Opinion
Downtown Revitalization is not “THE” issue for our new city council. There are other more pressing issues.
Downtown revitalization was a key issue in the 1980 Red Deer municipal election that saw Bob McGhee become our mayor.
Downtown revitalization was a key issue in the 1992 Red Deer municipal election that saw Gail Surkan become our mayor.
Downtown revitalization was a key issue in the 2004 Red Deer municipal election that saw Morris Flewwelling become our mayor.
Downtown revitalization was a key issue in the 2013 Red Deer municipal election that saw Tara Veer become our mayor.
Downtown revitalization was a key issue in the 2021 Red Deer municipal election that saw Ken Johnston become our mayor.
Downtown revitalization has always been “a” key issue in Red Deer but it is not “the” key issue in Red Deer.
There have been many ideas for revitalizing the downtown. From tax freezes, tax holidays, grants for store front restorations, pedestrian walkways, patios, one- way streets, free parking, river lands, pedestrian bridge, even a canal and they all cost money.
Parkland Mall use to be the powerhouse destination point for central Alberta and some of their taxes went to pay for many of the downtown revitalization incentives. Now the malls could use some help. Anyone?
I used to work out of an office downtown, but I still felt alienated from the downtown culture, and it all became clear in one incident. I was leaving a store on Ross Street and as I stepped out the door I was bowled over by a bicyclist. My pants were torn, my leg was cut but no one spoke to me, but the staff fussed over the bicyclist by name. I got up leaned the bicycle against the parking meter and left, amazed that nobody even asked if I was okay.
I remember a business owner saying that every time the city invests in the downtown my rent goes up. The landlords benefit the most. Another talked about how losing parking stalls hurt his business, another spoke of walk-in traffic increases theft more than sales.
Councilor Frank Wong retired from city council this year citing “Unresolvable issues” and I think that the downtown is one of them. Perhaps it is time to think bigger picture.
Capstone, for example, even after all these decades and the hundreds of millions spent moving the public yards, burying services, aligning roads and promoting this 23-acre futuristic miracle neighbourhood, won’t save the downtown for such simple reasons as most pedestrians won’t cross Taylor Drive.
We have spent decades developing 30 Avenue, shopping centres, plans for 5 high schools, 2 Aquatic Centres, Pickleball courts, new firehall, walkways and playgrounds so let us make 30 Avenue the new Ross Street.
We have new shopping destinations on Gaetz south and I see they are currently upgrading storefronts without taxpayers money, shouldn’t the landlords downtown pay for their updating.
So, after voting a dozen times municipally talking about downtown revitalization, perhaps it is time to rethink the way forward.
Perhaps there is more to Red Deer than downtown? Perhaps the powers that be could expand their circle of influence?
Remember there are other key subjects that need attention, stagnant population growth, no high school for the 30% population living north of the river, crumbling infrastructure in older neighbourhoods, gangs and homeless stealing in neighbourhoods, and the mere fact that Red Deer continues to have the poorest air quality in Alberta, and Alberta has the poorest air quality in Canada. The list goes on.
So perhaps the new council will look outwards too and address other issues, like they do on downtown revitalization, too.
Just saying.
Garfield Marks
National
Eco-radical Canadian Cabinet minister resigns after oil deal approved
From LifeSiteNews
Steven Guilbeault, a Quebec MP who had formerly served as Justin Trudeau’s Minister of Environment, said he was leaving the Cabinet because his ‘climate’ policies were being abandoned.
One of Canada’s most radical environmentalist politicians has resigned from Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Cabinet.
Steven Guilbeault, until recently the Culture Minister, quit his position after the federal government struck a deal with the province of Alberta that relaxes environmental regulations and allows the construction of a new oil pipeline.
On Thursday, November 27, Guilbeault, a Quebec MP who had served as former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Minister of Environment, said he was stepping down because his “climate” policies were being abandoned.
“This afternoon, it is with great sadness that I submitted my resignation to the Prime Minister as Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture and Minister responsible for Official Languages, Minister of Nature and Parks Canada, as well as his Lieutenant in Quebec,” he said in a statement.
“When I entered politics, it was because I had a deep conviction that I could make a difference in fighting climate change and protecting our environment. My commitment to leaving a better world for the future of our children and our planet remains unchanged.”
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and Prime Minister Mark Carney signed on Thursday a memorandum of understanding (MOU) which will let Alberta build an oil pipeline to the coast of British Columbia. It also lessens tanker restrictions and allows Albertan oil to be sold on Asian markets. The pipeline still faces opposition from British Columbia’s ruling New Democratic Party government.
The MOU agreement changes a host of other green-related initiatives that Guilbeault had a hand in, such as imposing an emissions cap on the oil and gas sector and new Clean Electricity Regulations. Under the deal, Alberta will be exempt from these radical environmental regulations.
Premier Smith has been battling Guilbeault over his extreme climate change policies for years now. She said of the recent MOU that, although it’s a “massive win for Alberta and Canada, we will still hold the federal government accountable for keeping their end of the bargain.”
“There’s a lot of work left to do so let’s roll up our sleeves and get the job done, Alberta!” she stated.
Smith has repeatedly defended Alberta from Trudeau-era climate regulations and asserted Alberta’s right to control its power grid, also promising the province will not be “transitioning away” from oil and natural gas. She had called on the then-prime minster to replace Guilbeault because he was too “extreme.” Last year, Smith blasted the Minister after he said the federal government would no longer fund road construction projects and instead funnel the savings to “climate change” projects.
Alberta does have support from the Supreme Court, however, which recently sided in favor of provincial autonomy when it comes to natural resources. The Supreme Court ruled that Trudeau’s law, C-69, dubbed the “no-more pipelines” bill, is “mostly unconstitutional.” This was a huge win for Alberta and Saskatchewan, who challenged the law in court. The decision returned authority over the pipelines to provincial governments, meaning oil and gas projects headed up by the provinces should be allowed to proceed without federal intrusion.
Guilbeault’s extreme eco-activist past
Guilbeault, under Trudeau’s watch, pushed a radical environmental agenda similar to the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset” and the United Nations’ “Sustainable Development Goals.”
He was as extreme as they come for an environment minister, and his background shows a history of breaking the law for ideological aims. In 1997, he joined Greenpeace and served for a time as a director and then campaign manager of its Quebec chapter for a decade.
He was arrested many times for environmental protests, the most famous arrest coming after an incident in 2001 when he climbed Toronto’s CN Tower with British activist Chris Holden. The pair hung a banner saying “Canada and Bush — Climate Killers.”
Greenpeace is a group that advocates for population control in addition to calling for an end to all oil and gas.
His extreme ideals continued in his role as environment minister. He threatened Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe, who said that his province would no longer collect a federally imposed carbon tax on electric heat in addition to natural gas, with arrest and jail.
While Minister of Environment, Guilbeault was hoped to create a new “global’ carbon tax applied to all goods shipped internationally that could further drive-up prices for families already struggling with inflated costs.
The reduction and eventual elimination of the use of so-called “fossil fuels” and a transition to unreliable “green” energy has also been pushed by the World Economic Forum – the globalist group behind the socialist “Great Reset” agenda – an organization in which Trudeau and some of his cabinet have been involved.
The reality of Trudeau’s, and then Carney’s push, for so-called renewable energy showed itself just over a month ago when Alberta’s power grid faced near certain collapse due to a failure of wind and solar power.
Daily Caller
John Kerry Lurches Back Onto Global Stage For One Final Gasp

From the Daily Caller News Foundation
John Kerry, one of the grandest and most persistent climate scolds of the 21stcentury, lurched back into the news this week when he was knighted by Britain’s King Charles, a prominent climate scold in his own right.
In fact, their shared efforts involving flying off on carbon-spewing private jets to lecture the masses to live smaller, more costly lives in the name of fighting climate change was the motivation for the award, as the King thanked Kerry for his “services to tackling climate change.” That seems to be a bit of a grammatical error, but when royalty is involved, no one really cares, do they?
“King Charles and I share the same point of view — that there’s an urgency to doing things,” Kerry told the Globe in an interview. “He’s been ahead of most folks on this from the time I can remember… He always had a commitment to nature.”
Unfortunately for the U.K.’s citizens, the Labour government’s “commitment to nature” mainly appears to involve covering thousands of acres of bucolic British farmland with massive solar arrays and felling thousands of forest trees to make home to big wind installations these days.
Projects like those – frequently forced by the central government on objecting rural communities – form the centerpiece of Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero Ed Miliband’s program to deindustrialize the formerly formidable British economy.
That program – based on the shared philosophy of King Charles and Kerry – has sent the U.K.’s utility rates skyrocketing to the highest on earth. It has also rendered the former global power dependent on imports from foreign nations for its energy security, with China the most prominent among them.
Such are the fruits of the King Charles/Kerry “point of view.” Most would agree with Kerry’s statement that “there’s an urgency to doing things.” The problem is that pretty much everything he and the King have been doing in this realm across the first quarter of the 21st century leads inevitably to serfdom to the Chinese Communist Party.
In an interview with the Financial Times the same day, Kerry repeated much of the tiresome dogma of his alarmist religion, in the process excoriating President Donald Trump as a “denier” and calling U.S. corporate leaders cowards for straying from the narrative he and the King prefer. “It is not that they don’t believe [in climate change] or they don’t want to move forward. They are just scared,” Kerry said of the corporate CEOs, adding, “The process of Donald Trump in the last months, coupled with the justice department, coupled with his vengeance programs, has scared… a lot of people.”
But a more believable alternative explanation for the shift away from the twin manias of ESG and DEI by many companies in recent years is that these corporate leaders have a fiduciary duty to maximize returns on capital to their investors. The problem for Kerry and his disciples is that the preferred alternatives they have advanced too often devolved into unprofitable boondoggles that fail to satisfy that duty. Kerry wants to place the entire blame on Trump – who, ironically, was recently honored by King Charles himself with an unprecedented second state dinner. But the truth is that shift started in earnest in 2023, when Joe Biden’s autopen was still in charge of the ship of American state.
That shift has certainly accelerated this year, as companies have been freed from the incessant hectoring of the Biden government and are now being denied access to the ruinous green subsidies from the IRA that so radically distorted energy markets. This has little to do with climate denialism or cowardice and much to do with sound business practice and CEOs properly carrying out the mandates of their high positions. No amount of hyperbolic talking points from Kerry or the King can change that reality.
In the end, Kerry’s remarks come off as a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. Now in the twilight of his career, he has become a relic, a totem of a fading global religion whose end cannot come soon enough.
David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
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