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RDC launches $1 Million fundraising campaign after huge commitment by anonymous donor

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Red Deer College has launched an ambitious and significant student bursary fundraising campaign. A generous, anonymous donor has committed a $500,000 donation to match gifts made to the new RDC Student Bursary Fund. Gifts of any size made to this fund during the campaign will be matched 1:1 by the donor funds, doubling the impact of each gift.

“The impact of COVID-19 on our community has been tremendous. As it impacts Red Deer College directly, we have experienced decreases in both new student enrollment and in registrations for continuing students,” says RDC President, Dr. Peter Nunoda.

It is a priority for the donor and for RDC that students are not deterred from pursuing their chosen educational path by financial constraints. The many impacts of COVID-19 have caused some students to pause or delay starting their post-secondary education.

“In addition to this immediate financial support for students, it was important to the donor that these funds be used to connect the community to the effort. By creating the matching program, we hope that other community members who wish to support post-secondary students will be inspired by the potential to double their impact on new and continuing RDC students,” says Dr. Nunoda.

The RDC Student Bursary Fund is new and will be established entirely by donor gifts, doubled by the anonymous donor’s matching gift. Bursaries will be available for full- and part-time students, up to $1,500 and $750, respectively, per year. Bursaries will be distributed as tuition credits on a first come-first served basis. When the matching campaign has fully funded the RDC Student Bursary Fund, it will provide financial support for more than 1,300 students. The bursary created by the matching campaign will be available to new and returning students in credit programs, beginning in Fall 2021 Term. Application for these awards is open now at rdc.ab.ca/studentbursary.

“We’re grateful for the support of all of our donors, internal and external, small and large, and especially to this anonymous donor for their commitment, which will provide immediate and broad support for our students,” says Dr. Nunoda. “It has been a challenging year for many in our community, but we continue to come together in large and small ways to support one another. This is one more example of what makes me proud to be a part of this community.”

More information about the initiative, including the link to an online donation page, can be found at rdc.ab.ca/giving.

This new bursary is one of the ways in which RDC and generous donors support students in helping to keep post-secondary education accessible and affordable. Students enrolling in courses for 2021/2022 can apply for a variety of scholarships and awards now through May 31. RDC is pleased to award more than $1 million in scholarships and bursaries each year.

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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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