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Discovery Centre rolls into Capstone

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The City of Red Deer, Land & Economic Development team publicly launched a real estate presentation centre for the Capstone community redevelopment program. The presentation centre has been designed specifically to educate and engage Red Deerians and Central Albertans on the vision of the community and its importance to the vitality and sustainability of downtown Red Deer. The opening marks a new era in the transformation of the area into a master planned urban village in the heart of downtown Red Deer.

While traditional ‘bricks and mortar’ real estate centres are still common practice in community development, The City of Red Deer took a more innovative approach to sharing the vision of the Capstone redevelopment, by converting a decommissioned transit bus into a discovery centre.

Named the Capstone Discovery Bus, the mobile real estate centre allows The City a unique opportunity to travel throughout Red Deer and into smaller areas to broaden interest for and educate on the community vision. Civic celebrations, annual festivals and cultural performances will be regular stops when the bus is not at its main stop near Canada 150 Square inside Capstone.

“Having a community presentation centre that engages and educates the public is a vital part of real estate development as it supports storytelling, which ultimately affects a buying decision,” said Mayor Ken Johnston. “It gives future residents and real estate prospects a sampling of how the community will look, feel, and behave. Importantly, it addresses how the community will meet the needs of its residents.”

Capstone is quite unique in its design and development intentions and represents a new type of community for Red Deer. The vision for Capstone is a mixed use, multi-family community in which 5,000 residents will one day live in some 2,000 condominiums, apartments, and townhomes. Its’ location on the Red Deer River, west of the downtown, means Capstone is both a prime riverside address and an accessible city home.

“The success of the Capstone redevelopment program underpins the future health and vitality of our downtown core,” City Manager, Tara Lodewyk. ‘Our city is expected to grow by approximately 20,000 new residents over the next 10-12 years and accommodating some of this population growth in Capstone is good news for our downtown businesses and services. We have planned for the highest and best use of the lands in Capstone to accommodate for our growth.”

City Manager Tara Lodewyk joins Mayor Johnston and Councillors Buruma, Dawe, and Lee at Capstone Discovery Bus Ribbon Cutting Ceremony

The interior spaces and displays of the remodeled city bus have been meticulously designed to portray the Capstone vision. Within its tiny 280 square foot footprint, the Capstone Discover Bus allows visitors to experience a typical day-in-the-community. An urban condo, a brew pub, a micro grocery store, and a mini park space all come together to describe the personality and built form of the neighbourhood. A 3-D model, depicting the community at full build-out, will be delivered digitally and will orient the visitor to the lands of Capstone, while highlighting the future density ambitions and design aesthetic.

Extensive research was done on the wants and needs of the future resident, and young working professionals and older adults have identified as most interested in calling Capstone home. With nearby retail services and amenities, including an expanded regional hospital, the future Capstone citizen is seeking a community which not only satisfies their social and recreational needs but also offers beautifully appointed and designed homes.

The Capstone Discovery Bus is free of charge to the public and is open 12 – 6 p.m. Thursday through Sunday and on holiday Mondays. No reservation is needed; the public is invited to find us in Capstone and throughout the downtown core this summer. Follow us at #liveincapstone.

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PBO report shows cost of bureaucracy up 73 per cent under Trudeau

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From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

By Franco Terrazzano

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is calling on the federal government to rein in the bureaucracy following today’s Parliamentary Budget Officer report showing the bureaucracy costs taxpayers $69.5 billion.

“The cost of the federal bureaucracy increased by 73 per cent since 2016, but it’s a good bet most Canadians aren’t seeing anywhere close to 73 per cent better services from the government,” said Franco Terrazzano, CTF Federal Director. “Taxpayers are getting soaked because the size and cost of the federal bureaucracy is out of control.”

Today’s PBO report estimates the federal bureaucracy cost taxpayers $69.5 billion in 2023-24. In 2016-17, the cost of the bureaucracy was $40.2 billion. That’s an increase of 72.9 per cent.

The most recent data shows the cost continues to rise quickly.

“Spending on personnel in the first five months of 2024-25 is up 8.0 per cent over the same period last year,” according to the PBO.

“I have noticed a marked increase in the number of public servants since 2016 and a proportional increase in spending,” said Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux. “But we haven’t seen similar improvements when it comes to service.”

The Trudeau government added 108,793 bureaucrats since 2016 – a 42 per cent increase. Canada’s population grew by 14 per cent during the same period. Had the bureaucracy only increased with population growth, there would be 72,491 fewer federal employees today.

The government awarded more than one million pay raises to bureaucrats in the last four years, according to access-to-information records obtained by the CTF. The government also rubberstamped $406 million in bonuses last year.

“The government added tens of thousands of extra bureaucrats, rubberstamped hundreds of millions in bonuses and awarded more than one million pay raises and all taxpayers seem to get out of it is higher taxes and more debt,” Terrazzano said. “For the government to balance the budget and provide tax relief, it will need to cut the size and cost of Ottawa’s bloated bureaucracy.”

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Can’t afford Rent? Groceries for your kids? Trudeau says suck it up and pay the tax!

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Watch Canada’s Prime Minister tell an anti-poverty group, your ability to buy “groceries for my kids” is less important than sacrificing to pay his carbon tax.

In case you still thought there might be even the tiniest chance Justin Trudeau might come around.. well this settles it. He is as they say, ‘beyond the pale’.

Sure we’ve pieced this together over the last number of years, but it’s still SHOCKING to see him say it directly, proclaim it proudly. This week Trudeau received applause from an audience of the intellectually suffering at something called the “Global Citizen Now” panel discussion on the sidelines of the G20 Leaders’ Summit in Rio.

Much appreciation for the first short video below to Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre who shared his ferocious reaction to Trudeau’s anti-human comments, challenging the current PM to call an immediate election.

Or course there will be no quick election call. To Justin, it’s more important to cling to the undercarriage of a taxpayer funded jet so he can fly the globe stunning audiences unfortunately already stunned by their utter terror of losing the planet.

In their horror at their inability to turn the switch off and let us all freeze/starve to death this winter, they applaud lovingly for their intellectual leader/sock model as he describes how hard it is to convince angry, hungry people they really need to suck it up.

If only he read a history book.. any history book.. apologies, any book at all. Truly even spending some time with the literary version of an Al Gore video rant would at lest keep JT occupied so he couldn’t speak for a few moments. I’m pretty sure every time he opens his mouth, the temperature in Canada rises as millions of frustrated hotheads (hello there) explode, spewing steam high up into the upper atmosphere where water particles do much more damage to our planet than the final exhaling of a non grocery-eating-planet-loving-Canadian.

Watch Pierre Poilievre’s video and assuage the ensuing headache by mapping out your route to a polling booth. If this doesn’t sell a couple of those ‘Axe the Tax’ shirts for the Poilievre team, well.. enjoy your stroll to the foodbank.

Here’s a link to his entire discussion. If you have a strong stomach and 20 minutes of your life to donate to a higher cause… No silly, not the intended cause of the anti-poverty group… But to the intellectual cause of understanding just how twisted the logic has become for those who fly around the world to wine and dine, only to break long enough to tell us they think it’s perfectly fine if we can’t buy groceries for our kids.

By the way, please save a bit of your shock and disappointment for the hapless host of the ‘anti-poverty’ Global Citizen. This was apparently on the sidelines of a G20 Summit.  I would expect this drivel to be called out at a respectable middle school debate. Apparently the ‘anti-poverty’ Global Citizen people aren’t overly concerned with poverty. Do we need to say that not being able to afford groceries is in fact THE definition of poverty?  Or course not. It would be much easier for them to change their name to Former Global Citizens.

You were warned.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sits down for a conversation with Michael Scheldrick, co-founder of the anti-poverty group Global Citizen, on the sidelines of the G20 Leaders’ Summit Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

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