Opinion
Red Deer’s population grew by 195 since 2015

2019 RED DEER MUNICIPAL CENSUS = 101,002
2016 RED DEER MUNICIPAL CENSUS= 99,832
2015 RED DEER MUNICIPAL CENSUS= 100,807
In the four years since 2015 Red Deer has grown by 195 residents or less than 0.2% in 4 years.
Timberlands grew from 1834 residents in 2015 to 3038 residents in 2019 or 1204 residents, for a growth of about 66% so where did we lose all our residents? Let us look at the neighbourhoods north of the river.
Residents living north of the river in 2015=32,005, 2016=31,228 and finally 2019= 30,576 for a total decline of 1,429 residents.
Let us break it down;
……YEAR………..2019.…………….2016.……………..2015
Kentwood-………….4235.……………4267.……………..4299
Glendale………..….4284.……………4288.……………..4430
Normandeau……….3275.……………3530.……………..3603
Pines……………..…1725.……………..1718.……………..1851
Highland Green……3896.…………….3920.……………4065
Oriole Park…………5200.…………..…5244.…………….5300
Riverside Meadows..3423.…………….3686.…………….3810
Fairview…………….733.………………710.……………..761
Johnstone…………..3805.……………..3865.…………….3886
Total……………….30,576.…………31,228.……………32,005
So it looks like we just relocated residents from north of the river to new subdivisions like Timberlands. In an age where we are trying to limit our footprint Red Deer expanded our footprint faster than our population growth demanded. New neighbourhoods require infrastructure ($), schools ($), sewers ($), water ($), roads ($), transit ($) etc.
30,000 plus people live north of the river down from 32,000 plus 4 years ago, but still a large community. I wrote about this very topic in 2016 and was given the brush off by many in city hall. One city councillor suggested that I have more children to populate the north side.
The issue was not taken seriously in 2016 and again in 2019.
I wrote that Lethbridge would overtake us and become the 3rd largest city in Alberta, and they did.
I dove deeper to see what was happening in local neighbourhoods and found that the north side of the river is being decimated and annexing or new neighbourhoods are fuelling our growth.
People keep telling me it is the provincial economy that is preventing growth. Lacombe grew by 7% last year, Blackfalds has seen record growth, Penhold, Sylvan Lake and the county grew in the same province, so I discount that theory.
My thinking is perhaps more closer to home. The other communities invested in their residents. New recreation complexes that required per capita investments that dwarf Red Deer’s by huge margins, up to 100s of percents.
Red Deer has neglected the residents north of the river. For every dollar they spend north of the river they spend 20 south of the river. No high school north of the river with 4 current and 2 planned, south of the river.
If the city could just bring their culture from 1980 to 2020 then maybe we will not lose so many residents from north of the river. It is time to stop neglecting the residents living north of the river.
Start investing in substantial recreational facilities north of the river after years of building so many south of the river. Build the next aquatic centre north of the river, build the next school, especially high school north of the river.
For the whole city the powers that be need to wake up, and invest in it’s residents. It has been said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. It is time to wake up, what the powers that be have been doing has not worked, the census proves it, it is time to do things differently.
No I am not having more children, councillor.
Sports
The Top 10 Best Super Bowl Commercials of Super Bowl 59

The price for a :30 Super Bowl ad space is up to $8 Million
#10 – Pfizer
As much as it pains me to say it, this was an effective ad.
Unfortunately, many viewers will fall for this propaganda using a cute kid to sell the narrative of Pfizer “knocking out” cancer.
#9 – Bud Light
They are at least trying to salvage their image after the Dylan Mulvaney disaster.
#8 – “He Gets Us” – an ad campaign promoting Jesus Christ.
@BehizyTweets responded to the commercial, saying, “‘He Gets Us’ just aired a Super Bowl ad promoting Jesus, and it’s a massive improvement from last year’s woke ad.”
#7 – Rocket.com
@annamlulis reacted to this ad, saying:
“The Super Bowl just showed the most beautiful pro-life ad. Instead of fearmongering people out of having a family, it showed U.S. service members getting married and having kids.”
“Everyone deserves their shot at the American dream.”
#6 – Coors Light
#5 – Duracell
#4 – Michelob Ultra
#3 – Hims & Hers
As a company that donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration, the ad aligned well with Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) messaging—despite the company primarily operating within the pharmaceutical space.
“Something’s broken, and it’s not our bodies. It’s the system.”
“The system wasn’t built to help us. It was built to keep us sick and stuck.”
#2 – Mountain Dew
The only ad that made me laugh out loud.
#1 – Jeep
They dropped $32 million on this ad—and they’re about to get their money’s worth and then some.
Starring Harrison Ford and the American flag, the ad featured several patriotic statements, including:
“Freedom is for everybody. But it isn’t free. It’s earned.”
“There are real heroes in the world, but not the ones in the movies. Real heroes are humble, and they’re not driven by pride.”
“The most sacred thing in life isn’t the path. It’s the freedom to choose it.”
Thanks for making it all the way to the end! If you enjoyed this list, follow me (@VigilantFox) for more.
Fun fact: Each 30-second ad spot cost about $8 million this year. Which ad was your favorite?
Business
‘The DNA Of Our Foreign Policy’: How USAID Hid Behind Humanitarianism To Export Radical Left-Wing Priorities Abroad

From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Thomas English
Behind the veil of humanitarian aid, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) doled out billions in taxpayer dollars to engage in left-wing social engineering abroad — from rampant LGBT advocacy to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs and tech censorship.
President John F. Kennedy established USAID in 1961 to, in his words, “provide generously of our skills, and our capital and our food to assist the peoples of the less-developed nations to reach their goals in freedom.” The agency, though, has reinterpreted Kennedy’s mission statement to mean that Ecuador suffers from a lack of drag shows, that Peruvian comic books are too light on transgender representation, that the Serbian workplace is insufficiently welcoming to the homosexual community — while also offering social media platforms a host of creative tactics to suppress those who disagree with USAID’s social agenda.
“It’s probably one out of every three grants is totally insane left-wing nonsense … USAID has always been somewhat left, but when the Biden administration started, you can clearly see a huge uptick in spending,” Parker Thayer, who researches federal spending at Capital Research Center, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “The amount of lunatic, fringe grants goes up dramatically. For example, if you go to USAspending[.gov] and search for the keyword ‘transgender,’ the graph is basically a vertical line when you hit 2021. It’s kind of remarkable.”
He also emphasized his discovery of a $13 million grant for an Arabic-language translation of “Sesame Street,” calling it “something else, man.”
Other programs include a $2 million grant for funding sex-change procedures in Guatemala, $500,000 for LGBT inclusion in Serbian workplaces, $70,000 for a DEI-themed musical in Ireland, a transgender clinic in Vietnam, a similar clinic in India, $46,000 in HIV care for transgender South Africans, $1.5 million more for South African children to “learn through play,” $20,000 Bulgarians to enjoy a vaguely-defined “LGBT-related event” — programs for which former USAID Administrator Samantha Power said “a big pot of money” wasn’t enough.
These and other programs were the vehicle through which Power went about “working LGBT rights into the DNA of our foreign policy,” a priority she emphasized to Harvard students in 2015 during her tenure as U.S. Ambassador to the United States.
“One of the most common complaints you will get if you go to embassies around the world — from State Department officials and ambassadors and the like — is that USAID is not only not cooperative; they undermine the work that we’re doing in that country,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who assumed control over USAID on Monday, said. He condemned the agency’s more questionable programs as not only a waste of taxpayer dollars, but a diplomatic liability.
“They are supporting programs that upset the host government for whom we’re trying to work with on a broader scale,” he said.
Beyond pro-LGBT funding, former President Joe Biden’s USAID offered social media platforms a “disinformation primer,” a 100-page document providing guidance for countering “disinformation” through increased fact-checking and censorship — policies it said would make platforms more “democratically accountable.”
The document credits some of its content suppression tactics to the Global Engagement Center (GEC), a now-defunct agency that operated under the State Department. To “counter disinformation,” GEC recommended ginning up “moral outrage” against content that “violates [the] sacred value” of what it considers “the truth.”
Biden seemed to heed GEC’s guidance on moral outrage during the height of the pandemic in 2021, accusing Facebook of “killing people” by insufficiently censoring anti-vaccine content on the platform. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg recalled during his Jan. 10 appearance on “The Joe Rogan Experience” an instance when the Biden administration pressured him to censor a satirical meme about vaccine side effects. Biden later walked back his accusation against Facebook in an interview with CNN.
The USAID-funded primer also recommended “advertiser outreach,” a strategy that would financially throttle agency-disfavored informational outlets by informing advertisers of potential damage to brand reputation.
“[Advertisers] inadvertently are funding and amplifying platforms that disinform. Thus, cutting this financial support found in the ad-tech space would obstruct disinformation actors from spreading messaging online,” the Disinformation Primer reads. “Efforts have been made to inform advertisers of their risks, such as the threat to brand safety by being placed next to objectionable content.”
The document further characterized the legacy media’s recent decline “leading to a loss of information integrity,” which thereby justifies USAID’s efforts to combat those “casting doubt on media.”
“It leads to a loss of information integrity. Online news platforms have disrupted the traditional media landscape. Government officials and journalists are not the sole information gatekeepers anymore … Because traditional information systems are failing, some opinion leaders are casting doubt on media, which, in turn, impacts USAID programming and funding choices,” the document continued.
USAID also faced intense congressional scrutiny in 2023 after allegations emerged that its PREDICT program and subsequent grants to EcoHealth Alliance potentially funneled U.S. taxpayer funds into gain-of-function coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology — which raised questions about USAID’s possible role in contributing to the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul complained that USAID refused to hand over documents pertaining to the allegations and the agency’s funding habits.
“The response I got from your agency was: ‘USAID will not be providing any documents at this time.’ They’re just unwilling to give documents on scientific grant proposals — we’re paying for it, they’re asking for $745 million more in money. We get no response,” Rand said. “We’re not asking for classified information. We’re not asking for anything unusual. 20 million people died around the world … and you won’t give us the basic information about what grants you’re funding — should we be funding the Academy of Military Medical Research in China?”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio echoed Rand’s transparency concerns after announcing he was the USAID’s new acting director Monday, calling the agency “completely uncooperative.”
“They’re one of the most suspicious federal agencies that exists,” Thayer told the DCNF, suggesting the agency’s reputation for being opaque is justified. “It’s kind of a character trait for USAID to be less than transparent.”
Thayer explained that, in his research, USAID is selective in its transparency. The grants he called “complete nonsense,” such as the “Sesame Street” translation, “are very specific about what they’re doing. And the ones that are vaguely humanitarian-sounding are usually written like someone put a sociology textbook through a word randomizer then just took whatever it spat out and put it on the page. They are so full of jargon words that they’re basically incomprehensible, even to people who understand what the jargon words are supposed to mean.”
“I got $1.1 million for a study of youth rural migration in Morocco,” he added. “I literally — I cannot help you in understanding what that could possibly mean. I have no idea what that means.”
Elon Musk, the leader of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), claimed that he and President Donald Trump agreed to shutter the agency entirely during an X Spaces conversation early Monday morning. Rubio emphasized in a Tuesday interview with Fox News that he does not intend to “get rid of foreign aid,” but is considering whether USAID ought to be housed under State Department or remain an autonomous agency.
“This is not about getting rid of foreign aid,” Rubio said. “There are things we do through USAID that we should continue to do, that make sense. And we’ll have to decide: Is that better through the State Department, or is that better through a reformed USAID? That’s the process we’re working through … but they’re completely uncooperative. We had no choice but to take dramatic steps to bring this thing under control.”
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