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City council considers Entertainment District status for the Ross Street Patio

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By Mark Weber

Downtown Business Association officials are thrilled that City council passed first reading this past week on a new bylaw that would see the Ross Street Patio receive ‘Entertainment District’ designation.

The move follows a request from the DBA made several weeks ago, explained Amanda Gould, executive director. According to the City, Entertainment Districts are new to the province, having been created last December through an amendment to the Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis Act. The designation would allow certain public areas – in this cast the Ross Street Patio – to be a place where adults could consume alcohol outside of a licensed premises while taking in various forms of live entertainment. “It’s really the natural next step for the Ross Street Patio,” said Gould. “The Patio is already becoming the home for live music, and we are getting more and more people coming downtown to enjoy it. As a result, a lot of people are using the restaurants along the Patio there.

“Because of that, a lot of times their patios are full. And so they often have people asking if they can buy a drink and take it out onto the actual Patio. Unfortunately, they have to say no.” But with Entertainment District designation, that could all change.

Gould noted that it would help to further revitalize the downtown core by drawing more folks down to not only check out the entertainment that is running on the Patio all summer, but to also see all that downtown ultimately has to offer.

“It will help to make the Ross Street Patio even more popular than it already is,” she said, adding that she approached Council about the designation about eight weeks ago.

“It has all moved really fast – the City has been wonderful with this. They talked about it in council, and everyone was really supportive of it. It went to first reading, and it was unanimously supported,” she said. Second and third reading are expected to take place later in June.

“In the meantime, we’ve met with businesses and found out what their preferred operating times are. We’ve also tried to discover any issues that they can think of and how we could mitigate any challenges, and things like that,” she added. “But the businesses are so keen to do this – they are absolutely pumped.”

According to Erin Stuart, the City’s inspection and licensing manager, “Research into the topic has shown that, while relatively new in Canada, there are numerous international jurisdictions where open consumption is allowed in public areas.

“Learnings from those areas show that Entertainment Districts provide opportunities for municipalities to revitalize key neighbourhoods, drive tourism, and support local businesses,” she said in a release. “Working with the Downtown Business Association is an opportunity for a unique partnership and provides the option of working together on any issues that arise.” Prior to the May 24th meeting, City administration determined a new bylaw was needed to support the DBA’s request and sought direction from Council before proceeding.

A short timeline for implementing the designation would also of course maximize the use of the summer season. The release also noted that an Entertainment District in Red Deer would not allow public intoxication, underage drinking, use of cannabis, or the bringing in/taking away of alcohol to/from the district. The release also pointed out that the bylaw would be the first of its kind in Canada.

“It’s awesome,” said Gould in reflecting on the level of support shown for the Entertainment District concept here in Red Deer. “I’m delighted. I just came out of a meeting with the businesses and the City, and it’s just great. I’m just so excited for it.” In the meantime, she said this past week has marked the first official week of summer programming on the Ross Street Patio.

The Wednesday market is also in full swing. Visitors are invited to come down and purchase all their fresh fruits and veggies between 3:30 and 6:30 p.m. each Wednesday. Live music on the Ross Street Patio is a key feature on Wednesdays as well. And with the official kick-off to summer on the Patio having taken place, part of the celebration included the introduction of a limited-edition Ross Street Patio beer developed in partnership with Sawback Brewing.

The special beer will be available through the summer and will also be featured at several downtown restaurants. As for entertainment plans, performances on the Patio will run on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. For more about the Downtown Business Association and all that is planned for the Ross Street Patio, find them on Facebook or visit www.downtownreddeer.com.

Born and raised in Red Deer, Mark Weber is an award-winning freelance writer who is committed to the community. He worked as a reporter for the Red Deer Express for 18 years including six years as co-editor. During that time, he mainly covered arts and entertainment plus a spectrum of areas from city news and health stories to business profiles and human interest features. Mark also spent a year working for the regional publication Town and Country in northern Alberta, along with stints at the Ponoka News and the Stettler Independent. He’s thrilled to be a Todayville contributor, as it allows him many more opportunities to continue to focus on the city and community he not only has a passion for, but calls home as well.

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Warning Canada: China’s Economic Miracle Was Built on Mass Displacement

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If you think the CCP will treat foreigners better than its own people, when it extends its power over you, please think again: Dimon Liu’s warning to Canadian Parliament.

Editor’s Note: The Bureau is publishing the following testimony to Canada’s House of Commons committee on International Human Rights from Dimon Liu, a China-born, Washington, D.C.-based democracy advocate who testified in Parliament on December 8, 2025, about the human cost of China’s economic rise. Submitted to The Bureau as an op-ed, Liu’s testimony argues that the Canadian government should tighten scrutiny of high-risk trade and investment, and ensure Canada’s foreign policy does not inadvertently reward coercion. Liu also warns that the Chinese Communist Party could gain leverage over Canadians and treat them as it has done to its own subjugated population—an implied message to Prime Minister Mark Carney, who has pledged to engage China as a strategic partner without making that position clear to Canadians during his election campaign.

OTTAWA — It is an honor to speak before you at the Canadian Parliament.

My testimony will attempt to explain why China’s economic success is built on the backs of the largest number of displaced persons in human history.

It is estimated that these displaced individuals range between 300 to 400 million — it is equivalent to the total population of the United States being uprooted and forced to relocate. These displaced persons are invisible to the world, their sufferings unnoticed, their plights ignored.

In 1978, when economic reform began, China’s GDP was $150 billion USD.

In 2000, when China joined the WTO, it was approximately $1.2 trillion USD.

China’s current GDP is approximately $18 trillion USD.

In 2000 China’s manufacturing output was smaller than Italy’s.

Today it’s larger than America, Europe, Japan, and South Korea combined.

If you have ever wondered how China managed to grow so fast in such a short time, Charles Li, former CEO of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, has the answers for you.

He listed 4 reasons: 1) cheapest land, 2) cheapest labor, 3) cheapest capital, and 4) disregard of environmental costs.

“The cheapest land” because the CCP government took the land from the farmers at little to no compensation.

“The cheapest labor,” because these farmers, without land to farm, were forced to find work in urban areas at very low wages.

The communist household registration system (hukou 戶口) ties them perpetually to the rural areas. This means they are not legal residents, and cannot receive social benefits that legal urban residents are entitled. They could be evicted at any time.

One well known incident of eviction occurred in November 2017. Cai Qi, now the second most powerful man in China after Xi Jinping, was a municipal official in Beijing. He evicted tens of thousands into Beijing’s harsh winter, with only days, or just moments of notice. Cai Qi made famous a term, “low-end population” (低端人口), and exposed CCP’s contempt of rural migrants it treats as second class citizens.

These displaced migrant workers have one tradition they hold dear — it is to reunite with their families during the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday, making this seasonal migration of 100 to 150 million people a spectacular event. In China’s economic winter of 2025 with waves of bankruptcies and factory closures, the tide of unemployed migrant workers returning home to where there is also no work, and no land to farm, has become a worrisome event.

Historically in the last 2,000 years, social instability has caused the collapse of many ruling regimes in China.

“The cheapest capital” is acquired through predatory banking practices, and through the stock markets, first to rake in the savings of the Chinese people; and later international investments by listing opaque, and state owned enterprises in leading stock markets around the world.

“A disregard of environmental costs” is a hallmark of China’s industrialization. The land is poisoned, so is the water; and China produces one-third of all global greenhouse gases.

Chinese Communist officials often laud their system as superior. The essayist Qin Hui has written that the Chinese communist government enjoys a human rights abuse advantage. This is true. By abusing its own people so brutally, the CCP regime has created an image of success, which will prove to be a mirage.

If you think the CCP will treat foreigners better than its own people, when it extends its power over you, please think again.

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Judge Declares Mistrial in Landmark New York PRC Foreign-Agent Case

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Sam Cooper's avatar Sam Cooper

U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan declared a mistrial Monday afternoon in the high-profile foreign-agent and corruption case against former New York state official Linda Sun and her husband Chris Hu, after jurors reported they were hopelessly deadlocked on all 19 counts.

After restarting deliberations Monday morning with an alternate juror, the panel sent a note to Judge Cogan stating:

“Your honor, after extensive deliberations and redeliberations the jury remains unable to reach a unanimous verdict. The jurors’ positions are firmly held.”

Cogan brought the jury into court and asked the foreman whether they had reached agreement on any counts. They replied that they were deadlocked on every one. The judge then declared a mistrial.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexander Solomon immediately told the court that the government intends to retry the case “as soon as possible.” A status conference is scheduled for January 26, 2026, to determine next steps.

Jury selection began November 10, 2025, and the government called 41 witnesses to the stand, compared with eight for the defense and one rebuttal witness for the prosecution. Deliberations began on December 12, and by this afternoon the jurors had sent three notes to the court — each indicating deadlock.

As The Bureau reported in its exclusive analysis Friday, the panel’s fracture had become visible as jurors headed into a second week of deliberations in a landmark foreign-agent and corruption trial that reached into two governors’ offices — a case asking a jury of New Yorkers to decide whether Sun secretly served Beijing’s interests while she and Hu built a small business and luxury-property empire during the pandemic, cashing in on emergency procurement as other Americans were locked down.

Prosecutors urged jurors to accept their account of a dense web of family and Chinese-community financial transactions through which Sun and Hu allegedly secured many millions of dollars in business deals tied to “United Front” proxies aligned with Beijing. The defense, by contrast, argued that Sun and Hu were simply successful through legitimate, culturally familiar transactions, not any covert scheme directed by a foreign state.

Sun and Hu face 19 charges in total, including allegations that Sun acted as an unregistered foreign agent for the People’s Republic of China; visa-fraud and alien-smuggling counts tied to a 2019 Henan provincial delegation; a multimillion-dollar pandemic PPE kickback scheme; bank-fraud and identity-misuse allegations; and multiple money-laundering and tax-evasion counts.

Prosecutors have argued that the clearest money trail ran through New York’s COVID procurement scramble and a pair of Jiangsu-linked emails. In closing, Solomon told jurors that Sun’s “reward” for steering contracts was “millions of dollars in kickbacks or bribes,” contending the money was routed through accounts opened in Sun’s mother’s name and via friends and relatives.

The government has tied those claims to a broader narrative — laid out in Solomon’s summation and dissected in The Bureau’s reporting — that Sun functioned as a “trusted insider” who repurposed state access and letterhead to advance Beijing’s priorities, including by allegedly forging Governor Kathy Hochul’s signature on invitation letters used for Chinese provincial delegations, while keeping those relationships hidden from colleagues. The defense, in turn, urged jurors to reject the government’s picture of clandestine agency and argued prosecutors had overreached by treating ordinary diaspora networking, trade promotion, and pandemic procurement as criminal conduct — insisting none of the evidence proved the “direction or control” element central to the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Whether a future jury will see the same evidence as corruption and covert foreign agency or as culturally familiar commerce and politics — will now be tested again, on a new timetable, in a courtroom that has already shown just how difficult this record is to unanimously interpret.

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