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“Just getting attention is important,” he said. “Calgary and Edmonton, they’re somewhat conceited. They believe the world knows about them. The world doesn’t.”

Subsidies are not the key to attracting business — subtle things play a role, Harding said, such as low crime rates, good transportation and the city’s attitude. Edmonton used to have a terrible view of itself. That’s now changing.

North America-wide effort

Greg LeRoy, head of the non-profit organization Good Jobs First, said his group and other non-profits are trying to reveal all the American bids.

The non-profit MuckRock submitted 100 freedom of information requests in the United States, tracking them publicly at muckrock.com.

Most of the bids simply celebrate what’s great about a city, which is ridiculous to hide, but historically, development has been rife with cronyism, backroom deals and projects that help politically connected friends more than the marginalized communities that pay for them, LeRoy said.

In the Amazon bids, “there’s going to be stuff people don’t like. But that’s not a reason not to put it out there,” said LeRoy, whose Washington D.C.-based organization is dedicated to increasing accountability in economic development. “We’ve never liked the secretive nature of how this all works.”

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What did we learn so far?

Edmonton’s freedom of information co-ordinators refused to release a copy of the Amazon bid. But they did provide about 400 pages of heavily redacted emails sent between team members preparing the bid. Here’s what we learned. Postmedia is appealing the decision.

Focused on secrecy

The team was convinced secrecy was key. “Keep this quiet within the teams,” wrote city branch manager Paul Ross in an email titled WinLab followup.

“Confirming that the (provincial) government … will not pass information from one city to another as both shape their separate bids,” wrote a staff member in the mayor’s office.

EEDC vice-president Glen Vanstone said even the mayor didn’t get the bid, in an email sent one day before the deadline. “So you are aware,” he wrote to a group of people whose names were all redacted, “yourselves are the only ones outside EEDC who have a copy of the Edmonton proposal.”

Worried about Calgary

First the mayor’s staff reassured the team that Government of Alberta staff supporting the Edmonton effort would not share any details with Calgary.

Then Adam Sweet, chief of staff at EEDC, complained to the mayor’s communications manager that Premier Rachel Notley kept talking on Twitter about Calgary’s bid instead of Edmonton’s.

He later thanked the city for taking action. Notley’s account retweeted one of EEDC’s tweets that day.