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It took ten years to find out I was wrong and City Hall knew what they were doing.

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It is ironic that when I realized that I was wrong and that the city’s planning engineers were right, they did a huge article in the paper.

The issue is the Molly Bannister extension. Years ago I thought the city was erring in developing the Molly Bannister extension over a creek, but through time I got to understand the necessity for it.

Red Deer needs an Arterial road every 1.6 kilometres and this was repeated by the developers at a meeting at the Bower Community Centre on January 7, 2020.

Molly Bannister would connect up with 22 Street at 40 Avenue exactly 1.6 kilometres south of 32 Street. The city understood this 20 years ago but the population was only 60% of our current population, making it easy to dismiss.

The developer would like to do away with this option, even though admitting that in the future when the population hits 180,000 and the arterial road would be needed, it would be hard to get built.

Many believe that Red Deer is at the cusp of needing it built sooner than later with the traffic on 32 Street getting so heavy and the same can be said for 19 Street, Even before the commercial centre opening and with the increased business at the Westerner.

The Bower farm comprises of 155 acres, and the Molly Bannister travels along the south and west sides. 40 acres is Environmental Reserve and 11.5 acres will be Municipal Reserve according to the same developer. That leaves 103.5 acres or about 42 hectares. The density will be 17 residential units per hectare for 714 residential units.

714 residences with average occupancy of 2.5 residents means 1785 residents. Over and above all the new residents further east as the city grows. The only way for them to go east is by going west to 40 avenue then north to 32 Street or south to 19 Street.

The developer stated that the traffic lights along an arterial road would be detrimental to wildlife but did not state how having 50 houses backing onto the creek would not affect wildlife.

I believe the city was correct in designing the arterial road to run along the south and west borders of any future new subdivision and I don’t agree when the developer says it splits his development. If the roadway disappeared the developer would make more money but the city would pay for it many times over.

Leave the option open and if it doesn’t get fully developed that would be okay too.

Besides our population has only increased by 195 residents since 2015, yet we have increased housing with 1299 more residential units, during this period.

Our real estate assessments has declined by 2% this year, do we need 714 more residences to increase supply without population growth?

The Red Deer Advocate’s poll currently run about 68% in favor of the road. In my blog, twitter, face book, Todayville.com and other social media contacts it is overwhelmingly in favor as in the thousands of hits, likes, shares, comments and e-mails I have less than ten that disagree with that.

Sorry, Red Deer City hall you were right and I was wrong.

 

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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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