to the community. He said they have.
“My fear is – and I’m not going to be the one to say it – at some point later on down the line we’re going to have to say to some group that wants to fly their flag in front of our town office, ‘sorry, you’re not significant enough to have your own flag.’
“In (no) way is it inclusive at all. It is exclusive in my mind and I won’t support it.”
Coun. Harvey Walsh agreed with Cummings.
“We’re not the United Nations in that regard. So I had concerns about that also," Walsh said.
"Flying those flags on special occasions, great, we can do that for people. But to have it permanently up, I think again, the Canadian flag, the Alberta flag and the town of Olds flag are sufficient.”
Mayor Judy Dahl took the opposite tack.
“I disagree with you 100-plus per cent,” she said.
Dahl said it’s important to recognize, support and include Indigenous people and their culture.
She also noted that a lot of work on that file had been taken via Alberta Municipalities.
Deputy mayor Wanda Blatz echoed that thought.
“I don’t really know that I want to get into any kind of a political debate which is the right flag or the wrong flag to fly outside the office or when do we draw the line,” she said.
“The Indigenous people were here long before we were and I think that’s part of the recognition for them.
“I do believe that we have a flag policy in place and I think whatever that policy says is what we should be adhering to. It has been approved by council.”
Blatz said if this request was in the operating budget rather than the capital budget “we wouldn’t be having this discussion. We would have just put the flags up and been done with it.”
Coun. Darren Wilson also came down on the side of approving the flagpoles.
"I am again sensitive to splintering here or creating -- for lack of a better word -- factions,” he said.
“But at the end of the day, we recognize the land that we are on and we continually recognize the land that we are on relative to the Indigenous people, the indigenous nation.”
