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Red Deer sees the glass as half empty while Blackfalds and the County see it as half full.

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The opinions expressed are those of the author.

The city dealt with a 10 year capital budget recently and what came out of it was a news article about not building a swimming pool. The gist of it is that if the city wins a lottery they will build a pool.

The city says it needs to win the Provincial Government lottery or the Federal Government lottery in order to build an Aquatic Centre that could cost a $1,000 per resident of Red Deer.

Let us revisit a spending article 4 months ago about Canada’s fastest growing community with a population over 5,000.

July 3 2019, and the town of Blackfalds announced they are expediting moving forward on twinning their Multi-Plex to the tune of $15 million, and $5 million to expand their library. This is only a few years after opening their $15 million Abbey Centre.

Blackfalds moved construction up a few years to avail themselves of economic savings. Construction costs are down while the industry has slowed and the residents will save money.

Granted it is still $2,000 per resident as Blackfalds only has 10,000 +/- residents.

The city of Red Deer is delaying discussing building an Aquatic Centre, 18 years after opening the Collicutt Centre.

Blackfalds, population of 10,400 will spend $1,500 per person twinning their multi-plex just a few short years after spending $2,000 per person on the Abbey Centre. $500 per resident on the library.

In just a few years Blackfalds is committing about $4,000 per resident on recreational facilities.

A story this past week, Bentley Alberta, population 1,078 recently opened a playground at a cost of $500 per resident. Fundraising and community support helped.

These are communities investing in themselves with councils that see solutions instead of problems.

The city says it is broke, after building new ice rinks, subsidizing ice rinks and will be paying for many years to come. The Harris rink will see million dollar payments for another 7 years or so from the city taxpayers. Keeping our debt levels up there.

Blackfalds built the Abbey Centre a few years ago, but at least 10 years after Red Deer built their last complex, Collicutt Centre, at a cost to Blackfalds, of about $2,000 per resident yet they are back in the game, now.

Sylvan Lake is investing in recreational infrastructure, the county is building. Due to tenders coming in 50% and lower real estate costs.

The County, Blackfalds, Sylvan Lake, and Penhold are seeing the glass as half full while our council sees the glass as half empty.

When ever you watch a documentary of a success story there is always the negative fearful book keeper trying to keep things status quo. Is there a documentary out there about book keepers seeing a half full glass? I don’t know.

I think that our city council is sated with book keepers and sorely lacking of much needed visionary leadership.

The terms to describe this council appears to be “Caretaker” and “Interim”. The feeling is this council is between generations, maintaining the status quo, until the next “Growth” or “Next Generation” council comes in.

Perhaps it is time for the next generation, open to new ideas and new processes open to more risk and investing in infrastructure that benefits all citizens of Red Deer. Just saying.

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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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