Elise Stolte broke the news that on Monday at an in-private meeting of Council Services Committee, Edmonton City Council approved a plan to install a glass wall between council and the members of public in council chambers as well as install metal detectors and implement bag searches at the door.

This is something I absolutely do not support, at all. You can check out my thoughts from Twitter which I've collected into a moment.

I also posted feedback on Andrew Knack's Facebook Page as well as in a thread on reddit.

Edmonton's City Council does not have an issue with violence. We've had heated debates - many recall the passionate Uber debate - but shouting and removing your shirts does not violence make. Even when the room was completely packed with angry, passionate citizens who believed their livelihood was threatened, there was no violence. The existing infrastructure of security and police functioned as expected, and the crowd was controlled and removed from chambers.

Standing up to this issue, and saying firmly no, without specific details of a credible threat warranting this, we're not going to erode our freedoms to engage in security theatre. Attending a council or committee meeting is pleasurable, I know for certain if I was asked to have my bag searched when entering, I'd be disinclined to attend these legally required public hearings.

And let's not forget, this is the same council that voted to not allow residents to call in to committee meetings because "face-to-face" was important to them.

Credit where it is due, Councillors Caterina, Henderson, McKeen and Nickel all voted against the proposal, but it passed nevertheless.

Councillor Esslinger referenced a police training event showing how quickly things can escalate as what convinced her this was required. Councillor Banga likened it to body armour, which is necessary to protect police lives - but lets stop and think about what means: we're letting fear, not evidence or need make our decisions for us, and that's not a road we want to go down. When decisions are made based on fear, whoever makes the scariest appeal to emotion, without facts present is going to be heard the loudest.

What stinks even more about this whole ordeal is that the entire debate was in-private. We will never know what the report said or if there was even any evidence present: we know there was a survey within stating that administration felt uncomfortable with their backs to the public. This was kept private under Section 18 of FOIP which says that disclosure can be refused if it would reasonably be considered to be a threat to public safety. I'm not sure how discussions of furnishing of a room with a 1.5 metre wall would reasonably threaten public safety if they were disclosed.

After a debate around phone calling into committee meetings where opposition to the idea sounded an awful lot like hiding from constituent opinions, and then the completely secret debate around building a wall to separate the public from council - I'm not sure. It rubs me the wrong way. It feels like elected officials are hiding instead of engaging, and they're using FOIP and procedures as their veil.

The secret plan they approved is to build a wall, and make us pay for it.

Let's not do that.