Council to vote on $3 million grant and $19 million loan for Westerner Park

City Administration recommending stronger legal oversight and financial support for Westerner Park

A new agreement between Westerner Park and The City of Red Deer will be considered by City Council at a Special Meeting on April 22 with the goal to ensure financial and operating stability for Westerner Park by increasing involvement and legal and financial oversight on the part of The City.

The proposed agreement includes increased City involvement in the decision making process for Westerner Park’s future and financials. It also proposes financial support that responds to short-term operational needs as well as long term-financial sustainability. The proposed financial support comes with a price tag of $22 million.

“In 2019, Westerner Park notified us about their financial instability, and we have since been working with them to ensure they not only survive the economic downturn and global pandemic, but thrive when in-person events and entertainment can resume,” said City Manager Allan Seabrooke. “We are recommending financial support, and a Relationship Framework Agreement inclusive of an updated Master Plan and an Asset Management Plan.”

The first item being recommended is a $3 million cash investment in the form of a grant to ensure continued operations of Westerner Park through the pandemic. A $19 million capital loan is also recommended to enable Westerner Park to pay out an unsustainable loan they currently hold, related to the expansion of Exhibition Hall.

If approved, the proposed $3 million grant is not expected to impact property taxes as it would be funded through the operating reserve; however, the $19 million loan would be funded through debt, and with the proposed payback plan, there would need to be adjustments to The City’s overall capital plan to accommodate this funding.

At this time, without support from The City of Red Deer, Westerner Park cannot continue to operate based on current capital and operating projections.

“It is unfortunate that The City has to consider doing this, but ensuring the success of Westerner Park is mutually beneficial as it drives $150 million in economic activity annually when normal operations are possible. Westerner Park is an important part of the region’s economic recovery and long term community resiliency,” said Seabrooke. “We based our recommendations for financial support on seven years of data and we are confident Westerner Park will be able to pull through these tough times, pay back any loans received, and thrive.”

In addition to this funding, the recommended Relationship Framework Agreement aims to formalize the necessary level of oversight The City will require that is not covered in the previous agreements. The new framework will mean The City has a higher level of involvement in decision-making, budgeting, lease agreements and other major items relating to Westerner Park.

The proposed relationship agreement also outlines expectations on roles and processes for completing a Master Plan for Westerner Park. The plan is expected to establish the 15-year vision, land use concept, multi-modal transportation plan, building design principles and site-servicing concept.

“It is proposed that the first step outlined in the agreement is for Council to discuss and determine the essential elements for what needs to be included in the Master Plan,” said Seabrooke. “Once the plan has been developed, it will go for approval through resolution at an open Council meeting.”

An asset management plan will be developed to ensure all infrastructure on the grounds is maintained. This plan will provide a guide for capital investment to support the long term planning for the site.

Please see attached FAQ Backgrounder for more details. April 2021 – FAQ – WEA (pdf)

Related Topics:#CityCouncil #CityofRedDeer #WestenerParkBailout #WesternerPark

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Duane Rolheiser

After 15 years as a TV reporter with Global and CBC and as news director of RDTV in Red Deer, Duane set out on his own 2008 as a visual storyteller. During this period, he became fascinated with a burgeoning online world and how it could better serve local communities. This fascination led to Todayville, launched in 2016.

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Worst kept secret—red tape strangling Canada’s economy

Published on February 22, 2025

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Matthew Lau

In the past nine years, business investment in Canada has fallen while increasing more than 30 per cent in the U.S. on a real per-person basis. Workers in Canada now receive barely half as much new capital per worker than in the U.S.

According to a new Statistics Canada report, government regulation has grown over the years and it’s hurting Canada’s economy. The report, which uses a regulatory burden measure devised by KPMG and Transport Canada, shows government regulatory requirements increased 2.1 per cent annually from 2006 to 2021, with the effect of reducing the business sector’s GDP, employment, labour productivity and investment.

Specifically, the growth in regulation over these years cut business-sector investment by an estimated nine per cent and “reduced business start-ups and business dynamism,” cut GDP in the business sector by 1.7 percentage points, cut employment growth by 1.3 percentage points, and labour productivity by 0.4 percentage points.

While the report only covered regulatory growth through 2021, in the past four years an avalanche of new regulations has made the already existing problem of overregulation worse.

The Trudeau government in particular has intensified its regulatory assault on the extraction sector with a greenhouse gas emissions cap, new fuel regulations and new methane emissions regulations. In the last few years, federal diktats and expansions of bureaucratic control have swept the auto industry, child care, supermarkets and many other sectors.

Again, the negative results are evident. Over the past nine years, Canada’s cumulative real growth in per-person GDP (an indicator of incomes and living standards) has been a paltry 1.7 per cent and trending downward, compared to 18.6 per cent and trending upward in the United States. Put differently, if the Canadian economy had tracked with the U.S. economy over the past nine years, average incomes in Canada would be much higher today.

Also in the past nine years, business investment in Canada has fallen while increasing more than 30 per cent in the U.S. on a real per-person basis. Workers in Canada now receive barely half as much new capital per worker than in the U.S., and only about two-thirds as much new capital (on average) as workers in other developed countries.

Consequently, Canada is mired in an economic growth crisis—a fact that even the Trudeau government does not deny. “We have more work to do,” said Anita Anand, then-president of the Treasury Board, last August, “to examine the causes of low productivity levels.” The Statistics Canada report, if nothing else, confirms what economists and the business community already knew—the regulatory burden is much of the problem.

Of course, regulation is not the only factor hurting Canada’s economy. Higher federal carbon taxes, higher payroll taxes and higher top marginal income tax rates are also weakening Canada’s productivity, GDP, business investment and entrepreneurship.

Finally, while the Statistics Canada report shows significant economic costs of regulation, the authors note that their estimate of the effect of regulatory accumulation on GDP is “much smaller” than the effect estimated in an American study published several years ago in the Review of Economic Dynamics. In other words, the negative effects of regulation in Canada may be even higher than StatsCan suggests.

Whether Statistics Canada has underestimated the economic costs of regulation or not, one thing is clear: reducing regulation and reversing the policy course of recent years would help get Canada out of its current economic rut. The country is effectively in a recession even if, as a result of rapid population growth fuelled by record levels of immigration, the GDP statistics do not meet the technical definition of a recession.

With dismal GDP and business investment numbers, a turnaround—both in policy and outcomes—can’t come quickly enough for Canadians.

Matthew Lau

Adjunct Scholar, Fraser Institute

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‘Out and out fraud’: DOGE questions $2 billion Biden grant to left-wing ‘green energy’ nonprofit`

Published on February 22, 2025

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From LifeSiteNews

By Calvin Freiburger

The EPA under the Biden administration awarded $2 billion to a ‘green energy’ group that appears to have been little more than a means to enrich left-wing activists.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Biden administration awarded $2 billion to a “green energy” nonprofit that appears to have been little more than a means to enrich left-wing activists such as former Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams.

Founded in 2023 as a coalition of nonprofits, corporations, unions, municipalities, and other groups, Power Forward Communities (PFC) bills itself as “the first national program to finance home energy efficiency upgrades at scale, saving Americans thousands of dollars on their utility bills every year.” It says it “will help homeowners, developers, and renters swap outdated, inefficient appliances with more efficient and modernized options, saving money for years ahead and ensuring our kids can grow up with cleaner, pollutant-free air.”

The organization’s website boasts more than 300 member organizations across 46 states but does not detail actual activities. It does have job postings for three open positions and a form for people to sign up for more information.

The Washington Free Beacon reported that the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project, along with new EPA administrator Lee Zeldin, are raising questions about the $2 billion grant PFC received from the Biden EPA’s National Clean Investment Fund (NCIF), ostensibly for the “affordable decarbonization of homes and apartments throughout the country, with a particular focus on low-income and disadvantaged communities.”

PFC’s announcement of the grant is the organization’s only press release to date and is alarming given that the organization had somehow reported only $100 in revenue at the end of 2023.

“I made a commitment to members of Congress and to the American people to be a good steward of tax dollars and I’ve wasted no time in keeping my word,” Zeldin said. “When we learned about the Biden administration’s scheme to quickly park $20 billion outside the agency, we suspected that some organizations were created out of thin air just to take advantage of this.” Zeldin previously announced the Biden EPA had deposited the $20 billion in a Citibank account, apparently to make it harder for the next administration to retrieve and review it.

“As we continue to learn more about where some of this money went, it is even more apparent how far-reaching and widely accepted this waste and abuse has been,” he added. “It’s extremely concerning that an organization that reported just $100 in revenue in 2023 was chosen to receive $2 billion. That’s 20 million times the organization’s reported revenue.”

Daniel Turner, executive director of energy advocacy group Power the Future, told the Beacon that in his opinion “for an organization that has no experience in this, that was literally just established, and had $100 in the bank to receive a $2 billion grant — it doesn’t just fly in the face of common sense, it’s out and out fraud.”

Prominent among PFC’s insiders is Abrams, the former Georgia House minority leader best known for persistent false claims about having the state’s gubernatorial election stolen from her in 2018. Abrams founded two of PFC’s partner organizations (Southern Economic Advancement Project and Fair Count) and serves as lead counsel for a third group (Rewiring America) in the coalition. A longtime advocate of left-wing environmental policies, Abrams is also a member of the national advisory board for advocacy group Climate Power.