Opinion
A good paint and bad engine is an easier sell than a good engine and bad paint.
It is easier to sell a vehicle with a good paint job and a bad drive train than it is to sell a vehicle with a good drive train and a bad paint job. Buyers will over look the blue tinged exhaust but worry about the dime sized rust spot by the rear wheel. Not everyone but I would say the majority.
Sales people and politicians know this. Voters will vote for the fancy platform over the more substantive policy based platform. Former Prime Minister Kim Campbell is known for declaring elections are not the time to discuss policy. Between elections our politicians, generally, are invisible and voters are busy with their lives, so between elections policy is not discussed.
This October 16, we will be having our municipal elections, we will hear much about our downtown, the Riverlands, our trail systems like all the past elections, and we will hear much about the 2019 Winter Games.
The Winter Games is the paint job while our decreasing population is our engine. We will spend $2,000 for every visitor that will visit this city over those 2 weeks, but last year we lost 975 permanent residents. Which is the bigger issue? The city is not doing a census this year, so we will not know if the losses will continue. How much discussion will there be on reversing this trend, or will it all be blamed on the economy?
The five fastest growing cities in Canada are Calgary, Edmonton, Regina, Saskatoon and Lethbridge. They are all in western provinces, affected by the same economy, and Lethbridge is almost the same size as Red Deer. So why did they all grow while Red Deer shrank?
Blackfalds, Penhold, Sylvan Lake all grew while Red Deer shrank, but we are not discussing it, because it is the economy.
Let us delve further into Red Deer’s shrinkage. One third of the residents live north of the river and they lost 777 residents while two thirds of the residents live south of the river and they only lost 198 residents. So the north side is shrinking 8 times faster than the south side of the river. You cannot blame this on the provincial economy.
It might have more to do with the city planning for everything being on the south side. No high schools on the north side and 6 for the south side. 1 recreational complex on the north side, (Dawe Centre) and 10 on the south side ( the Downtown Recreation Centre, Michener Aquatic Centre, Downtown Arena, Centrium complex, 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).
There will be few words or thoughts given to our bad engine and many offered about the winter games paint job.
Reminds me of the Rio Olympic Games, it emphasized the class differences, burden placed on the populace for the benefit of the few, and I did not hear of any mass migrations to Rio after the games. I did hear about the long term debt carried by the forgotten masses. I have no belief that our 2019 Winter Games will be the panacea for our declining population and economy in Red Deer.
Will we discuss the exiting from our downtown, businesses relocating to the county’s Gasoline Alley? No, probably not. because that is too negative while the trails have more positive spins and recognition. Though not because of the actions of our politicians now but from the actions of politicians long forgotten.
I think I see in my mind’s eye a lot of politicians taking note of the paint jobs but I do not see many lifting the hood. I really hope that I will be proven wrong, but if history is anything to go by, I won’t be. Fingers crossed.
From LifeSiteNews
A recent Nanos research survey found that ‘Pessimism and anger remain the top emotions Canadians say best describe their views of the federal government in Ottawa.’
Canadians’ anger towards Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal government has reached a record high, according to a new poll.
According to a national survey published by Nanos Research this month, 31% of Canadians feel anger and pessimism towards the Trudeau government, which marks an all-time low in satisfaction for government leadership.
“Which of the following feelings best describes your views of the federal government in Ottawa?” the poll questioned.
In addition to the 31% feeling angry and pessimistic respectively, 11% feel uninterested, while only 1% and 10% feel satisfaction and optimism, respectively. 6% were unsure of their feelings towards the Trudeau government.
“Feelings of anger toward the federal government have increased or held steady in every region, with the largest increases among residents of Quebec (December: 12%; March: 24%) and Atlantic Canada (December: 21%; March: 38%). Pessimism and anger remain the top emotions Canadians say best describe their views of the federal government in Ottawa,” the research found.
In recent months, Trudeau’s popularity has plummeted, with polls projecting a massive Conservative victory in the upcoming election.
Trudeau’s popularity has been falling and his government has been embroiled in scandal after scandal, one of the latest being a federal court ruling that the prime minister’s use of the Emergencies Act to end the 2022 Freedom Convoy was “not justified.”
Even top Liberal party stalwarts have called for him to resign.
Indeed, Canadians anger and dissatisfaction with Trudeau has become a topic of conversation on many social media platforms, with Canadians detailing how the Trudeau government has made their life less affordable.
Numerous videos are being uploaded to social media by Canadians explaining that they struggling to make ends meet amid the rising cost of living and Trudeau’s ever-increasing carbon tax, while many immigrants are telling others not to come to Canada.
From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
Those who claim there are unmarked burials have painted themselves into a corner. If there are unmarked burials, there have had to be murders because why else would anyone attempt to conceal the deaths?
The Federal Government released its Budget 2024 last week. In addition to hailing a 181% increase in spending on Indigenous priorities since 2016, “Budget 2024 also proposes to provide $5 million over three years, starting in 2025-26, to Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada to establish a program to combat Residential School denialism.” Earlier this spring, the government proclaimed:
The government anticipates the Special Interlocutor’s final report and recommendations in spring 2024. This report will support further action towards addressing the harmful legacy of residential schools through a framework relating to federal laws, regulations, policies, and practices surrounding unmarked graves and burials at former residential schools and associated sites. This will include addressing residential school denialism.
Like “Reconciliation,” the exact definition of what the Federal government means by “residential school denialism” is not clear. In this vague definition, there is, of course, a potential for legislating vindictiveness.
What further action is needed to address “the harmful legacy of residential schools” except to enforce a particular narrative about the schools as being only harmful? Is it denialism to point out that many students, such as Tomson Highway and Len Marchand, had positive experiences at the schools and that their successful careers were, in part, made possible by their time in residential school? If the study of history is subordinated to promoting a particular political narrative, is it still history or has it become venal propaganda?
Since the sensational May 27, 2021, claim that 215 children’s remains had been found in a Kamloops orchard, the Trudeau government has been chasing shibboleths. The Kamloops claim remains unsubstantiated to this day in two glaring ways: no names of children missing from the Kamloops IRS (Indian Residential Schools) have been presented and no human remains have been uncovered. For anyone daring to point out this absence of evidence, their reward is being the target of a witch hunt. As we recently witnessed in Quesnel, B.C., to be labeled as a residential school denialist is to be drummed out of civil society.
If we must accept a particular political narrative of the IRS as the history of the IRS, does our freedom of conscience and speech have any meaning?
To the discredit of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, fictions of missing and murdered children circulating long before the Commission’s inception were subsumed by the TRC (Truth and Reconciliation Commission). Unmarked graves and burials were incorporated into the TRC’s work as probable evidence of foul play. In the end, the TRC found no evidence of any murders committed by any staff against any students throughout the entirety history of the residential schools. Unmarked graves are explained as formerly marked and lawful graves that had since become lost due to neglect and abandonment. Unmarked burials, if they existed, could be construed as evidence of criminal acts, but such burials associated with the schools have never been proven to exist.
Those who claim there are unmarked burials have painted themselves into a corner. If there are unmarked burials, there have had to be murders because why else would anyone attempt to conceal the deaths? If there are thousands of unmarked burials, there are thousands of children who went missing from residential schools. How could thousands of children go missing from schools without even one parent, one teacher, or one Chief coming forward to complain?
There are, of course, neither any missing children nor unmarked burials and the Special Interlocutor told the Senate Committee on Indigenous People: “The children aren’t missing; they’re buried in the cemeteries. They’re missing because the families were never told where they’re buried.”
Is it denialism to repeat or emphasize what the Special Interlocutor testified before a Senate Committee? Is combating residential school denialism really an exercise in policing wrongthink? Like the beleaguered Winston in Orwell’s 1984, it is impossible to keep up with the state’s continual revision of the past, even the recent past.
For instance, the TRC’s massive report contains a chapter on the “Warm Memories” of the IRS. Drawing attention to those positive recollections is now considered “minimizing the harms of residential schools.”
In 1984, the state sought to preserve itself through historical revision and the enforcement of those revisions. In the Trudeau government’s efforts to enforce a revision of the IRS historical record, the state is not being preserved. How could it be if the IRS is now considered to be a colossal genocide? The intent is to preserve the party in government and if it means sending Canada irretrievably down a memory hole as a genocidaire, so be it.
Michael Melanson is a writer and tradesperson in Winnipeg.
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