Community
Grants Boost Visitor Experiences
Improvements to visitor services will help reach travellers in new and innovative ways – whether it’s a roving tourism information kiosk or a mobile-friendly website.
Sixteen visitor services providers in communities across the province have received grants to help them modernize their operations and develop new ways to strengthen connections with more travellers. Visitor services providers often represent the initial point of contact for travellers in Alberta. They can help influence visitors to extend their stays by promoting the province’s attractions and destinations.
“The Visitor Services Innovation Fund is making it easier to reach travellers in new, easy and innovative ways that will help grow tourism and promote the province’s range of destinations, attractions and experiences. By supporting the adoption of new interactive technologies, our visitor services providers help more travellers enjoy everything Alberta has to offer.” – Ricardo Miranda, Minister of Culture and Tourism.
The Visitor Services Innovation Fund provided grants of up to $7,000 to individual organizations and up to $16,000 to those that partner on improvements.
The grant recipient announcement is being made as part of Tourism Week in Canada (May 27 to June 2), a grassroots initiative that highlights the opportunities created through travel and tourism across the country. In Alberta, tourism is a priority sector to help diversify the economy, create jobs and generate investment in communities across the province.
The 2018 Visitor Services Innovation Fund grant recipients are:
- Bragg Creek and Area Chamber of Commerce: Implementation of mobile tourism information kiosk to be more accessible to visitors and provide convenient services.
- Camrose and District Chamber of Commerce: Implementation of mobile visitor services centre to enhance the visitor experience at events and other locations.
- Community Futures Alberta Southwest: Installation of electronic kiosks to increase visitor access to tourism information and services. Enhancing Cardston’s mobile tourism counselling unit, this is a partnership between Community Futures Alberta Southwest and the communities of Cardston, Stirling, Raymond and Magrath.
- Crowsnest Pass Chamber of Commerce Association: Expansion of the 2017 mobile visitor services kiosk and the delivery of tourism information at community events and tourism hot spots throughout the summer season.
- Edmonton Tourism: Launch of the Explore Edmonton Street Team as part of a visitor services strategy focused on online and social media presence, leveraging local ambassadors and content, and going to where the visitor is located.
- Edson and District Historical Society: Installation of weatherproof area map and brochure holders outside the facility to provide 24/7 access to travel materials and direction.
- Innisfail and District Chamber of Commerce: Construction and installation of an info booth station outside the visitor information centre to include tourism promotional materials. Funding also to assist in the implementation of a mobile tourism information kiosk at events and the delivery of a regional familiarization tour.
- Museum of Highwood: Construction and installation of custom outdoor kiosk outside the visitor information centre to provide important travel information, advisories and brochures.
- Olds Institute for Community and Regional Development: Refit of the EverythingOlds.ca website for mobile compatibility.
- Pincher Creek and District Historical Society: Installation of a fixed community information hut outside the current visitor information centre to advertise local events and businesses.
- Red Deer Tourism and Convention Bureau: Delivery of familiarization experience sessions to train frontline staff about regional tourism offerings, as well as addition of mobile team to engage visitors at traditional and non-traditional venues and events.
- SAMDA Economic Partnership Ltd.: Implementation of mobile visitor services pop-up tent to reach visitors at local events and delivery of familiarization tours for frontline staff. The project is a partnership between SAMDA Economic Partnership and the communities of Oyen, Consort, Empress and Hanna.
- Stony Plain and District Chamber of Commerce: Expansion of the 2017 mobile information centre kiosk to engage visitors and residents about tourism and services.
- Sundre and District Chamber of Commerce: Delivery of familiarization tours for frontline staff and volunteers and the establishment of a mobile visitor information kiosk to be shared among partners in the region. The project is a partnership between Sundre, Mountain View County, Didsbury, Carstairs and Cremona.
- Tourism Jasper: Installation of interactive touch screen kiosk at Glacier Discovery Centre to provide travel information.
- Vulcan and District Tourism Society: Implementation of a travelling kiosk to deliver tourism information in off-site locations and delivery of familiarization tours for frontline staff from the communities of Vulcan, Nanton and Fort McLeod. You can find related information through the links below.
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)
From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
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
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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