Brand new from the Edmonton Police: Oops! All Israel.
No matter what catastrophic mistakes you made last month at work, you have better decision-making on the job than Edmonton Police Chief Warren Driechel.
Canada's travel advice for Israel, March 2026.
He decided that in the year of our Lord 2026, the best place for an Edmonton police chief to do professional development is in Israel, a place that the Canadian government says to avoid all travel to, whose leader has been sanctioned by the International Criminal Court, and the perpetrator of an act of genocide.
Rubber-stamped
Police commission chair Ben Henderson.
Chair of the Edmonton Police Commission Ben Henderson agreed when he rubber-stamped the request earlier this year.
The trip was organized and sponsored by the Major Cities Chiefs Association, a group of police executives in North America.
Though it is notable that Axon is a capstone sponsor of that organization, and Edmonton has made headlines for being the first police force in the world to buy Axon's AI facial recognition body cams.
So, like most things in the policing industrial complex, it's a funding ouroboros that's really just a black hole for taxpayer dollars.
Swift reactions
Negative reactions to the trip were swift, with Mayor Andrew Knack, councillors Ashley Salvador and Erin Rutherford, Muslim communities, and the leader of the opposition all criticizing the tone-deaf trip for causing harm in racialized and faith communities, stoking anger and division, and notably, just kind of being a dumb and unnecessary thing to do.
I'm interested in what exactly he wanted to learn. I have a lot of respect for police in this province, for the work they do ... But I really want them to focus on the issues here at home.
The police chief rightly should answer questions about, why Israel? Why now? Why does he think this timing makes sense? And what exactly does the Israeli police service do better than we do at home that he wanted to learn from?
A different tack
One councillor, though, noted thin blue line enthusiast Mike Elliott, took a different tack.
He said that the trip was justified because global conflicts increasingly influence local demonstrations and community tensions.
He said that what is really concerning is that we're judging this travel while municipal leaders travel internationally to countries with significant human rights concerns without any scrutiny.
He's dog-whistling here about Andrew Knack's January trade trip to our sister city of Harbin in China.
If he can't identify the difference between these two things, I don't think anyone can help him.
The same Mike Elliott
This is exactly the kind of behaviour we expected from Mike Elliott this term. He has a long history of engaging in toxic attacks and undermining council to avoid even a modicum of police accountability.
When he was first elected to council, he told media that he was a different person from the Mike Elliott of years prior.
But in this, he's confirmed that, at least in all the ways that matter, he's exactly the same.
And it looks like in terms of arrogance and community alienation, the new chief is just the same as the old one.
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