Opinion
Red Deer City Councillors urged to focus on economic development
Editorial submitted by former candidate for City Council, Chad Krahn
Where is the focus?
“What gets measured, gets managed.”
As the father of management theory once said, the challenge is focus – where your time and attention go is where results will happen.
When it comes to Red Deer City Council, there has been little focus – and as a consequence even less results – on economic development.
In the last year a lot of focus has gone into social issues, like the location of the homeless shelter, and fair enough, we need a location for the shelter. But when virtually no attention has been paid to the economic health of the city, it’s no wonder that the lack of progress on this file speaks for itself.
In the last year and a half, there have only been two large private sector announcements. The first was the gondola across the Red Deer River, which has since been put on hold, and the second was the downtown casino’s move into the newly minted Red Deer Resort and Casino (formerly the Cambridge Hotel).
That certainly doesn’t speak to a vibrant, growing sector.
The Red Deer Economic Development Strategy was written in 2013 – making it over a decade old. Remember 2013? It was when CFL light bulbs were all the rage. So much has changed in the last ten years, and in the case of Red Deer, not for the better.
Since the Economic Development Strategy was written, the number of businesses in Red Deer has steadily declined from 4,040 in 2013 to 3,534 in 2022. While the number of businesses isn’t a perfect indicator of economic development, it is actually the metric chosen by Council as part of their strategic plan. Clearly, there is some work to do.
There are some things that Council can do and can prioritize right away to improve this situation.
The City tracks building permits, and those too have declined significantly in the last decade. In 2013, the City issued 2,068 building permits and that number has declined every year, so much so that, in 2022, only 903 building permits were issued. The City must work on modernizing the entire permitting system if they want to bolster this number – and make Red Deer more economically attractive.
There must be a guaranteed turnaround time on permits. Council must embrace automation to streamline the process where they can. If the City likes to use the number of permits as a benchmark for development, they can’t continue to be stuck in the status quo when it comes to getting them approved.
Taxes remain a sticking point and, while still competitive in comparison to other municipalities, Red Deerian’s taxes have gone up in the last decade. Even before this year’s new City budget and new tax rate come into effect, the commercial tax rate for Red Deer in 2022 was 14.8% – up from 12.23% in 2013.
Council has an opportunity to create new committees around its priorities. Currently, the City has committees for housing and homelessness, the library, public art, Gaetz Lake, and municipal planning, among others. Why not take the opportunity to create a new committee for Red Tape Reduction? Surely there are old bylaws on the books that could be revamped. Unfortunately, in government, it is always easier to add new laws rather than to take away old, defunct rules, but that’s no reason not to do it!
A committee on economic development is also needed, to begin the work of a new Economic Development Strategy. This committee would work to bring all the partners and economic drivers of the city and region together, and to find a way to present a clear vision of what this city has to offer in terms of economic opportunity. The economic advantages to those of us who live here are plain as day, but the message doesn’t seem to be resonating with those outside. Council needs to identify these advantages and work to convey them to potential investors, entrepreneurs, and would-be residents.
The City brands itself as an entrepreneurial one, and with a little more focus we could be the business testing grounds for Alberta. The city’s size and central location makes this an ideal site. Our city could be the launch pad for businesses for the whole country. Imagine how many more made-in-Red Deer success stories we could have.
We can be so much more – all we need is a little focus.
Chad Krahn is a former candidate for Red Deer City Council.
Jørund ‘Viktoria’ Alme, a Norwegian man who believes he is a paralyzed woman
From LifeSiteNews
Those who challenge the view that a person can identify as an amputee despite being healthy must also challenge the assertion that one can simply identify as the opposite sex.
Almost ten years ago, I wrote a column in this space on the phenomenon of the so-called “transabled” – people who identify as amputees or suffer from a mental illness that causes them to loathe one of their healthy limbs. In 2022, a high-profile (alleged) example of this emerged when a 53-year-old healthy, non-disabled Norwegian man began identifying as a woman paralyzed from the waist down and took to a wheelchair to give media interviews.
Those who found his claims to be somewhat suspect were in a bit of a bind – which of his assertions, after all, is more ridiculous – that he is a woman, or that he is paralyzed? Our culture has accepted that he can claim to be a woman, and that we must all nod solemnly in response. “How brave of her,” we must all say in unison as his loyal wife pushes him away from the cameras in his wheelchair. “No, not the wife. The other one.”
A grimmer but no less disturbing profile was published recently by the National Post titled “Quebec man has two healthy fingers amputated to relieve ‘body integrity dysphoria.’” It’s a sad story; the young man said he had “intrusive thoughts about his left hand’s fourth and fifth fingers, the sensation they weren’t his, that they didn’t belong to his body” since he was a child and would even have nightmares about them. He fantasized about cutting them off himself. From the Post:
Instead, a surgeon at his local hospital agreed to an elective amputation in what is being called the first described case of ‘digits amputation’ for body integrity dysphoria, or BID, a rare and complex condition characterized by an intense desire to amputate a perfectly healthy body part, such as an arm or a leg. The Quebec case involved an ambidextrous 20-year-old whose attempts at ‘non-invasive’ relief, including cognitive behavioural therapy, Prozac-like antidepressants and exposure therapy, only increased his distress.
What is significant about this case is the way it was described by Dr. Nadia Nadeau of the department of psychiatry at Université Laval in a case study published in the journal Clinical Case Reports. Nadeau describes the young man’s mental and emotional distress, and notes that this distress apparently ceased after the “elective amputation” and that “he was able to pursue the life he envisioned as a complete human being without those two fingers bothering him.” One month post surgery, he had no regrets.
The particularly significant conclusion came towards the end of the report. According to Nadeau: “He is now living a life free from distressing preoccupations about his fingers, with all his symptoms related to BID resolved. The amputation enabled him to live in alignment with his perceived identity.” This, of course, is precisely the argument used by transgender activists making the case for sex change surgeries, cross-sex hormones, and puberty blockers – that these “treatments” will help the recipient “live in alignment with his perceived identity.” Although they wouldn’t call it a “perceived” identity – they’d call it his real identity. This perceived identity, however, was considered real enough that a surgeon removed two of his fingers.
The justifications for these “treatments” that include bodily mutilation are similar, as well. The Post noted that “Nadeau’s patient, after doing some research, ‘related his condition to gender dysphoria’… People with BID often feel their physical body doesn’t align with the image of the body they have in their minds.”
Furthermore, although “cutting off healthy, functioning body parts for psychological distress raises ethical concerns, BID sufferers sometimes resort to self-mutilation or ‘black-market’ amputations, risking their lives.”
A similar argument is made for “transgender care”: if extreme medical intervention does make the mentally ill person’s body resemble the image of reality in their minds, they might harm themselves. That’s the catch-22, of course. Isn’t surgical mutilation also harm, by definition? Not if you redefine it – that’s why trans activists no longer refer to sex change surgeries, but “gender-affirming care.” According to Nadeau: “Recognizing and addressing the unique needs of (BID) patients can lead to a future where they can live with more dignity, respect and optimal well-being.”
Who can disagree with a campaign to increase understanding and dignity for the mentally ill? I wonder, however, what the limiting principle is here. If a young man who believes himself to be a woman can get himself legally castrated by a surgeon, why can’t a man who believes he is an amputee have a leg removed? Or an arm? If we have accepted that people’s self-perceptions are more important than actual reality, where does it stop?
From the Fraser Institute
By Ben Eisen, Milagros Palacios and Lawrence Schembri
Canada’s inflation-adjusted per-person annual economic growth rate (0.7 per cent) is meaningfully worse than the G7 average (1.0 per cent) over this same period. The gap with the U.S. (1.2 per cent) is even larger. Only Italy performed worse than Canada.
Growth in gross domestic product (GDP), the total value of all goods and services produced in the economy annually, is one of the most frequently cited indicators of Canada’s economic performance. Journalists, politicians and analysts often compare various measures of Canada’s total GDP growth to other countries, or to Canada’s past performance, to assess the health of the economy and living standards. However, this statistic is misleading as a measure of living standards when population growth rates vary greatly across countries or over time.
Federal Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, for example, recently boasted that Canada had experienced the “strongest economic growth in the G7” in 2022. Although the Trudeau government often uses international comparisons on aggregate GDP growth as evidence of economic success, it’s not the first to do so. In 2015, then-prime minister Stephen Harper said Canada’s GDP growth was “head and shoulders above all our G7 partners over the long term.”
Unfortunately, such statements do more to obscure public understanding of Canada’s economic performance than enlighten it. In reality, aggregate GDP growth statistics are not driven by productivity improvements and do not reflect rising living standards. Instead, they’re primarily the result of differences in population and labour force growth. In other words, they aren’t primarily the result of Canadians becoming better at producing goods and services (i.e. productivity) and thus generating more income for their families. Instead, they primarily reflect the fact that there are simply more people working, which increases the total amount of goods and services produced but doesn’t necessarily translate into increased living standards.
Let’s look at the numbers. Canada’s annual average GDP growth (with no adjustment for population) from 2000 to 2023 was the second-highest in the G7 at 1.8 per cent, just behind the United States at 1.9 per cent. That sounds good, until you make a simple adjustment for population changes by comparing GDP per person. Then a completely different story emerges.
Canada’s inflation-adjusted per-person annual economic growth rate (0.7 per cent) is meaningfully worse than the G7 average (1.0 per cent) over this same period. The gap with the U.S. (1.2 per cent) is even larger. Only Italy performed worse than Canada.
Why the inversion of results from good to bad? Because Canada has had by far the fastest population growth rate in the G7, growing at an annualized rate of 1.1 per cent—more than twice the annual population growth rate of the G7 as a whole at 0.5 per cent. In aggregate, Canada’s population increased by 29.8 per cent during this time period compared to just 11.5 per cent in the entire G7.
Clearly, aggregate GDP growth is a poor tool for international comparisons. It’s also not a good way to assess changes in Canada’s performance over time because Canada’s rate of population growth has not been constant. Starting in 2016, sharply higher rates of immigration have led to a pronounced increase in population growth. This increase has effectively partially obscured historically weak economic growth per person over the same period.
Specifically, from 2015 to 2023, under the Trudeau government, inflation-adjusted per-person economic growth averaged just 0.3 per cent. For historical perspective, per-person economic growth was 0.8 per cent annually under Brian Mulroney, 2.4 per cent under Jean Chrétien and 2.0 per cent under Paul Martin.
Due to Canada’s sharp increase in population growth in recent years, aggregate GDP growth is a misleading indicator for comparing economic growth performance across countries or time periods. Canada is not leading the G7, or doing well in historical terms, when it comes to economic growth measures that make simple adjustments for our rapidly growing population. In reality, we’ve become a growth laggard and our living standards have largely stagnated for the better part of a decade.
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