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Election 2017 is 2 days old and money for downtown has come up. $27.66 million for a footbridge, yay or nay?

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The 2017 election is barely 2 days old and the thorny subject of more money for downtown has arisen. In this case it started with the footbridge at the Riverlands… the latest panacea for our downtown.

Definition of panacea. : a remedy for all ills or difficulties : cure-all.

The Riverlands is often being touted as the cure-all for our city’s ills. It will bring businesses to Red Deer. It will stem the exodus of our residents, reversing the decline in population. It will put Red Deer on the map. It will bring people downtown.
23 acres will save Red Deer from it’s current decline, it may help, but only if seen as a portion of the solution.
The city council passed first reading on September 26 2016 of the redevelopment plan for the Riverlands. This took decades, a vision and hundreds of millions of dollars.
Let me start with: 23 acres at 10 million dollars per acre was quite the vision.
Yes, I am talking about the Riverlands at the corner of Ross Street and Taylor Drive. Now the city officials will talk about the costs being less, different budgets and necessitated upgrades and maintenance but anyway you look at it, it has been and will continue to be an expensive proposition.
Riverlands was once our civic yards and people came up with a vision for the riverlands that enjoyed support among successive councils.
The original Civic Yards Relocation budget was $106 million or $4.6 million per acre. Add in changes, cost over runs and it hit $118 million or $5 million dollars per acre, add in transportation, infrastructure and ignoring the fact that the city already owned the land and could have sold as prime riverfront property for future revenue and we are gaining on $138 million or $6 million per acre. We recently added 10 million dollars to expand, upgrade and replace facilities to accommodate outgrowing and replacing already obsolete equipment.
Back to the actual Riverland property, throw in environmental studies, planning, reclamation, demolition, relocating and burying transmission lines, upgrading water and sewer, Taylor Drive/Ross Street realignment, Alexander Way extension, Riverwalk phases 1&2 to name but a few and we are hitting the $10 million per acre mark before we talk about the new water feature and before we discuss Bower Ponds Riverlands Bridge with a budget $ 27.66 million dollars.
$27.66 million dollars so people can save a few hundred metres of walking, the distance walked, if they walked across the already built Taylor Bridge. The footbridge itself adds over $1 million per acre. So maybe I am under estimating the true costs when I say $10 million per acre?
One city councillor suggested that the city needs to build the Aquatic Centre downtown to accommodate the needs of the residents of the Riverlands. Planned for 2020 with a 3 year (2013) budget of $94 million not including demolition. You could add it to costs of the Riverlands but I won’t. You could also add in the proposed performing Arts Centre, and the list could go on, either as a benefit to residents or for promotional purposes.
A vision, prime riverfront property, $100s of millions and many years and we have an empty lot. We have potential, we have vision, we have a plan, but it is an empty 23 acre lot on the river.
One councillor said this going to be the cornerstone and future of our community. This 23 acre lot that has cost the taxpayers 100s of millions of dollars is the future of our community.
We are also starting to develop 2000 acres north of 11a, with a lake, there will be 20,000 plus new residents. Will we spend $1 on a swimming pool, or $I on an indoor skating rink, or even $1 for a high school on 2000 acres, a lake and 20,000 plus new residents? No.
On 23 acres, we will spend millions on fancy sidewalks, water features, $27.66 millions on a walking bridge to bower ponds and the golf club.
It is great to see such enthusiasm, but is it fair to concentrate so much on so little.
Let us ask the candidates. Well, Yes or No?

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Community

SPARC Red Deer – Caring Adult Nominations open now!

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Red Deer community let’s give a round of applause to the incredible adults shaping the future of our kids. Whether they’re a coach, neighbour, teacher, mentor, instructor, or someone special, we want to know about them!

Tell us the inspiring story of how your nominee is helping kids grow up great. We will honour the first 100 local nominees for their outstanding contributions to youth development. It’s time to highlight those who consistently go above and beyond!

To nominate, visit Events (sparcreddeer.ca)

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Addictions

‘Harm Reduction’ is killing B.C.’s addicts. There’s got to be a better way

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From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Susan Martinuk 

B.C. recently decriminalized the possession of small amounts of illicit drugs. The resulting explosion of addicts using drugs in public spaces, including parks and playgrounds, recently led the province’s NDP government to attempt to backtrack on this policy

Since 2016, more than 40,000 Canadians have died from opioid drug overdoses — almost as many as died during the Second World War.
Governments, health care professionals and addiction experts all acknowledge that widespread use of opioids has created a public health crisis in Canada. Yet they agree on virtually nothing else about this crisis, including its causes, possible remedies and whether addicts should be regarded as passive victims or accountable moral agents.

Fuelled by the deadly manufactured opioid fentanyl, Canada’s national drug overdose rate stood at 19.3 people per 100,000 in 2022, a shockingly high number when compared to the European Union’s rate of just 1.8. But national statistics hide considerable geographic variation. British Columbia and Alberta together account for only a quarter of Canada’s population yet nearly half of all opioid deaths. B.C.’s 2022 death rate of 45.2/100,000 is more than double the national average, with Alberta close behind at 33.3/100,00.

In response to the drug crisis, Canada’s two western-most provinces have taken markedly divergent approaches, and in doing so have created a natural experiment with national implications.

B.C. has emphasized harm reduction, which seeks to eliminate the damaging effects of illicit drugs without actually removing them from the equation. The strategy focuses on creating access to clean drugs and includes such measures as “safe” injection sites, needle exchange programs, crack-pipe giveaways and even drug-dispensing vending machines. The approach goes so far as to distribute drugs like heroin and cocaine free of charge in the hope addicts will no longer be tempted by potentially tainted street drugs and may eventually seek help.

But safe-supply policies create many unexpected consequences. A National Post investigation found, for example, that government-supplied hydromorphone pills handed out to addicts in Vancouver are often re-sold on the street to other addicts. The sellers then use the money to purchase a street drug that provides a better high — namely, fentanyl.

Doubling down on safe supply, B.C. recently decriminalized the possession of small amounts of illicit drugs. The resulting explosion of addicts using drugs in public spaces, including parks and playgrounds, recently led the province’s NDP government to attempt to backtrack on this policy — though for now that effort has been stymied by the courts.

According to Vancouver city councillor Brian Montague, “The stats tell us that harm reduction isn’t working.” In an interview, he calls decriminalization “a disaster” and proposes a policy shift that recognizes the connection between mental illness and addiction. The province, he says, needs “massive numbers of beds in treatment facilities that deal with both addictions and long-term mental health problems (plus) access to free counselling and housing.”

In fact, Montague’s wish is coming true — one province east, in Alberta. Since the United Conservative Party was elected in 2019, Alberta has been transforming its drug addiction policy away from harm reduction and towards publicly-funded treatment and recovery efforts.

Instead of offering safe-injection sites and free drugs, Alberta is building a network of 10 therapeutic communities across the province where patients can stay for up to a year, receiving therapy and medical treatment and developing skills that will enable them to build a life outside the drug culture. All for free. The province’s first two new recovery centres opened last year in Lethbridge and Red Deer. There are currently over 29,000 addiction treatment spaces in the province.

This treatment-based strategy is in large part the work of Marshall Smith, current chief of staff to Alberta’s premier and a former addict himself, whose life story is a testament to the importance of treatment and recovery.

The sharply contrasting policies of B.C. and Alberta allow a comparison of what works and what doesn’t. A first, tentative report card on this natural experiment was produced last year in a study from Stanford University’s network on addiction policy (SNAP). Noting “a lack of policy innovation in B.C.,” where harm reduction has become the dominant policy approach, the report argues that in fact “Alberta is currently experiencing a reduction in key addiction-related harms.” But it concludes that “Canada overall, and B.C. in particular, is not yet showing the progress that the public and those impacted by drug addiction deserve.”

The report is admittedly an early analysis of these two contrasting approaches. Most of Alberta’s recovery homes are still under construction, and B.C.’s decriminalization policy is only a year old. And since the report was published, opioid death rates have inched higher in both provinces.

Still, the early returns do seem to favour Alberta’s approach. That should be regarded as good news. Society certainly has an obligation to try to help drug users. But that duty must involve more than offering addicts free drugs. Addicted people need treatment so they can kick their potentially deadly habit and go on to live healthy, meaningful lives. Dignity comes from a life of purpose and self-control, not a government-funded fix.

Susan Martinuk is a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and author of the 2021 book Patients at Risk: Exposing Canada’s Health Care Crisis. A longer version of this article recently appeared at C2CJournal.ca.

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