Opinion
Election 2017 is but a week away. Will we be missing in action when Opportunity comes calling?
“Sometimes, we are so attached to our way of life that we turn down wonderful opportunities simply because we don’t know what to do with it.” Paulo Coelho.
What wonderful opportunity am I talking about? Let me give you a clue.
Lethbridge Alberta, population just shy of 100,000, Surrey B.C., population of 500,000, Singapore, population of 5,000,000, London England, population of 8,800,000 and Beijing, population of 21,500,000 all have man made lakes.
These cities, some are land locked, and some on the ocean, all invested in creating a man made lake. Parks, recreation, sports or works of art they were all investments for their residents.
So what do these wonderful resident based investments have to do with Red Deer turning down a wonderful opportunity?
Red Deer does not have to build a man made lake for it’s residents because it has natural lakes. It already has a 100 acre lake with 2 miles of shoreline. It has Hazlett Lake. So?
Hazlett Lake sits besides Hwy 2. So? Gasoline Alley sits besides Hwy 2 and is a huge economic success story, so huge that is pulling businesses out of Red Deer.
Now comes huge plans for Gasoline Alley, new accesses, new traffic circles, 200 assisted living homes and something like 800 new homes. Will Red Deer now see their population decrease more with the migration of residents to Gasoline Alley?
We have seen big box stores like Princess Auto leave the city recently along with Greyhound Bus, add in the accounting firms, businesses, dealers, stores, hotels, restaurants, that could have been within city limits, but are operating in gasoline alley and paying county taxes, and residents could be next.
I read in an article that the Red Deer County gets 3 times as much tax revenue from Gasoline Alley as from all the agricultural land in the county. That is before this major expansion.
Gasoline Alley is along Hwy 2 south of 32 Street and it is siphoning money out of Red Deer. Why not learn from their successes and emulate it on the north side of Red Deer. Why not build a gasoline alley along Hwy 2 north of Hwy 11a?
We have something that Gasoline Alley does not have, Hazlett Lake. The city is talking about building an Aquatic Centre. What could be more appealing than an Aquatic Centre with a lake? Attracting stores, restaurants, hotels, gas stations, tourism industries and residents.
Hwy 2 is one of the busiest highways in the country, and Hazlett Lake is Red Deer’s largest lake and is highly visible from Hwy 2. Hazlett Lake could be a destination more popular than Gasoline Alley.
Aren’t we talking about a lot of money? You are correct and that is why we will miss this once in a generation opportunity.
We are talking about 100 million dollars to build an Aquatic Centre with a much needed 50 metre pool, and that is a big chunk of change. City hall balks at spending that kind of money for the residents of Red Deer, to kick start development, to attract provincial and national competitions. Now we did spend 135 million moving the public works yard to make way for the Riverlands, was it 47 million to re-align Ross St. and Taylor Drive for the Riverlands, they support a 23 million dollar footbridge for the Riverlands parallel to Taylor Bridge.
The Winter Games has a budget of 77 million dollars to accommodate 20,000 visitors over a 2 week span in 2019, but a 100 million dollar swimming pool can wait.
The Collicutt Centre cost the city about 35 million dollars when it opened 16 years ago and it is the most popular recreational centre in Red Deer and look at the development in that corner of the city, now.
Someone down at city hall, retired now, told me in 2014 that it would cost over 100 million dollars if we built it then in 2014.
The budget for the Aquatic Centre in 2013 was 87 million so I rounded it up to 100 million. We hit economic recessionary times and labour costs, material costs, and other costs declined and our interest rates were low. We could have kept people working and kick started our development in the north west sector of the city like Collicutt helped in the south east sector.
The city is still blind to opportunities except notable exceptions like incumbents Frank Wong and Tanya Handley. The plan is to save for later development. Can we save faster than inflation?
Collicutt cost 35 million, now it would be about 135 million. If we had waited we may have saved up 100 million and then took out a 35 million dollar loan.
The economic picture is supposed to be improving and infrastructure inflationary delays are expected to increase costs by 10% per annum. So every year we delay the budget goes up 10% or 10 million in the first year, 11 million in the second year, 12.1 million in the third year. So if we wait 3 years, we would have to save 33.1 million dollars and still borrow 100 million dollars at a possibly higher interest rate. Simplified but it does show another side of the issue. We also do without a 50 metre pool and postpone development, jobs, and residential income for 3 years.
The current plan is to wrap the lake with residential development and a trail. What a wasted opportunity.
Hazlett Lake is our opportunity, will we waste it? Do we know what to do with it? I offered an option but I often really wonder if some folks down at city hall know what to do with it.
If interested call or e-mail the candidates before voting, on Monday October 16, 2017.
Reddeer.ca has on their website an official list of candidates with phone numbers and e-mail addresses for the public. I am listing them;
CANDIDATES FOR THE OFFICE OF MAYOR
Number of Positions to be filled: 1
Name -Phone -E-mail Address
Sean Burke 403-392-2893 [email protected]
Tara Veer 403-358-3568 [email protected]
CANDIDATES FOR THE OFFICE OF COUNCILLOR
Number of Positions to be filled: 8
Name Phone E-mail Address
Sandra (Sam) Bergeron 403-304-9884 [email protected]
S.H. (Buck) Buchanan 403-348-3240 [email protected]
Valdene Callin 403-348-9958 [email protected]
Matt Chapin 403-347-1934 [email protected]
Michael Dawe 403-346-9325 [email protected]
Rob Friss 403-597-1355 [email protected]
Calvin Goulet-Jones 403-872-4253 [email protected]
Jason Habuza 403-597-8712 [email protected]
Tanya Handley 403-596-5848 [email protected]
Vesna Higham 403-505-1172 [email protected]
Ted Johnson 403-396-5962 [email protected]
Ken Johnston 403-358-8049 [email protected]
Cory Kingsfield 403-352-6450 [email protected]
Jim Kristinson 403-318-0330 [email protected]
Lawrence Lee 403-346-7388 [email protected]
Kris Maciborsky 587-679-5747 [email protected]
Doug Manderville 403-318-0545 [email protected]
Bobbi McCoy 403-346-0171 [email protected]
Ian Miller 403-392-4527 [email protected]
Jeremy Moore 403-357-4187 [email protected]
Rick More 403-340-9330 [email protected]
Lynne P Mulder 403-392-1177 [email protected]
Bayo Nshombo Bayongwa 403-307-1074 [email protected]
Matt Slubik 403-848-3762 [email protected]
Jordy Smith 587-377-4384 [email protected]
Brice Unland 403-597-4321 [email protected]
Jonathan Wieler 403-358-8270 [email protected]
Frank Wong 403-872-3238 [email protected]
Dianne Wyntjes 403-505-4256 [email protected]
From the Fraser Institute
By Matthew Lau
If the value of local radio stations, as measured by how much revenue they generate, is higher than the costs of running those stations, no subsidies are needed to keep them going. Conversely, if the costs are higher than the benefits, it doesn’t make sense to keep those radio stations on the air.
The governmentalization of the news media in Canada continues apace. According to a recent announcement by the Trudeau government, the “CRTC determined that a new temporary fund for commercial radio stations in smaller markets should be created.” Now, radio stations outside of Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Ottawa-Gatineau will be eligible for taxpayer subsidies.
Clearly a bad idea. Firstly, there’s no obvious market failure the government will solve. If the value of local radio stations, as measured by how much revenue they generate, is higher than the costs of running those stations, no subsidies are needed to keep them going. Conversely, if the costs are higher than the benefits, it doesn’t make sense to keep those radio stations on the air.
The government said the new funding is “temporary” but as economists Milton and Rose Friedman famously observed, “Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.” Taxpayers may can reasonably expect that subsidies to local radio news stations will become an ongoing expense instead of a onetime hit to their wallets.
Indeed, the Trudeau government has a history of making temporary or “short-term” costs permanent. Before coming to power in 2015, the Liberals proposed “a modest short-term deficit” of less than $10 billion annually for three years; instead this fiscal year the Trudeau government is running its 10th consecutive budget deficit with the cumulative total of more than $600 billion.
Secondly, the governmentalization of media will likely corrupt it. Here again an observation from Milton Friedman: “Any institution will tend to express its own values and its own ideas… A socialist institution will teach socialist values, not the principles of private enterprise.” Friedman was talking about the public education system, but the observation applies equally to other sectors that the government increasingly exercises control over.
A media outlet that receives significant government funding is less likely to apply healthy skepticism to politicians’ claims of the supposed widespread benefits of their large spending initiatives and disbursements of taxpayer money. The media outlet’s internal culture will naturally lean more heavily towards government control than free enterprise.
Moreover, conflict of interest becomes a serious issue. To the extent that a media outlet gets its revenue from government instead of advertisers and listeners, its customer is the government—and the natural inclination is always to produce content that will appeal to the customer. Radio stations receiving significant government funding will have a harder time covering government in an unbiased way.
Finally, as a general rule, government support for an industry tends to discourage innovation, and radio and other media are no exception. When new companies and new business models enter a sector, the government should not through subsidies try to keep the incumbents afloat.
“The media, like any other business, continually evolves,” noted Lydia Miljan, professor of political science at the University of Windsor and a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute, in a recent essay. “As each innovation enters the market, it displaces audiences for the legacy players. But does that innovation mean we should prop up services that fewer people consume? No. We allow other industries to adapt to new market conditions. Sometimes that means certain industries and companies close. But they are replaced with something else.”
To summarize—there are three major problems with the Trudeau government’s new fund for radio stations. First, it will impose costs on taxpayers that, despite the government’s label, may not be “temporary” and the compensating benefits will be lower than the costs. Second, increased government funding will damage the ability of those radio stations to cover the government with neutrality and healthy skepticism. And third, the new fund will discourage innovation and improvement in the media sector as a whole.
Author:
From the Brownstone Institute
You might think these are quite rare but not a bit of it; 13,200 of these were recorded in the last 12 months, and that’s around 36 a day, and they go on your record and sometimes mean you end up with no job. They also have new laws planned to control misinformation and disinformation, something not just confined to the UK. Similar laws are planned for Ireland, Australia, Canada, and the EU.
I’m envious. The US has something the UK doesn’t have, namely a First Amendment. Yes I know there are those who wish the US didn’t have it either, including, I understand, John Kerry and that woman who still thinks she beat Trump the first time around. Kerry kind of wishes that the First Amendment wasn’t quite so obstructive to his plans. But from where I stand, you should be thankful for it.
Not only does the UK not have a First Amendment, it doesn’t have a constitution either, and that makes for worrying times right now. Free speech has little currency with Gen Z and the way it looks, even less with the new UK Labour government. Even Elon Musk, who takes a surprising interest in our little country, has recently declared the UK a police state.
It’s not surprising. Take for instance the case of Alison Pearson, who had the police knocking on her door this Remembrance Sunday. They had come to warn her they were investigating a tweet she had posted a whole year ago which someone had complained about. They were investigating whether it constituted a Non-Crime Hate Incident or NCHI. Yes, you heard me right, a ‘non-crime’ hate incident and no, this is not something out of Orwell, it’s straight out of the College of Policing’s playbook.
If you haven’t heard of them, you can thank your First Amendment. In the UK you can get a police record for something you posted on X that someone else didn’t like and you haven’t even committed a crime. NCHIs are a way they have of getting around the law in the same way John Kerry would like to get around the First Amendment, except it’s real where I live.
Alison Pearson is a reporter for the Daily Telegraph, but that doesn’t mean she can write what she likes. When she asked the police what the tweet was which was objected to, she was told they couldn’t tell her that. When she asked who the complainant was, they said they couldn’t tell her that either. They added, that she shouldn’t call them a complainant, they were officially the victim. That’s what due process is like when you don’t have a First Amendment or a constitution. Victims of NCHI in the UK are decided without a trial or a defense. They asked, very politely, if Pearson would like to come voluntarily to the police station for a friendly interview. If she didn’t want to come voluntarily, they would put her on a wanted list and she would eventually be arrested. Nice choice.
It’s true that there has been a public ruckus over this particular case, but the police are unapologetic and have doubled down. Stung into action by unwanted publicity, they are now saying they have raised the matter from an NCHI to an actual crime investigation. Which means they think she can be arrested and put in prison for expressing her opinion on X. And of course they are right. In the UK that’s where we are right now. Pearson tried to point out the irony of two police officers turning up on her door to complain about her free speech on Remembrance Day of all days, when we recall the thousands who died to keep this a free country, but irony is lost on those who have no memory of what totalitarianism means.
The way things are looking I would say things can only get worse. The new Labour government has made it clear that it wants to beef up the reporting of NCHIs and make them an effective tool for clamping down on hurtful speech. You might think these are quite rare but not a bit of it; 13,200 of these were recorded in the last 12 months, and that’s around 36 a day, and they go on your record and sometimes mean you end up with no job. They also have new laws planned to control misinformation and disinformation, something not just confined to the UK. Similar laws are planned for Ireland, Australia, Canada, and the EU. Germany in particular is keen to remove all misinformation from the internet, I understand.
Whenever I see the word ‘misinformation’ these days I automatically translate it in my head to what it really means, which is ‘dissent.’ Western countries, former champions of free speech, the bedrock of liberty and individual choice, en masse it seems, now want to outlaw dissent. What is coordinating this attack on free expression, I don’t know, but it’s real and it’s upon us. We are slowly being intellectually suffocated into not expressing any opinion that others might find objectionable or that might contradict what the government said. If you had told me that would happen in my lifetime, I would have called you a liar.
I live in the UK, the home of the Bill of Rights and the Magna Carta, and the mother of parliamentary democracy. I was proud that we produced men like John Milton, John Stuart Mill, and Thomas Paine, that we understood the importance of the Areopagitica, the Rights of Man, and incorporated On Liberty into our social thinking. But those days seem long gone when police knock on your door to arrest you for an X post.
So I’m glad someone somewhere has a First Amendment even if we don’t. It may be your last defense in that republic of yours, if you can keep it.
Author
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