Hometown athlete and Australian are RDC Athletes of the Week

From Red Deer College Communications

Red Deer College Athletics is proud to announce our Boston Pizza Athletes of the Week.

1. Alexandria Greenshields – Queens Volleyball Hometown – Red Deer, AB
Open Studies (1st year)

Alexandria Greenshields had a tremendous weekend on the court, helping the RDC Queens (14-8) defeat the SAIT Trojans (13-7) in a pair of matches to move even with the Ambrose University Lions (14-8) for second spot in the south. In Friday’s five set victory at the Gary W. Harris Canada Games Centre (25-22, 24-26, 27-25, 20-25 and 17-15), the five-foot-ten middle blocker totaled eight kills, two digs, two stuff blocks, one assist and one ace, accounting for 11 of the Queens’ points. Then on Saturday in Calgary, the first-year Open Studies student accumulated eight kills, five digs, four stuff blocks and one ace in another five set win (25-20, 16-25, 22-25, 25-20 and 15-13), contributing 13 more points for RDC.

Ali has been an integral part of the Queens’ strong play. Since November 2, the Red Deer College Queens have been one of the hottest teams in Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference (ACAC) Women’s Volleyball, going 13-3 in their past 16 matches.

2. Regan Fathers – Kings Volleyball
Hometown – East Fremantle, Western Australia Kinesiology General (5th year)

This past weekend, Regan Fathers was a force for the Kings Volleyball team (16-6). The six-foot-six outside hitter had 23 kills, five digs and three service aces while hitting for 48.6 per cent efficiency in Friday’s three set sweep over the SAIT Trojans (25-20, 25-19 and 25-21). The fifth-year’s contribution of 26 points helped him earn the Kings Player-of-the-Game award. Despite dropping a close five set decision on Saturday (20-25, 25-23, 25-22, 18-25 and 17-19), the talented student- athlete from East Fremantle, Western Australia, accumulated impressive numbers once again. Regan’s 21 kills led the Kings in Calgary, while adding three digs and two blocks.

The Kinesiology General student leads the league with 369 total kills and 5.13 kills per set. Regan will be a key player as the Kings prepare for the ACAC Championship from February 21-23 and the Canadian Collegiate Athletic Association (CCAA) Men’s Volleyball National Championship from March 7-9 at the Gary W. Harris Canada Games Centre, when the RDC Kings will be playing for their historic 14th national title.

This Week in RDC Athletics

This week, the RDC Basketball teams will play the Olds College Broncos in a home-and-home series, which will include the President’s Challenge during half-time of both Kings games. The Hockey Queens will face-off against the MacEwan University Griffins in a pair of games and the Kings will challenge the SAIT Trojans twice. Both volleyball teams will travel to Lethbridge and play the Kodiaks in two matches. This weekend will also feature the final RDC regular season home games, except for the rescheduled Kings Hockey game at 1:30 p.m. on Friday, February 22 at NexSource Centre in Sylvan Lake.

Here is a summary of what is happening this week in RDC Athletics.

Queens Basketball | Friday, Feb. 8 | 6:00 p.m. | Olds College

The Red Deer College Queens will play the Broncos in Olds. Sandra Garcia-Bernal continues to be one of top rebounders in the league. The second-year from Valencia, Spain sits third in ACAC Women’s Basketball, averaging 10.2 boards per game.

The five-foot-five guard’s tremendous effort and anticipation have helped guide the Queens to the top of the league in rebounding (47.6 per game).

Queens Basketball | Saturday, Feb. 9 | 6:00 p.m. | Gary W. Harris Canada Games Centre

The RDC Queens will tip-off against the Broncos on their home court.

Kings Basketball | Friday, Feb. 8 | 8:00 p.m. | Olds College

On the road, the fourth place Kings (8-8) will hit the hardwood against the Olds College Broncos (5-10), and it will be the first night of the President’s Challenge. Every game is significant as the RDC Kings look to lock down a playoff position in the south, and the Kings have been playing excellent lately with the postseason on their minds.

The Kings and Lethbridge College Kodiaks (8-9) are even with 16 points in the south standings, but the Kings have a game in hand, as both squads battle for a playoff spot.

After the home-and-home series against Olds College (5-10), the RDC Kings will play the Ambrose University Lions (12-6) once in Calgary and the Briercrest College Clippers (2-15) in two road games.

The Kodiaks will wrap up the regular season against the Briercrest College Clippers (2-15) twice and the Olds College Broncos (5-10) in a pair of games.

Red Deer’s Spencer Klassen continues to be a driving force for the Kings, leading the league with 25.7 points per game.

Kings Basketball | Saturday, Feb. 9 | 8:00 p.m. | Gary W. Harris Canada Games Centre

The Red Deer College Kings will host the Olds College Broncos.

At half-time, the second night of the President’s Challenge will take place in conjunction with Olds College. RDC President & CEO, Joel Ward, will compete against Stuart Cullum, President of Olds College, in a game of 21. The losing president from both evenings will have to the wear the other team’s jersey for a full day on Monday, February 11. If Ward and Cullum split the games of the 21, the point differential will determine the winner.

Queens Hockey | Friday, Feb. 8 | 7:00 p.m. | Gary W. Harris Canada Games Centre

The third place RDC Queens (8-8-4-0) will entertain the MacEwan University Griffins (13-4-2-0). MacEwan University sits in second spot in the standings with 28 points, six points behind NAIT (16- 2-2-0). The Red Deer College Queens have 20 points after 20 games and lead the fourth-place Olds College Broncos (6-11-1-0) by seven points.

Queens Hockey | Saturday, Feb. 9 | 6:00 p.m. | MacEwan University

The RDC Queens will face-off against the Griffins in Edmonton.

Kings Hockey | Friday, Feb. 8 | 7:00 p.m. | SAIT

The Red Deer College Kings (13-5-1-1) will tangle with the SAIT Trojans (14-5-0-0) in Calgary. Both teams share second place with 28 points, although the Trojans have a game in hand. It continues to be a battle at the top of the standings. The NAIT Ooks (16-6-0-0) lead ACAC Men’s Hockey with 32 points, but have also played two more games than the Kings. The MacEwan University Griffins (13-5-1-0) sit in fourth with 27 points. The University of Alberta Augustana Vikings (12-7-1-0) are next with 25 points.

The RDC Kings are the most disciplined team in the league, taking the fewest penalty minutes as a group. Although, even when a skater down the Kings can score, recording five shorthanded markers.

SAIT’s Dean Allison leads ACAC Men’s Hockey with 30 points, but RDC’s Chase Thudium is close behind with 27.

As part of a beer tasting event, participants are encouraged to make a donation with proceeds going to the Central Alberta Sexual Assault Support Centre (CASASC). Olds Brewery and Troubled Monk will be sponsoring the event.

Kings Hockey | Saturday, Feb. 9 | 7:00 p.m. | Gary W. Harris Canada Games Centre

The Kings will face the Trojans at home.

Queens Volleyball | Friday, Feb. 8 | 6:00 p.m. | Lethbridge College

The second place Red Deer College Queens (14-8) will take on the Lethbridge College Kodiaks (3-17). The RDC team has really progressed, going 8-2 over the past 10 matches.

Libero Kaylee Domoney has recorded a total of 364 digs, which is the most in the league.

Queens Volleyball | Saturday, Feb. 9 | 1:00 p.m. | Lethbridge College

In an afternoon rematch, the Volleyball Queens will challenge the Kodiaks.

Kings Volleyball | Friday, Feb. 8 | 8:00 p.m. | Lethbridge College

The second place Red Deer College Kings (16-6) will face the undefeated Kodiaks (20-0) in Lethbridge. In the first weekend of the season, the Lethbridge College Kodiaks picked up a pair of tight five set decisions over the RDC Kings, but the Kings did not have all of their players in action.

The Kings are ranked eighth and the Kodiaks are second in the CCAA.

The RDC Kings have a postseason spot locked up already in the south but want to continue fine- tuning their game leading up to the ACAC Championship and CCAA National Championship.

Kings Volleyball | Saturday, Feb. 9 | 3:00 p.m. | Lethbridge College

The Kings and Kodiaks will hit the court in the afternoon.

For more information on RDC Athletics, the student-athletes, scores, and game recaps of conference games, please visit: rdcathletics.ca

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Canadians largely ignore them and their funding bleeds their competition dry: How the CBC Spends its Public Funding

Published on October 18, 2024

Todayville

The Audit

David Clinton

If we want to intelligently assess the value CBC delivers to Canadians in exchange for their tax-funded investment, we’ll need to understand two things:

How CBC spends the money we give them
What impact their product has on Canadians

The answer to question #2 depends on which Canadians we’re discussing. Your average young family from suburban Toronto is probably only vaguely aware there is a CBC. But Canadian broadcasters? They know all about the corporation, but just wish it would lift its crushing hobnailed boots from their faces.

Stick around and I’ll explain.

For the purposes of this discussion I’m not interested in the possibility that there’s been reckless or negligent corruption or waste, so I won’t address the recent controversy over paying out millions of dollars in executive benefits. Instead, I want to know how the CBC is designed to operate. This will allow us to judge the corporation on its own terms.

The Audit is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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CBC’s Financial Structure

We’ll begin with the basics. According to the CBC’s 2023-24 projections in their most recent corporate plan strategy, the company will receive $1.17 billion from Parliament; $292 million from advertising; and $209 million from subscriber fees, financing, and other income. Company filings note that revenue from both advertising and legacy subscription pools are dropping. Advertising is trending downwards because of ongoing changes in industry ad models, and the decline in subscriptions can be blamed on competition from “cord-cutting” internet services. The Financing and other income category includes revenue from rent and lease-generating use of CBC’s many real estate assets.

The projected combined television, radio, and digital services spending is $1.68 billion. For important context, 2022-23 data from the 2022-2023 annual report break that down to $996 million for English services, and $816 million for French services. 2022-23 also saw $60 million in costs for transmission, distribution, and collection. Corporate management and finance costs came to around $33 million. Overall, the company reported a net loss of $125 million in 2022-23.

The corporation estimates that their English-language digital platforms attract 17.4 million unique visitors each month and that the average visitor engages with content for 28 minutes a month. In terms of market relevance, those are pretty good numbers. But, among Canadian internet users, cbc.ca still ranked only 43rd for total web destinations (which include sites like google.com and amazon.ca). French-language Radio-Canada’s numbers were 5.2 million unique visitors who each hung around for 50 minutes a month.

Monthly engagement with digital English-language news and regional services was 20 minutes. Although we’re given no visitor numbers, the report does admit that “interest in news was lower than expected.”

CBC content production

All that’s not very helpful for understanding what’s actually going on inside CBC. We need to get a feel for how the corporation divides its spending between programming categories and what’s driving the revenue.

The CRTC provides annual financial filings for all Canadian broadcasters, including the CBC. I could describe what’s happening by throwing columns and rows of dollar figures at you. In fact, should you be so disposed, you can view the spreadsheet here. But it turns out that my colorful graph will do a much better job:

As you can see for yourself, CBC spends a large chunk of its money producing news for all three video platforms (CBC and Radio-Canada conventional TV and the cable/VOD platforms they refer to as “discretionary TV”). The two conventional networks also invest significant funds in drama and comedy production.

The chart doesn’t cover CBC radio, so I’ll fill you in. English-language production costs $143 million (roughly the equivalent of the costs of English TV drama/comedy) while the bill for French-language radio production came in at $94 million (more or less equal to discretionary TV news production).

CBC Content Consumption

Who’s watching? The CBC itself reported that viewers of CBC English television represented only 5.1 percent of the total Canadian audience, and only 2.0 percent tuned in to CBC news. By “total Canadian audience”, I mean all Canadians viewing all available TV programming at a given time. So when the CBC tells us that their News Network got a 2.0 percent “share”, they don’t mean that they attracted 2.0 percent of all Canadians. Rather, they got 2.0 percent of whoever happened to be watching any TV network – which could easily come to just a half of one percent of all Canadians. After all, how many people still watch TV?

According to CRTC data, between the 2014–15 and 2022–23 seasons, English language CBC TV weekly viewing hours dropped from 35 million to 16 million. That total would amount to less than six minutes a day per anglophone Canadian. Specifically, news viewing fell by 52 percent, sports by 66 percent, and drama and comedy by 51 percent.

CBC Radio One and CBC Music only managed to attract 14.3 percent of the Canadian market. What does that actually mean? I’ve seen estimates suggesting that between 15 and 25 percent of all Canadians listen to radio during the popular daily commute slots. So at its peak, CBC radio’s share of that audience is possibly no higher than 3.5 percent of all Canadians.

A recent survey found that only 41 percent of Canadians agreed the CBC “is important and should continue doing what it’s doing.” The remaining 59 percent were split between thinking the CBC requires “a lot of changes” and was “no longer useful.” Those numbers remained largely consistent across all age groups.

It seems that while some Canadian’s might support the CBC in principle, for the most part, they’re not actually consuming a lot of content.

CBC Revenue sources

CBC’s primary income is from government funding through parliamentary allocations. Here’s what those look like:

Advertising (or, “time sales” as they refer to it) is another major revenue source. That channel brought in more than $200 million in 2023:

But here’s the thing: the broadcast industry in Canada is currently engaged in a bitter struggle for existence. Every single dollar from that shrinking pool of advertising revenue is desperately needed. And most broadcasters are – perhaps misguidedly – fighting for more government funding. So why should the CBC, with its billion dollar subsidies, be allowed to also compete for limited ad revenue?

Or, to put it differently, what vital and unique services does the CBC provide that might justify their special treatment?

It’s possible that CBC does target rural and underserved audiences missed by the commercial networks. But those are clearly not what’s consuming the vast majority of the corporation’s budget. Perhaps people are watching CBC’s “big tent” drama and comedy productions, but are those measurably better or more important than what’s coming from the private sector? And we’ve already seen how, for all intents and purposes, no one’s watching their TV news or listening to their radio broadcasts.

Perhaps there’s an argument to be made for maintaining or even increasing funding for CBC. But I haven’t yet seen anyone convincingly articulate it.

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Crime

Actor’s Death Raises Alarm about Off-Label Anesthetic

Published on September 14, 2024

Todayville

From Heartland Daily News

By Kevin Stone

A federal court has indicted and charged five individuals for contributing to the death of actor Matthew Perry by providing him with the anesthetic ketamine.

On October 28, 2023, Perry was found floating face-down in his hot tub. An autopsy later revealed his death had been caused by “acute effects of ketamine.” Perry, a star of the television show Friends, had long struggled with addiction.

Charged in the 18-count indictment are Perry’s personal assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa; two doctors, Salvador Plasencia and Mark Chavez; and two other individuals, Erik Fleming and Jasveen Sangha. Sangha was known as the “Ketamine Queen” who is accused of running a North Hollywood “stash house.”

Multiple Players Charged

Documents filed by prosecutors claim Perry’s assistant and an acquaintance worked with the two doctors and the drug dealer to provide tens of thousands of dollars worth of ketamine to fuel Perry’s addiction. Fleming coordinated the sale with Sangha, prosecutors say.

Iwamasa provided at least 27 ketamine injections to Perry in the five days leading up to his death, according to the prosecution. Chavez admitted selling ketamine to Plasencia for redistribution to Perry by falsifying information to a distributor and then using a prescription written in the name of a former patient.

When Plasencia texted another doctor about how much to charge Perry for the ketamine, he wrote, “I wonder how much this moron will pay,” and “Let’s find out,” prosecutors say. The trial date for Chavez and Plasencia is set for March 4, 2025.

Binge-Use Temptation

Ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic that can produce hallucinogenic effects. Ketamine is also used as a pain reliever and for the relief of treatment-resistant depression.

Some people use ketamine as a recreational drug for its ability to induce hallucinations. The effects of ketamine are short-lived, and users may rapidly develop tolerance to the drug, leading some to binge-use it.

Celebrity Power, Vulnerability

Ketamine is widely accepted as safe and effective for use as an anesthetic in a clinical setting. Off-label uses of the drug that may lead to abuse have led to rising concerns.

A recent New York Times article questioned the drug’s safety for off-label use in the wake of Perry’s death. Although ketamine ordinarily carries no more risk than other anesthetics, pain relievers, and antidepressants.

Celebrities can use their fame and wealth to circumvent effective safeguards against over-prescription and abuse, says Devon Herrick, a health economist.

“Physicians have significant leeway to prescribe FDA-approved medications off-label,” said Herrick. “Some off-label therapies later become mainstream, while others fall out of favor. What makes Matthew Perry’s situation unique was his celebrity status. Similar to the experience of Michael Jackson, Perry was able to enlist the help of physicians willing to provide him with a risky drug therapy not appropriately monitored.

“It’s unlikely a noncelebrity patient would be able to find a doctor willing to administer an anesthetic in their home,” said Herrick. “The lure of both money and bragging rights to say they’re a celebrity doctor likely culminated in Perry’s demise.”

Off-Label Benefits

Ketamine was developed as an anesthetic agent and was found to help treat some mental health conditions through off-label use, which is a common procedure, says Jeffrey Singer, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute who defends off-label use of the drug.

“Roughly 20 percent of all drugs prescribed in the U.S. are for off-label uses,” said Singer. “The [Food and Drug Administration, FDA] has always deferred to clinicians and clinical researchers on how to use drugs off-label. Once the FDA approves a drug for a particular indication, it permits clinicians to use it for any other indication where clinicians and clinical researchers believe the drug can be helpful.”

This real-world experience brings important knowledge, says Singer.

“As clinical research and clinical experience continue, such off-label drug use can lead to subsequent therapeutic advances,” said Singer. “However, clinical researchers often discover over time that specific off-label uses do not work. Over time, we should learn a lot more about what conditions ketamine works best for and what are the optimal ways to use it for those conditions.”

The system is working, says Singer.

“There is no reason why the FDA should add to the already cumbersome regulatory regime by requiring further approvals for off-label uses,” said Singer. “The FDA should leave the off-label uses of drugs to clinical researchers, clinicians, and the civil tort system.”

Black Market Problem

Adding new legal barriers to ketamine prescription would probably drive those wishing to abuse the drug into the black market, where its use would be wholly unmonitored and more dangerous drugs are also readily available, says Singer.

“People are already getting ketamine in the black market, along with other psychedelics such as MDMA, psilocybin, DMT, and magic mushrooms,” said Singer. “If the FDA further restricted online sales [of ketamine], it would only intensify profits in the black market and drive people to the black market, where the purity and strength of these drugs are less certain.

“We already have seen reports of black market MDMA—“ecstasy” or “Molly”—being laced with fentanyl,” said Singer. “Further restricting online sales of ketamine—or limiting its off-label use by licensed clinicians—will only make it more dangerous for people who continue to use ketamine. But it will not prevent them from using it.”

Kevin Stone ([email protected]) writes from Arlington, Texas.