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Calgary

Who loves COVID19? Here are the top 3 COVID lovers.

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13 minute read

No I’m not kidding, nor is the headline intended to be click-bait.  There really are raving fans of COVID19, who have their fingers crossed for this pandemic to keep going for as long as possible. Members of the COVID cult are secretly flailing about in crazed glee that all of their dreams and aspirations are finally… magnificently coming true.  None of the pain, suffering, or even the deaths of the rest of us bothers the cultists even slightly.  In fact, quite the opposite; they think we had it coming. 

 

When small businesses shut down, they roll their eyes and moan, “ugh, who cares? They are just a bunch of greedy, Scrooge McDucks anyway!”.  When seniors die they shrug their shoulders and quip, “meh, they were old anyway…you can’t live forever”.  As the spine of the energy sector fractures they roar with cheers, “WOOOOOO HOOOOO! Ding dong the witch is dead!  The evil, anti-environmental  oil companies are finally dethroned!!!”  The ideologically rabid cultists don’t have even a microscopic iota of empathy for the increase in bankruptcies, foreclosures, or even the suicides which are all a direct result of the economic armageddon of which we are now merely at the inception of.  To justify their sociopathic Machiavellian perspectives they simply recite a terrible cliche, “You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.” 

 

So, who are the proverbial “they” of which I speak?  Here are a few:

 

1 – Environmental Extremists 

The world truly does face serious environmental issues, and I’m not trivializing this fact in any way.  This being said, there is no denying that the extreme fringe of environmental activism has been becoming more and more mainstream every year. The frantic chicken little screams of “we’re all going to die!” has been getting louder every year, yet the actual actions toward climate change mitigation have been nominal at best.  Although most of the climate change fear mongers have had their sights set firmly on the oil producers, more rational minds admit that the only way to reduce carbon emissions, is by reducing the demand for fossil fuels…not the production.  Reducing the demand requires humans to make severe changes to their lifestyle, which of course very few would do voluntarily.  Some of these changes would include:

  1. Only go out for Groceries once a week at the most
  2. Stop recreational travel such as Sunday drives, Camping, and Holidays.
  3. Stop all recreational air travel, and all Cruises.
  4. Drastically reduce commuting to work by working from home instead
  5. Eat less meat (The Cargil plant just shut down, which supplies at least ⅓ of all Canadian meat processing)
  6. Kill the Oil industry by killing the demand for oil with the above measures. (price per barrel is now negative for the first time in history)

Just imagine how pleased the environmental activists must be now that their impossible demands have now been met!  How else would they have achieved their goals? Truly, this pandemic is a dream come true for David Suzuki, Justin Trudeau, and so many others.  How likely do you think it is that Justin Trudeau would feel motivated to put an end to the lockdown as soon as possible?  My guess is…not very. 

 

2 – Extreme left-wingers, including Pro-Communist groups

It’s been seventy years since the terrifying rise and fall of McCarthyism, but what if Senator Joseph McCarthy was correct in his vehement opposition to  Communism?  Is he looking down on us now with his hands thrown in the air yelling “I told you so!”?  On paper, Communism seems to be a fair and just system of government, where gluttony is outlawed, and extreme poverty is eliminated.  And, microcosms of Communism seem to work quite well in the case of small agrarian communities such as Hutterites, Amish, and Mennonites. By definition, even the Military is a communist organization, though most would argue the obvious parallel.  

 

With every passing year, more and more college and University students can be seen wearing Che (Ernesto) Guevara shirts. Many students and faculty members even laud Chairman Mao Tse-Tung as a folk hero.  Che was a psychopathic murderer, but Mao Tse-Tung was the most murderous dictator in all of human history.  Mao killed so many of his own people, that nobody knows for sure just how many fell victim to his unbridled rage. Some current estimates put the death toll between 35 and 45 million, though other estimates are far higher, exceeding 60 million deaths. Only Stalin stands in direct competition with Mao for the prize of being the most hideous communist dictator of all time, yet the leftists continually cite Hitler as the one and only homicidal maniac in modern history. How horrific is it that not only the aforementioned, but other hideous figures from recent history like Pol Pot are forgotten altogether by our post-secondary educators? Why is it that hard-left extremists not only forgive the horrific crimes of the left…they applaud them?

 

This begs the question, “If leftist extremists can applaud genocide, what else could they endorse as long as it was in line with their ambitions”?  Is supporting a pandemic really that much of a stretch given the last 200 years of history?

 

3 – Never Trumpers

For all who believe that Capitalism is the root of all evil, Trump is their Satan.  Prior to 2015, Trump was lauded as the King of Capitalism, and the epitome of the American dream. Reporters fawned over him, and television networks begged for his attention, until finally, NBC landed a deal with D.J. Trump which resulted in the top-rated show of their entire lineup. 

 

Advertisers paid for ad space which rivaled the Super Bowls price per second and has-been celebrities clambered to be on the second generation of the show in hopes that the exposure might reignite their careers. The same giddy sycophants who yearned for Trump’s approval were quick to turn on him the moment he announced his run for President.  Even Omarosa Manigault, (who was given both a second and a third chance for redemption by Trump) turned on Trump the moment she no longer benefitted from standing in the President’s spotlight.  “Oh how fickle love can be when power and fame tempt thee.”

 

Desperate to dethrone President Trump, his political opponents, supported by the majority of media outlets, have fired every possible accusation and conspiracy theory they could think of at him.  First, they attacked the legitimacy of the election, then when that failed they screamed “RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA!” until their lungs burst. After the most exhaustive investigation in modern history, the Russian collusion hoax was debunked.  Still undeterred, the extreme faction of the Democrats squeaked loud enough to convince the DMC to hold a meaningless impeachment vote, knowing full well that it would never come to fruition. The damage which was done to both the country and democracy was considered to be…” worth it”.  Again, this begs the question, “Just how far would the Dems go to dethrone Trump?”  Being that Trump’s #1 accomplishment has been a record-breaking robust economy, wouldn’t it be wonderful if that economy was destroyed?  What if, you could destroy Trump’s best argument for re-election, AND reconfigure society into an environmentalist utopia? Just how far would one go, if only there were a way to make all of this happen?  

 

I’m not claiming that the American Democrats colluded with Justin Trudeau and other hysterical environmentalists to release the COVID19 virus on the world. I am however asking the question, “If they could, …wouldn’t they?”  I wouldn’t put it past them for a second, and no rationally minded person would argue this point. Do I have enough prima facie evidence to make a credible accusation?  No.  No I do not, however, there is in fact more than enough evidence to at least be suspicious.  

 

  1. Justin Trudeau’s government gave nearly one million dollars to the exact SAME laboratory in Wuhan from which the COVID19 virus is very likely to have originated.  To say this is a strange coincidence is a significant understatement. 
  2. The W.H.O. which is largely funded by the Chinese Communist Regime, shielded China from culpability for as long as possible, which put the entire globe at greater risk. Being pro-china can not be detached from being pro-communist. 
  3. Both criticism of the Chinese regime, and/or demands for Chinese culpability results in accusations of racism and/or xenophobia by Liberal Governments. 
  4. Trump was an early adopter of mitigation efforts by being among the first to impose travel restrictions. The media loudly criticized him for this, then when the entire globe followed suit, they criticized him for not imposing the restrictions even earlier.  No matter what Trump does, the media tells the public that his policies are killing Americans.  If the media’s agenda is to dethrone Trump at any cost, then their spectacular flip-flops are not a surprise. 
  5. Dissent is being squelched by both social shaming, and soon by law. EG: Social media deleting all content that questions the official government narrative of COVID19, and Trudeau’s Liberals are now proposing a restriction to free speech for the same end. 

 

None of the above five points constitute a smoking gun, however, all of them constitute smoke. Where there is smoke, there is usually fire and combined, that’s a lot of smoke. 

 

Just remember that throughout all of human history, wherever power could expand, it did expand.  Zealots have always been willing to allow the suffering of others for what they believe to be the greater good; and no, no we have not evolved beyond this terrible flaw in the human psyche. 

 

For more stories, visit Todayville Calgary

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Alberta

Building a 21st century transit system for Calgary

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From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Randal O’Toole

Calgary Transit is mired in the past, building an obsolete transit system designed for an archaic view of a city. Before the pandemic, transit carried 45 percent of downtown Calgary employees to work, but less than 10 percent of workers in the rest of the Calgary urban area, showing that Calgary Transit doesn’t really serve all of Calgary; it mainly serves downtown.

That would have worked in 1909, when Calgary’s first electric streetcars began operating and most jobs were downtown. By 2016, less than 15 percent of Calgary jobs were downtown, and the pandemic has reduced that number further.

Rather than design a transit system that serves the entire urban area, Calgary Transit light-rail system reinforced its downtown focus. Transit ridership has grown since the city’s first light-rail line opened in 1981, but it was growing faster before the light rail began operating than it has since then. Now Calgary Transit is planning even more downtown-oriented light-rail lines.

Light rail is an expensive form of low-capacity transit. The word “light” in light rail refers not to weight but to capacity: the American Public Transportation Association’s transit glossary defines light rail as “an electric railway with a ‘light volume’ traffic capacity.” While a light-rail train can hold a lot of people, for safety reasons a single light-rail line can move no more than about 20 trains per hour in each direction.

By comparison, Portland, Oregon runs 160 buses per hour down certain city streets. An Istanbul busway moves more than 250 buses per hour. Bogota Columbia busways move 350 buses per hour. All these transitways cost far less per mile than light rail yet can move more people per hour.

Once they leave a busway, buses can go on any city street, reaching far more destinations than rail. If a bus breaks down or a street is closed for some reason, other buses can find detours while a single light-rail breakdown can jam up an entire rail line. If transportation patterns change because of a pandemic, the opening of a new economic center, or the decline of an existing center, bus routes can change overnight while rail routes take years and cost hundreds of millions of dollars to change.

To truly serve the entire region, Calgary Transit must recognize that buses are faster, more flexible, and can move more people per hour to more destinations at a lower cost than any rail system. It should also recognize that modern urban areas have many economic centers and use buses to serve all those centers.

Besides downtown, Calgary’s major economic centers—the airport, the University of Calgary, Chinook Center, the Seton health center, and others—are mostly located near freeway on- and off-ramps. Calgary Transit should identify ten or so such centers geographically distributed around the region. It should locate transit centers—which need be no more than curbside parking reserved for buses with some modest bus shelters—near the freeway exchanges closest to each center.

It should then operate frequent (up to five times per hour) non-stop buses from every center to every other center. A few secondary transit centers might have non-stop buses operate to just two or three other centers. Local bus routes should radiate away from each center to serve every neighborhood of the Calgary urban area.

Since non-stop buses will operate at freeway speeds, the average speed of this bus system will be more than double the average speed of Calgary’s current bus-and-rail system. Transit riders will be able to get from any corner of the urban area to any other part of the urban area at speeds competitive with driving.

Such a polycentric system will serve a much higher percentage of the region’s workers and other travelers than the current monocentric system yet cost no more to operate. It will cost far less to build than a single rail line since most of the necessary infrastructure already exists. While some may worry that buses will get caught in congestion, the solution is to fix congestion for everyone, not spend billions on a slow rail system that only serves a few people in the region.

It is time for Calgary Transit to enter the 21st century. A polycentric bus system may be the best way to do it.

Randal O’Toole is a transportation policy analyst and author of Building 21st Century Transit Systems for Canadian Cities. 

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Alberta

Calgary Ring Road opens 10 months early

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Christmas comes early for Calgary drivers

The Calgary Ring Road is now ready to be opened to public traffic, several months ahead of schedule.

Calgary’s ring road is one of the largest infrastructure undertakings in Calgary’s history and includes 197 new bridges and 48 interchanges. The 101-kilometre free-flowing Calgary Ring Road will open to traffic Dec. 19, completing a project decades in the making.

“Calgary’s ring road is a project that has been decades in the making and its completion is a real cause for celebration. This has been an important project and our government got it done. With this final section completed, travelling just got a little easier for families and for workers. This will not only benefit Calgarians and residents in the metro region, it will provide a boost to our economy, as goods can be transported more easily across our province.”

Danielle Smith, Premier

Although construction of the entire ring road project began in 1999 under former premier Ralph Klein, discussions on a ring road around the City of Calgary began as early as the 1950s. In the late 1970s, under former premier Peter Lougheed, high-level planning and land acquisition started and a transportation utility corridor was established to make the Calgary Ring Road a reality.

“The final section of the Calgary Ring Road is now complete, and I’d like to acknowledge the work done by former premiers and transportation ministers and their vision to build Alberta. I’m proud to announce that the final section was completed on budget and months ahead of schedule.”

Devin Dreeshen, Minister of Transportation and Economic Corridors

“I’m thrilled to see the Calgary Ring Road project completed. It was something I have helped shepherd through the process since 2014. Finally, all the hard work put in by everyone has become a reality. The Calgary Ring Road will provide travellers with over 100 kilometres of free-flow travel, create new travel options for the City of Calgary and surrounding area and provide improved market access across the region.”

Mike Ellis, MLA for Calgary-West

Opening the ring road means new travel options for Calgarians, which will draw traffic away from heavily travelled and congested roads such as the Deerfoot Trail, 16th Avenue, Glenmore Trail and Sarcee Trail. For commercial carriers, the ring road provides an efficient bypass route, saving time and money for the delivery and shipment of goods and services.

“The ring road investment generated thousands of local jobs and will now play an integral role in keeping Calgarians and the economy moving. This important transportation link will ease congestion on city routes and greatly improve connectivity and access for businesses transporting goods.”

Jyoti Gondek, mayor, City of Calgary

The ring road is a critical component to growing economic corridors in Alberta and Western Canada, as it connects the Trans-Canada Highway to the east and west, and the Queen Elizabeth II Highway and Highway 2 to the north and south. It is also part of the CANAMEX corridor, which connects Alberta to the highway network in the United States and Mexico.

The completion of the ring road is a major boost for Calgary, opening new business opportunities and supporting key components of the Calgary economy. It sends a signal to businesses and investors that Calgary has a strong highway infrastructure, providing economic corridor connections through the entire region.

“With one of the smoothest commutes in Canada and the capacity to reach 16 million customers by road within a single day, Calgary offers unmatched quality of life and economic opportunities. The triumphant completion of the Calgary Ring Road further improves our capacity to attract even more companies, capital and talent to our city.”

Brad Parry, president & CEO, Calgary Economic Development and CEO, Opportunity Calgary Investment Fund

“This is an exciting step forward for the Calgary Metropolitan Region. This key artery will not only improve the quality of life for the residents of the region, it is also a key economic enabler and we are thrilled to see its completion.”

Greg Clark, chair, Calgary Metropolitan Region Board

Quick facts

  • Stretched into a single lane, the highway is 1,304 kilometres long, the distance from Calgary to Winnipeg.
  • Other sections opened in 2009, 2013, 2020 and 2023.
  • The West Calgary Ring Road is the final piece of the ring road project.
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