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Why I Am Running For City Council

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Hello Red Deer,

I have decided to put my name forward to run in the City Council Election on October 16, 2017.

Before I get to telling you why I am running, I want to tell you on what pretenses I am not running.

I am not a politician. I am not running in the City Council Election to become one. I am also not using City Council as some sort of stepping stone to a different political career.

I am not running in hopes of boosting or otherwise furthering my business or that of friends. Neither from name recognition nor from favourable city policy. In fact, I don’t have a business. With that said, I understand business is vital to any community and supporting them needs to be a priority of council. It just won’t be businesses associated with me personally.

I am not running for the money or the need of a job. I have a job I love: teaching high school students, and occasionally instructing at Red Deer College.

I am not running because I think the city is falling apart around us or that past or current Council has done a poor job. I believe, all things considered, we live in a pretty great city and obviously Council, and more importantly city workers, are a significant part of that.

Those statements above are fundamental to my candidacy. Who someone is not is sometimes just as important as who they are. Now, here are the reasons I am running, which help define who I am as a candidate:

I am running because I want to make a difference for Red Deer. I want to help our great city become an amazing city. We are on the cusp of significant changes for a community of our size. The decisions we make today are going to significantly impact the livability of Red Deer for generations to come.

I am running because I want the city that our family has called home to continue to be a great place to raise a family when our children grow up.

I am running because I have experience with policy and bylaws. I have been involved in creating, debating, passing and denying policies and motions in the field of education. Council work is not easy. Nor is it meant to be a place where everyone raises their hand and agrees with everyone else. It is a place for intense and passionate debate, ultimately, if done correctly, resulting in actionable and meaningful direction. A vital component of this work is understanding government systems and the role they should and should not play. I am well versed in this.

I am running because, while I think Council has done a pretty good job, we can do better. If elected, I would be one of the youngest members (at the age of 34) on Council. This is important. When you have a body of people making decisions for a diverse city populous, it too must be diverse.

I am running because I want to plant trees that I will never live to see fully grown. As stated above, I don’t have a short term goal or personal invested interest in becoming a City Councillor. This allows me to, if elected, to make decisions with the future in mind. Our kids’ future, not necessarily my future. It’s this type of thinking that ensures Red Deer continues to invest in planning like our well-known trail system.

I am running because I believe I am a good candidate for you and our city.

If you would like to learn more about my candidacy, what I stand for, or have questions, please visit: www.unland.ca

Come October 16, you will have your say in the future of Red Deer. If, like me, you believe that the above beliefs and values are what you want to see on City Council, make me one of your eight selections on Election Day.

I won’t let you down.

Your neighbour,

Brice Unland

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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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