Opinion
Our problems like high crime, high unemployment, andpoor air quality are not secrets.
I am always surprised when local residents are amazed after being apprised of the following information. They are not secrets, they are widely known in national news stories, human interest articles and polls, and used in marketing tools by other cities and corporations.
One third of Red Deer’s residents live north of the river and they have the G.H.Dawe Community Centre developed in the 70s and built in the 80s.
Two thirds of Red Deer’s residents live south of the river and they have the Downtown Recreation Centre, Michener Aquatic Centre, Downtown Arena, Centrium, Collicutt Recreation Centre, Pidherney Curling Centre, Kinex Arena, Kinsmen Community Arenas, Red Deer Curling Centre, and the under-construction Gary W. Harris Centre. The city is also talking about replacing the downtown recreation centre with an expanded 50m pool.
One third of Red Deer’s residents live north of the river and there are no high schools current or planned.
Two thirds of Red Deer’s residents live south of the river and there are 4 high schools currently with 2 more high schools planned.
Alberta has the poorest air quality in Canada, and Red Deer region has the poorest air quality in Alberta. Given there are pockets like downtown Edmonton and Calgary that may show poorer readings and there are times like during a forest fire when Fort McMurray will show poorer readings but as a whole and chronically for years that Red Deer region has the poorest air quality.
Red Deer has an unemployment rate that is 10% higher than the provincial rate and 43% higher than the national rate.
Red Deer is the second most dangerous city in Canada after Grande Prairie.
Red Deer population shrank between 2015-2016. The population north of the river shrank by 777 or 2.4% and the population south of the river shrank by 0.25% according to the city’s municipal census. While communities all around Red Deer grew with Blackfalds being one of the fastest growing communities in Canada.
Lethbridge is only marginally smaller than Red Deer but they grew by 2% during the same period. Does anyone believe that they would not use that fact when trying to attract families and businesses to relocate to Lethbridge.
Our crime is up, and recently the province announced a new much larger courthouse will be built in Red Deer, but when it comes to our health care our hospital has been forgotten. Money is going to a health care facility in Sylvan Lake, (a growing community), and if you need to see a specialist or need surgery do not be surprised if you are referred to the Olds hospital, for example.
Red Deer has become complacent, often times smug. Our politicians are content to be big fishes in a small but still shrinking pond. Seldom do you see our elected officials on the provincial, national or international stages. We worry about appeasing the few without expanding the base. A community cannot grow without accommodating the diverse groups beyond the basic group. Without growth a city shrinks as seen by the last 2 municipal censuses.
October 16 2017 is the next municipal election and the next opportunity to hold the mayor, the 8 councillors and the school board trustees accountable. I have heard that some incumbents will not run again but there are subtle hints that they may all run again. So ask the incumbents questions like the following questions.
Why is our unemployment so much higher than the provincial average?
What role did you play in keeping all high schools south of the river?
What have you done to mitigate the poor air quality in Red Deer?
Why are all the recreation centres, indoor ice rinks and indoor swimming pools being built south of the river? Will you commit to building the next indoor swimming pool/recreation centre north of the river?
What role did you play in building the school destined for Johnstone Park, north of the river, to be actually built south of the river?
What root causes have you addressed that increased our crime rates to current levels.
We need to ask because the media outlets do not hire investigating journalists who ask hardball questions they have just reporters/stenographers quoting the politicians. News medias need advertising dollars and the city spends big bucks and carry this big stick effectively.
So we should not be surprised if someone in Vancouver mentions our crime rates or someone in Toronto acknowledges our poor air quality. We should start questioning the decisions and actions taken.
Does having all 6 high schools in one area, 5 along 30 Ave. forcing one third of the students to commute across the whole city twice a day during rush hour traffic, really help our air quality ? Probably not?
Does having all but the one recreational complex on one side of town, increase juvenile delinquency and increase crime rates? Probably, does need asking.
The election is only 6 months away. Questions need to be asked. Complacency and the status quo are not options. Issues are abundant, questions need to be asked and new candidates need to come forward, but most importantly residents should not allow these issues to be ignored or shoved into the back corner.
I will keep asking.
From the Fraser Institute
Political developments in the U.S. over the past few years have substantially increased the risk of any investment that relies on unrestricted access to the U.S. market
Last week, the Trudeau government and the Ford government announced a new multi-billion dollar taxpayer-funded subsidy for Honda to expand its Alliston, Ontario plant to manufacture electric vehicles (EV) and host a large EV battery plant. Eventually, the direct and indirect subsidies could total $10 billion from the two governments.
The Honda announcement follows earlier deals with Northvolt, Stellantis and Volkswagen to build and operate EV battery and auto assembly plants in Ontario. According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, these three deals may total $50.7 billion after accounting for the cost of government borrowing to finance the subsidies and foregone corporate tax revenue from tax abatements tied to production.
Clearly, if future taxpayers across the country (not just in Ontario) are to avoid a huge additional tax burden or suffer reductions in government services, a lot needs to go right for Canada’s EV industry.
In particular, there must emerge sufficient market demand for EVs so these “investments” in the EV auto sector will be fully paid for by future tax revenues from corporate and personal income taxes levied on companies and workers in the EV sector. During their joint announcement of the Honda deal, both Prime Minister Trudeau and Premier Ford ignored this elephant in the room while claiming that the Honda deal will mean 240,000 vehicles a year manufactured at the site and 4,200 jobs preserved, while adding another 1,000 jobs.
By way of perspective, in 2023 around 185,000 EV vehicles were sold in Canada—about 11 per cent of all new cars sold in Canada that year. This is considerably less than the target capacity of the Honda complex and the total expected production capacity of Canada’s EV sector once all the various announced subsidized production facilities are in operation. In contrast, 1.2 million EVs were sold in the United States.
The demand for EVs in Canada will likely grow over time, especially given the increased incentive the federal government now has to ensure, through legislation or regulation, that Canadians retire their gas-powered vehicles and replace them with EVs. However, the long-run financial health of Canada’s EV sector requires continued access to the much larger U.S. market. Indeed, Honda’s CEO said his company chose Canada as the site for their first EV assembly plant in part because of Canada’s access to the U.S. market.
But political developments in the U.S. over the past few years have substantially increased the risk of any investment that relies on unrestricted access to the U.S. market. The trade protectionist bent of Donald Trump, the Republican nominee in the upcoming presidential election, is well known and he reportedly plans to impose a broad 10 per cent tariff on all manufactured imports to the U.S. if elected.
While the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Free Trade Agreement ostensibly gives Canadian-based EV producers tariff-free access to the U.S. market, Trump could terminate the treaty or at least insist on major changes in specific Canadian trade policies that he criticized during his first term, including supply management programs for dairy products. The trade agreement is up for trilateral review in 2025, which would allow a new Trump administration to demand political concessions such as increased Canadian spending on defence, in addition to trade concessions.
Nor would the re-election of President Joe Biden immunize Canada from protectionist risks. Biden has been a full-throated supporter of unionized U.S. auto workers and has staked his administration’s legacy on the successful electrification of the U.S. transportation sector through domestic production. Given his government’s financial commitment to growing a domestic EV sector, Biden might well impose trade restrictions on Canada if Canadian exports start to displace domestic production in the U.S.
In short, Canadian politicians, most notably Justin Trudeau and Doug Ford, have staked the future of Canada’s heavily subsidized domestic EV sector on the vagaries of the U.S. political process, which is increasingly embracing “America First” industrial policies. This may turn out to be a very costly gamble for Canadian taxpayers.
Author:
From LifeSiteNews
When one school in Alberta decided to bring in gender-neutral bathrooms back in 2017, many students avoided them because, as any idiot knows, boys and girls generally feel uncomfortable doing their business in a stall next to a member of the opposite sex.
It is still sometimes surreal to consider what constitutes a news story in 2024. Imagine telling your grandparents, or even your parents 20 years ago, that it would be breaking news across the board — Global News, the Globe and Mail, the national broadcaster — that a provincial government had issued a directive … that bathrooms and locker rooms in schools be specifically designated for either boys or girls.
But yet here we are. On May 1, Quebec’s new rules banning the implementation of shared, “gender-neutral” or “all-gender” bathrooms came into effect, the result of a 2023 petition to protest the plan to make all bathrooms gender neutral at D’Iberville high school in Rouyn-Noranda. At the time, Premier François Legault commissioned Family Minister Suzanne Roy with creating an advisory committee to do research; recommendations are expected in the winter of 2025.
But Education Minister Bernard Drainville, perhaps realizing how ridiculous it is that an advisory committee needs to be created — and then needs a year — to determine whether or not teenage boys and girls need their own bathrooms, decided to go ahead and “correct the course,” citing the need protect young girls from discomfort and harassment. When the news broke that a Quebec high school in Rouyn-Noranda was starting work on gender-neutral bathrooms, Drainville decided to address the issue via directive.
The very existence of such a sane, common-sense directive reveals how insane our culture has become; mandating male and female bathrooms is not the sort of thing one used to have to do, explicitly. The directive also stipulates that any student wishing to use an individual bathroom must be able to do so. The directive, Drainville says, is needed. “It’s a question of well-being, privacy, and respect for private life,” he said.
The CBC, of course, promptly hunted down some LGBT activists who predictably oppose the policy. “(The directive) is not well balanced because it stigmatizes kids that are a bit different,” said Mona Greenbaum, co-director of LGBT+ Family Coalition. “We know that from all sorts of research that it’s very harmful for young people to not have their gender identity affirmed.” The most recent research, of course, is the UK National Health Service’s Cass Review, which in fact concluded that the so-called “affirmative model” is “very harmful for young people.”
Jennifer Maccarone, a frequently hysterical LGBT activist and Member of the National Assembly, serves as the Liberal Party critic for “the 2SLGBTQIA+ community,” also weighed in, stating that the directive contradicted a 2021 guide for schools published by the Ministry of Education that supported the idea of gender-neutral spaces. “Does the government still stand by their document?” Maccarone demanded to know during a news conference. Drainville’s directive is pretty clear, so it would seem the answer to her question is “no.”
It is because of folks like Maccarone that such directives are even needed in the first place. When one school in Alberta decided to bring in gender-neutral bathrooms back in 2017, many students avoided them because, as any idiot knows, boys and girls generally feel uncomfortable doing their business in a stall next to a member of the opposite sex. Lineups began to form outside the gender-specific bathrooms, and students trekked all the way across the school to avoid using the gender-neutral bathrooms. Girls even risked dehydration and bladder infections rather than use bathrooms with males.
Of course, none of that matters to Maccarone and the LGBT activists. Their agenda is far more important than the comfort and safety of students — especially girls. Their complaints, and their stories, are never even considered. Fortunately, it appears that saner heads are finally prevailing.
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