Community
Who is Jon Wieler?
Hey everyone,
I recently announced that I am running for city council and I am grateful for the outpouring of support that I have received! People are asking for lawn signs and sharing content on social media about my campaign. Just this last week my FaceBook Page soared to over 550 likes!
With all the momentum building for my campaign I want to write a little about my background so that you can get to know me better. I have always remarked, during election season, how it feels empty to just vote for a name on an election sign that I see as I drive by. So I feel that it is very important for me to be as transparent as I can be. But I have to admit up front, it is a little out of my comfort zone.
My late brother Isaac was severely autistic and never spoke a word in his life. My family moved to Red Deer in the late 90s because there were better services available for him here. While it’s easy to fall through the cracks, I can say from personal experience that there are many people in our city doing great things to help families like mine. My brother died almost a decade ago but he is still in my heart. I see him when I talk to a senior citizen who is living in poverty and I look into his eyes when I pass a homeless person on the street.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution; as much as the average person who has no personal experience with developmental disabilities wants one. It takes compassion, empathy and patience to make a positive difference for someone like my brother. My experience growing up with Isaac helps me to understand the bigger picture of mental health and social justice in our community. I am constantly looking to understand how everything is connected and where an innovative solution may be found. Closely related are issues around seniors care, affordable housing, drug and alcohol rehabilitation and housing first. These are issues that I am passionate about because I feel I can relate to them.
I have been very privileged to grow up in Red Deer. I went to Hunting Hills High School and Red Deer College. As I was growing up so was this city; the population effectively doubled in the years since I was in middle school. I know now that the boom was because of our thriving oil and gas industry. People came from all across Canada to our province and many landed in Red Deer.
I have effectively made a living in the oil and gas industry. I say effectively because, as we all know, it ebbs and flows. The boom years seem like they’ll never end and the recession hurts badly. But Red Deer has pushed through it. I’ve been laid off from high paying oil patch jobs and had to make personal sacrifices. I deeply understand how important it is for the citizens of our community to get the best value for their tax dollars. I also know that it is imprudent to plan for 20 more years of growth based on a booming oilfield that may or may not come through for us. As a city we must live within our means and save for the future.
I started my oilfield career as a roughneck on a service rig. I worked until they shut us down in -49C. I worked in the snow and mud. I have been covered head-to-toe in oil. I’ve been as far north as Rainbow Lake and as far south as Brooks. To the west I worked 97 days straight on a rig in Hudson’s Hope, BC and to the east I’ve drilled for oil near the USA boarder in Manitoba. I know what it’s like to work hard and I have done it all so that my family can have a good life.
With all that said, I am an environmentalist and who better to lay claim to that title than an oilfield worker? I am very fond of that place where all my air, water and food comes from. I have seen environmental catastrophes covered up and I have seen vast landscapes degraded. But there is reason to be optimistic. Attitudes are changing, technology is improving and our industry has made leaps and bounds when it comes to taking environmental issues seriously. I see programs in our city such as organic waste collection and efforts to conserve water and energy making the impact our city has on the environment less severe.
I am very bullish on emerging technologies such as solar panels and battery storage. It is very quickly becoming a reality that the way we generate and use energy is going to shift. I have looked into solar for my own house and it is very close to making economic sense. Without rebates and incentives I can get a net zero system that will pay for itself in under a decade. I suspect that in a few years we will see mass adoption of this technology and our city will have to adapt, quickly. However in the meantime the biggest gains for the environment and the wallet will come from energy conservation and efficiency strategies; which are largely behavioural changes and building upgrades.
Red Deer is the city that I grew up in and this is where I choose to raise my family and run my business, Bullseye Safety Training. I have 4 wonderful kids and a loving wife. I have personal vested interest in seeing this community continue to prosper and my success is your success. We have a lot going for us here. We need both a steady hand at the wheel and a long view for the way forward.
This summer I will be out door knocking and meeting as many Red Deerians as possible and I would love to hear from you!
Let’s go for coffee!
Please feel free to email me ([email protected]) or contact me on social media; just search for “Wieler4RD” on most platforms or use the hashtag #CoffeeWithWieler.
Cheers,
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)
From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
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
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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