Opinion
Blackfalds, Sylvan Lake, Penhold all grew in population last year while Red Deer declined.
Penhold has a population of 3,277. It takes the same time for the residents of Penhold to get to Hunting Hills High School in Red Deer or the Collicutt Center as the residents in the Kentwood subdivision in Red Deer. It will be quicker for the Penhold residents to get to the Collicutt Centre than any residents planned for north of 11a.
The population of Penhold is 10% of the population north of the river in Red Deer, now and will be only about 6% after developing the land north of 11A. Yet there is not a high school or a secondary school now or being planned for north of the river.
Let us look at Penhold, with 10% of the population and possibly easier access to Red Deer High Schools and the Collicutt Centre built.
For starters they worked with various groups and built Penhold Crossing Secondary School and the Penhold Multiplex combination.
Our beautiful new school in Penhold is a unique ‘P3’ partnership with the Province of Alberta, the Town of Penhold, and Chinook’s Edge. It is adjacent to the Penhold Multiplex, which provides the school community with access to the newly constructed arena, gym and community library. We are a grade 6 – 12 school, which has been growing substantially each year.
The Penhold Multiplex is a diverse facility located in Penhold at 1 Waskasoo Avenue.
Serving all of central Alberta, the facility boasts:
• An exceptional NHL size ice surface
• Meeting rooms
• A fitness center
• Running track
• Dance studio
• Concession
• Lounge
• Library
• Town administration offices
Penhold has a population of 3,277, they planned ahead, they acquired more needed land and they grew last year, while Red Deer shrank.
Blackfalds grew after developing the Abbey Centre, which like Penhold was not built downtown. Sylvan Lake invested in the Nexsource Centre-multiplex. Blackfalds gained 700 new residents last year, Sylvan lake gained 632 last year, Penhold gained 491 new residents while Red Deer lost 975 residents. 777 of those who moved out of Red Deer lived north of the river.
All these communities are less than half of the population of Red Deer, north of the river, with Penhold at 10%, being the smallest. They are all growth communities.
Why then, can’t the city, the province and the school boards address this deficiency.
A proposal that I have been suggesting for years now, is develop Hazlett Lake. Not only would it address these issues it would encourage tourism, help the less fortunate, combat juvenile delinquencies, encourage growth, and the stature of the city.
Hazlett Lake is up for development now, and I worry that the city will chop it up, industrialize it, or completely ignore it’s potential. Highly visible from Hwy 2 and Hwy 11A, it would draw tourism. Lethbridge built Henderson Lake Park around a man-made slough and they are the 5th fastest growing city in Canada.
Build a Collicutt Centre type complex with a 51m pool, a Penhold Multiplex with a library and a secondary school, with a 51m pool competition pool. Incorporate the lake for swimming, boating, fishing, kayaking, canoeing, photography or sun tanning on a beach like Lethbridge does.
Lethbridge, Penhold, Blackfalds, Sylvan Lake must have done something right because they all grew last year while Red Deer shrank. There must be something we learn from this?
From the Fraser Institute
Here’s the shocker: Meng shows that for 15 out of the 16 uses, plastic products incur fewer GHG emissions than their alternatives…
For example, when you swap plastic grocery bags for paper, you get 80 per cent higher GHG emissions. Substituting plastic furniture for wood—50 per cent higher GHG emissions. Substitute plastic-based carpeting with wool—80 per cent higher GHG emissions.
It’s been known for years that efforts to ban plastic products—and encourage people to use alternatives such as paper, metal or glass—can backfire. By banning plastic waste and plastic products, governments lead consumers to switch to substitutes, but those substitutes, mainly bulkier and heavier paper-based products, mean more waste to manage.
Now a new study by Fanran Meng of the University of Sheffield drives the point home—plastic substitutes are not inherently better for the environment. Meng uses comprehensive life-cycle analysis to understand how plastic substitutes increase or decrease greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by assessing the GHG emissions of 16 uses of plastics in five major plastic-using sectors: packaging, building and construction, automotive, textiles and consumer durables. These plastics, according to Meng, account for about 90 per cent of global plastic volume.
Here’s the shocker: Meng shows that for 15 out of the 16 uses, plastic products incur fewer GHG emissions than their alternatives. Read that again. When considering 90 per cent of global plastic use, alternatives to plastic lead to greater GHG emissions than the plastic products they displace. For example, when you swap plastic grocery bags for paper, you get 80 per cent higher GHG emissions. Substituting plastic furniture for wood—50 per cent higher GHG emissions. Substitute plastic-based carpeting with wool—80 per cent higher GHG emissions.
A few substitutions were GHG neutral, such as swapping plastic drinking cups and milk containers with paper alternatives. But overall, in the 13 uses where a plastic product has lower emissions than its non-plastic alternatives, the GHG emission impact is between 10 per cent and 90 per cent lower than the next-best alternatives.
Meng concludes that “Across most applications, simply switching from plastics to currently available non-plastic alternatives is not a viable solution for reducing GHG emissions. Therefore, care should be taken when formulating policies or interventions to reduce plastic demand that they result in the removal of the plastics from use rather than a switch to an alternative material” adding that “applying material substitution strategies to plastics never really makes sense.” Instead, Meng suggests that policies encouraging re-use of plastic products would more effectively reduce GHG emissions associated with plastics, which, globally, are responsible for 4.5 per cent of global emissions.
The Meng study should drive the last nail into the coffin of the war on plastics. This study shows that encouraging substitutes for plastic—a key element of the Trudeau government’s climate plan—will lead to higher GHG emissions than sticking with plastics, making it more difficult to achieve the government’s goal of making Canada a “net-zero” emitter of GHG by 2050.
Clearly, the Trudeau government should end its misguided campaign against plastic products, “single use” or otherwise. According to the evidence, plastic bans and substitution policies not only deprive Canadians of products they value (and in many cases, products that protect human health), they are bad for the environment and bad for the climate. The government should encourage Canadians to reuse their plastic products rather than replace them.
Author:
Crime
The US Canadian border: Greatest number of terrorist watch list individuals being apprehended at northern border
A Border Patrol agent standing watch at the Montana-Canada border in the CBP Spokane Sector. The Spokane Sector covers the U.S.-Canada border along the northwestern section of Montana, part of Idaho, and the eastern part of Washington.
From The Center Square
Lack of operational control at northern border poses national security threats
The northern border largely has been unmanned and understaffed for decades as federal reports issue conflicting conclusions about how much, or how little, operational control exists.
Some officials have suggested the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has just 1% operational control over the northern border after a 2019 General Accounting Office audit of U.S. Customs and Border northern border operations. But a December 2022 DHS report claimed, “The Border Patrol is better staffed today than at any time in its 87-year history,” noting no surveillance of extensive parts of the northern border existed prior to 9/11.
After 9/11, several federal agencies were combined to fall under the newly created Department of Homeland Security. Within 20 years, roughly 950 miles along the U.S.-Canada border from Washington to Minnesota, and roughly 200 miles along the northern border in New York and Lake Ontario, were under unmanned aircraft surveillance. None of these areas “were covered prior to the creation of DHS,” DHS says, meaning the northern border was largely unprotected since Border Patrol’s founding in 1924.
In 2012, DHS released its first unified department strategy for U.S.-Canada border security, prioritizing “deterring and preventing terrorism and smuggling, trafficking, and illegal immigration; safeguarding and encouraging the efficient flow of lawful trade, travel, and immigration; and, ensuring community resiliency before, during, and after terrorist attacks and other disasters.”
Within 10 years at the northern border, more than 2,200 Border Patrol agents were stationed between ports of entry; nearly 3,700 CBP officers were stationed at ports of entry; more than 35 land ports of entry were modernized; and thermal camera systems, mobile and remote video surveillance systems had been deployed.
Havre Sector Border Patrol agent patrolling northern border on an ATV. The Havre Sector covers the U.S.-Canada border along most of Montana’s northern border, and includes part of Idaho and all of Wyoming, Colorado and Utah.
Despite these improvements, “the northern border is under-resourced by far compared to the southwest border,” former Border Patrol chief Mark Morgan told The Center Square. “But at the same time, it still represents significant threats. Cartels are expanding their operations, flying people into Canada, which doesn’t require a visa, presenting an opportunity for terrorist watch-listed individuals to exploit. It’s much easier to get to Canada to come across.”
“Data from 39 months shows terrorist watch-listed individuals are coming here every day and they aren’t stopping,” Morgan added.
For years and prior to the current border crisis, there weren’t enough personnel to cover all shifts, and the infrastructure, technology and equipment afforded to them didn’t compare to those at the southwest border, he said. People can easily drive snow mobiles over frozen territory or boats across the Great Lakes in areas that are unmanned, Morgan said, with a previous policy of self-reporting to authorities.
“The northern border represents a threat,” Morgan said. Noting it only took 19 men to carry out the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Morgan has warned that a terrorist threat is already in the U.S. No one knows how many terrorist watch-listed individuals have illegally entered who weren’t caught, multiple officials have told The Center Square.
While much attention has focused on the southwest border, the greatest number of known or suspected terrorists to ever be apprehended in U.S. history were at the northern border in fiscal 2023, breaking fiscal 2022’s record, The Center Square first reported.
This fiscal year through April, the greatest number of KSTs (known or suspected terrorists) continue to be apprehended at the northern border, 143 so far, according to CBP data.
Potential terrorist threats are not new and have persisted for some time, federal reports indicate. One Border Patrol intelligence report says terrorist threats potentially come from “foreign violent extremists to exploit established alien smuggling routes and networks for the purpose of evading detection en route to the United States.”
Other threats include drug smuggling from Canada into the U.S., connected to “criminal groups with known ties to or hired by Mexican drug trafficking organizations” and human smuggling. In the last few years, human smuggling attempts and apprehensions have significantly increased, The Center Square has reported.
The Center Square first began reporting on northern border national security threats several years ago. Since then, apprehensions of illegal border crossers in the first six months of fiscal 2024 were the highest on record. In the busiest sector of Swanton, Border Patrol agents recently apprehended more people in one week than they did in all of fiscal 2021.
Last month, they apprehended more than 1,400 illegal border crossers, more than they did in fiscal years 2021 and 2022 combined, Swanton Sector Chief Border Patrol Agent Robert Garcia just announced, saying it was “another record-breaking milestone in northern border history.”
This is after they apprehended more than 6,700 in fiscal 2023, more than the apprehensions of the previous 11 years combined, The Center Square first reported.
The U.S.-Canada border is the longest international border in the world of 5,525 miles. Unlike the U.S.-Mexico border, there are no border walls or similar barriers along the U.S.-Canada border. Through DHS, CBP officers are tasked with border security at ports of entry and Border Patrol agents between ports of entry along 4,000 miles. The U.S. Coast Guard, working with CBP’s Air and Maritime Operations, covers maritime security.
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