Government of Alberta and Judiciary representatives with special guests at the Red Deer Justice Centre plaque unveiling event April 22, 2025.

On March 3, all court services in Red Deer began operating out of the new justice centre. The new justice centre has 12 courtrooms fully built and equipped with video-conference equipment to allow witnesses to attend remotely if they cannot travel, and vulnerable witnesses to testify from outside the courtroom.

The new justice centre also has spaces for people taking alternative approaches to the traditional courtroom trial process, with the three new suites for judicial dispute resolution services, a specific suite for other dispute resolution services, such as family mediation and civil mediation, and a new Indigenous courtroom with dedicated venting for smudging purposes.

“We are very excited about this new courthouse for central Alberta. Investing in the places where people seek justice shows respect for the rights of all Albertans. The Red Deer Justice Centre fills a significant infrastructure need for this rapidly growing part of the province. It is also an important symbol of the rule of law, meaning that none of us are above the law, and there is an independent judiciary to decide disputes. This is essential for a healthy functioning democracy.”

“Public safety and access to justice go hand in hand. With this investment in the new Red Deer Justice Centre, Alberta’s government is ensuring that communities are safer, legal matters are resolved more efficiently and all Albertans get the support they need.”

“This state-of-the-art facility will serve the people of Red Deer and surrounding communities for generations. Our team at Infrastructure is incredibly proud of the work done to plan, design and build this project. I want to thank everyone, at all levels, who helped make this project a reality.”

Budget 2025 is meeting the challenge faced by Alberta with continued investments in education and health, lower taxes for families and a focus on the economy.

Quick facts

• The new Red Deer Justice Centre is 312,000 sq ft (29,000 m2). (The old courthouse is 98,780 sq ft (9,177 m2)).
• The approved project funding for the Red Deer Justice Centre is about $191 million.

Susan Smith (L) and Marion Calder, directors of ‘For Women Scotland’ cheer as they leave the Supreme Court on April 16, 2025, in London, England after winning their appeal in defense of biological reality

From LifeSiteNews

By Michael Haynes, Snr. Vatican Correspondent

The U.K. Supreme Court has issued a ruling stating that “woman” in law refers to a biological female, and that transgender “women” are not female in the eyes of the law.

In a unanimous verdict, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom ruled today that legally transgender “women” are not women, since a woman is legally defined by “biological sex.”

Published April 16, the Supreme Court’s 88-page verdict was handed down on the case of Women Scotland Ltd (Appellant) v. The Scottish Ministers (Respondent). The ruling marks the end of a battle of many years between the Scottish government and women’s right campaigners who sought to oppose the government’s promotion of transgender ideology.

In 2018, the Scottish government issued a decision to allow the definition of “woman” to include men who assume their gender to be female, opening the door to allowing so-called “transgender” individuals to identify as women.

This guidance was challenged by women’s rights campaigners, arguing that a woman should be defined in line with biological sex, and in 2022 the Scottish government was forced to change its definition after the court found that such a move was outside the government’s “legislative competence.”

Given this, the government issued new guidance which sought to cover both aspects: saying that biological women are women, but also that men with a “gender recognition certificate” (GRC) are also considered women. A GRC is given to people who identify as the opposite sex and who have had medical or surgical interventions in an attempt to “reassign” their gender.

Women Scotland Ltd appealed this new guidance. At first it was rejected by inner courts, but upon their taking the matter to the Supreme Court in March last year, the nation’s highest judicial body took up the case.

Today, with the ruling issued against transgender ideology, women’s campaigners are welcoming the news as a win for women’s safety.

“A thing of beauty,” praised Lois McLatchie Miller from the Alliance Defending Freedom legal group.

“They looked at the whole argument, not just who goes in what bathroom and trans women. This is going to change organizations, employers, service providers,” Maya Forstater, chief executive of Sex Matters, told the Telegraph. “Everyone is going to have to pay attention to this, this is from the highest court in the land. It’s saying sex in the Equality Act is biological sex. Self ID is dead.”

“Victory,” commented Charlie Bently-Astor, a prominent campaigner for biological reality against the transgender movement, after she nearly underwent surgical transition herself at a younger age.

“After 15 years of insanity, the U.K. Supreme Court has ruled that men who say they are ‘trans women’ are not women,” wrote leader of the Christian political movement David Kurten.

Leader of the Conservative Party – the opposition to the current Labour government – Kemi Badenoch welcomed the court’s ruling, writing that “saying ‘trans women are women’ was never true in fact and now isn’t true in law, either.”

Others lamented the fact that the debate even was taking place, let alone having gone to the Supreme Court.

“What a parody we live in,” commented Reform Party candidate Joseph Robertson.

Rupert Lowe MP – who has risen to new prominence in recent weeks for his outspoken condemnation of the immigration and rape gang crisis – wrote, “Absolute madness that we’re even debating what a woman is – it’s a biological fact. No amount of woke howling will ever change that.”

However, the Supreme Court did not wish to get pulled into siding with certain arguments, with Lord Hodge of the tribunal stating that “we counsel against reading this judgment as a triumph of one or more groups in our society at the expense of another. It is not.”

The debate has taken center stage in the U.K. in recent years, not least for the role played by the current Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Starmer himself has become notorious throughout the nation for his contradictions and inability to answer the question of what a woman is, having flip-flopped on saying that a woman can have a penis, due to his support for the transgender movement.

At the time of going to press, neither Starmer nor his deputy Angela Rayner issued a statement about the Supreme Court ruling. There has been no statement issued from the Scottish government either, nor from the office of the first minister.

Transgender activists have expectedly condemned the ruling as “a disgusting attack on trans rights.” One leading transgender campaigner individual told Sky News, “I am gutted to see the judgement from the Supreme Court which ends 20 years of understanding that transgender people with a GRC are able to be, for all intents and purposes, legally recognized as our true genders.”