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City of Red Deer introduces funding program to boost downtown development

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From The City of Red Deer

New incentive program for downtown development projects in Red Deer

A new funding program has launched in Red Deer to support downtown development projects. The program aims to increase activity and growth opportunities in the Greater Downtown Area while supporting The City’s overall Strategic Plan.

There are five funding opportunities in the program, including:

  • Facade and Storefront Improvement Rebate, intended to increase a sense of downtown pride through an investment in beautification, restoration, signage and improved security features.
  • Environmental Site Assessment Rebate, which supports owners of properties which require Environmental Site Assessments before redevelopment can occur.
  • Demolition of Vacant and Derelict Properties Rebate, which assists property owners with demolition costs to facilitate sale or redevelopment of their property.
  • Utility Connection Fee Rebate, which supports property owners required to replace or upgrade utility connections as part of developing or redeveloping on their property.
  • Residential and Mixed Use Development Grant, which promotes the development of newly constructed multifamily residential and/or mixed use units.
  • These opportunities will contribute to a healthy, successful downtown by improving aesthetic, encouraging developers to build residential units downtown, and reducing the costs of investing in our downtown.

“These economic development programs are taking intentional actions to incent development in our downtown,” said Tara Lodewyk, Director of Planning Services. ”We recognize that downtowns are the heart of our cities and play a vital role as our communities’ business, administrative, and cultural centres.”

Property owners and developers may apply for funding from all five opportunities for a single location, pending eligibility. The first intake occurs February 15 – March 15, 2020 and a second intake is planned for July 1 – August 1, 2020, pending available remaining funds.

For more information and to apply online, visit www.reddeer.ca/EconomicIncentives.

After 15 years as a TV reporter with Global and CBC and as news director of RDTV in Red Deer, Duane set out on his own 2008 as a visual storyteller. During this period, he became fascinated with a burgeoning online world and how it could better serve local communities. This fascination led to Todayville, launched in 2016.

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Energy

Carbon tax costs average Alberta family $911 this year

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From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

Author: Kris Sims 

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to scrap the carbon tax, which is set to increase April 1.

“Alberta families are fighting to afford food and home heating and the last thing they need is Trudeau’s carbon tax hike,” said Kris Sims, CTF Alberta Director. “It’s wrong for the Trudeau government to punish Albertans for driving their cars, heating their homes and buying food.”

The federal carbon tax is set to increase to 17 cents per litre of gasoline, 21 cents per litre of diesel and 15 cents per cubic metre of natural gas on April 1.

The carbon tax will cost about $12 extra to fill up a minivan and about $18 extra to fill up a pickup truck. Truckers filling up their big rigs with diesel will pay about $200 extra due to the carbon tax.

For natural gas home heating, the average Alberta household will pay about $439 extra in the carbon tax.

According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, the carbon tax will cost the average family in Alberta $911 this year, even after the rebates are factored in.

A Leger poll showed 72 per cent of Albertans oppose the April 1 carbon tax increase.

“If Trudeau really cares about making life more affordable for Canadians, then at the very least he wouldn’t hike his carbon tax again,” said Franco Terrazzano, CTF Federal Director. “The PBO is clear: the carbon tax costs average families hundreds of dollars more every year than they get back in rebates.”

Carbon tax costs, per PBO

Province Net cost for the average household in 2024-25
Alberta $911
Saskatchewan $525
Manitoba $502
Ontario $627
Nova Scotia $537
Prince Edward Island $550
Newfoundland and Labrador $377

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You can get the inside scoop right from my notebook each week so you can hold politicians accountable for hilarious and infuriating stories the media usually misses. You can sign up for the Taxpayer Update Newsletter now.
— Franco Terrazzano, Federal Director
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Banks

RFK Jr. warns Americans ‘will be slaves’ if central bank digital currency is established

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From LifeSiteNews

By Doug Mainwaring

The U.S. presidential candidate cited the Freedom Convoy trucker protests in Canada when the government ‘was able to destroy their lives’ by freezing bank accounts.

Democrat presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. declared in no uncertain terms recently that establishing a Central Bank Digital Currency in the country will be “the end of freedom; we will be slaves if we allow that to happen.”

In a wide-ranging discussion at the University of Austin about freedom of speech and civil discourse, Kennedy said he didn’t “get” the connection between CBDCs and the loss of freedom of expression and other freedoms until he witnessed the Canadian trucker protest.

“The truckers in Canada were protesting the COVID mandates, the lockdowns, masking mandates, vaccination mandates, and others,” Kennedy began. “They started in Alberta. They picked up thousands of trucks as they drove across Canada to Ottawa.”

When they got to Ottawa — they were trying to petition Prime Minister Trudeau — and they were exercising a right that we all take for granted in this country: the right to assemble, the right to protest, the right to petition their government, and the government instead condemned them as right-wing fascists and racists, which if you look at the videos, they’re the opposite. Looks like Woodstock. They were delivering bottled water, they were cooking food for the poor, they were picking up garbage. There were musicians on every block.

It was really a beautiful thing.

However, the Trudeau government perceived the protesters to be an existential threat.

“The government used facial recognition systems and other intrusive technologies to identify the participants,” he recounted, and weaponized that information against them to freeze their bank accounts so they couldn’t purchase diesel for their trucks, buy food for their kids, or pay their mortgages or rents.

A pivotal moment for Kennedy occurred when one of the truckers told him that because of the government’s action, he was going to go to jail because he couldn’t pay his alimony.

He said that transactional freedom is as important as freedom of the press, or freedom of speech, “because if you have freedom of speech in the First Amendment and yet when you exercise that speech — if the government doesn’t like it — they can starve you to death. They can throw you out of your home.”

They keep a social credit score on you so that if (for instance) you’ve got your mask off below your nose, or if you’re not social distancing properly, or if you violate some other social norm, you get penalties taken off your social (credit) score and at some point they punish you.

Penalized persons are then limited to buying groceries from “stores that are within a certain radius of your house. You can’t buy gas. You can’t buy an airplane ticket. You can’t buy anything else, so you’re basically under home confinement.”

The truckers in Canada were never charged with a crime. They were certainly never convicted. It was just (that) they were doing something the government didn’t like.

So the government was able to destroy their lives, and that is a very dangerous power to give government. And that’s why I’m against Central Bank Digital Currencies because that is part of the path to getting us where China is today.

That’s where they started. That’s where all these other countries … with a Central Bank Digital Currency (started). And it’s the end of freedom. We will be slaves if we allow that to happen.

Kennedy is far from alone in his alarm over the prospect of a CBDC being introduced in the U.S. or Canada.

Although digital currency offers some attractive features, it also would grant the federal government unlimited opportunity to weaponize the technology against citizens, allowing it to both spy on the spending habits of everyday Americans and block access to the money in their personal bank accounts.

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz introduced the CBDC Anti-Surveillance State Act last month to prohibit the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency that Republican sponsors of the bill believe could turn the nation into a “surveillance state” by handing over control of personal finances to federal government agencies.

“The Biden administration salivates at the thought of infringing on our freedom and intruding on the privacy of citizens to surveil their personal spending habits, which is why Congress must clarify that the Federal Reserve has no authority to implement a CBDC,” Cruz said.

“While Americans across the country are being punished for thinking, speaking, and voting the ‘wrong’ way, the last thing we need is the government surveilling personal finances,” Heritage Action for America explained in a statement concerning the new legislation. “Anti-CBDC legislation is necessary to safeguard Americans’ financial privacy in the face of potential surveillance, control, and political intimidation.”

“CBDCs present major privacy concerns for everyday Americans, including granting the government the ability to collect intimate personal details on U.S. citizens, and potentially track and freeze funds for any reason,” the Blockchain Association noted.

“Big government has no business spying on Americans to control their personal finances and track their transactions,” said Republican U.S. Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, a co-sponsor of the bill.

“It is a massive overreach,” he warned.

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