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New Funding Model Approved For Innisfail’s Fire Department

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2 minute read

By Sheldon Spackman

Innisfail’s Fire Department will see a new funding model in place starting January 1st. Town officials say the new model is a bid to keep departmental spending within budget and more sustainable.

The department’s annual budget has tripled over the last 10 years and currently exceeds $500,000. This has resulted in the allocation of $50,00 in additional funding each year to address the annual budget overruns, a practice deemed unsustainable by Town staff.

A number of concerns were identified during a recent financial analysis of the Fire Department’s Budget. Alarm calls make up 55% of the department’s total call volume, with false alarms accounting for a large part of that. In an attempt to lower that number, officials say a community education and awareness campaign will be undertaken to help bring the Fire Department’s budget in line with other comparable municipalities.

Town officials say within an area spanning Olds to the south and Lacombe to the north, Innisfail pays the highest hourly rates. Innisfail’s highest and lowest paid firefighters receive $33.05 and $15.25, respectively, while Red Deer County’s receive $22.50 and $10.00. Annually, Innisfail pays $6,075 per firefighter, while Red Deer County pays $2,530 per firefighter per year.

With the department’s overall budget to remain unchanged, funding will be allocated in accordance with the new policy. This means money will be made available for the purchase of vehicles, equipment and other necessary expenditures. It will also free up funding to be paid to firefighters for other department initiatives, such as inspections and community involvement.

Officials say the situation will be re-assessed in 2017 to identify successes and any necessary improvements.

(Photo courtesy of Innisfail Fire Rescue)

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UK Supreme Court rules ‘woman’ means biological female

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Susan Smith (L) and Marion Calder, directors of ‘For Women Scotland’ cheer as they leave the Supreme Court on April 16, 2025, in London, England after winning their appeal in defense of biological reality

From LifeSiteNews

By Michael Haynes, Snr. Vatican Correspondent

The U.K. Supreme Court has issued a ruling stating that “woman” in law refers to a biological female, and that transgender “women” are not female in the eyes of the law.

In a unanimous verdict, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom ruled today that legally transgender “women” are not women, since a woman is legally defined by “biological sex.”

Published April 16, the Supreme Court’s 88-page verdict was handed down on the case of Women Scotland Ltd (Appellant) v. The Scottish Ministers (Respondent). The ruling marks the end of a battle of many years between the Scottish government and women’s right campaigners who sought to oppose the government’s promotion of transgender ideology.

In 2018, the Scottish government issued a decision to allow the definition of “woman” to include men who assume their gender to be female, opening the door to allowing so-called “transgender” individuals to identify as women.

This guidance was challenged by women’s rights campaigners, arguing that a woman should be defined in line with biological sex, and in 2022 the Scottish government was forced to change its definition after the court found that such a move was outside the government’s “legislative competence.”

Given this, the government issued new guidance which sought to cover both aspects: saying that biological women are women, but also that men with a “gender recognition certificate” (GRC) are also considered women. A GRC is given to people who identify as the opposite sex and who have had medical or surgical interventions in an attempt to “reassign” their gender.

Women Scotland Ltd appealed this new guidance. At first it was rejected by inner courts, but upon their taking the matter to the Supreme Court in March last year, the nation’s highest judicial body took up the case.

Today, with the ruling issued against transgender ideology, women’s campaigners are welcoming the news as a win for women’s safety.

“A thing of beauty,” praised Lois McLatchie Miller from the Alliance Defending Freedom legal group.

“Victory,” commented Charlie Bently-Astor, a prominent campaigner for biological reality against the transgender movement, after she nearly underwent surgical transition herself at a younger age.

“After 15 years of insanity, the U.K. Supreme Court has ruled that men who say they are ‘trans women’ are not women,” wrote leader of the Christian political movement David Kurten.

Leader of the Conservative Party – the opposition to the current Labour government – Kemi Badenoch welcomed the court’s ruling, writing that “saying ‘trans women are women’ was never true in fact and now isn’t true in law, either.”

 

Others lamented the fact that the debate even was taking place, let alone having gone to the Supreme Court.

“What a parody we live in,” commented Reform Party candidate Joseph Robertson.

Rupert Lowe MP – who has risen to new prominence in recent weeks for his outspoken condemnation of the immigration and rape gang crisis – wrote, “Absolute madness that we’re even debating what a woman is – it’s a biological fact. No amount of woke howling will ever change that.”

However, the Supreme Court did not wish to get pulled into siding with certain arguments, with Lord Hodge of the tribunal stating that “we counsel against reading this judgment as a triumph of one or more groups in our society at the expense of another. It is not.”

The debate has taken center stage in the U.K. in recent years, not least for the role played by the current Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Starmer himself has become notorious throughout the nation for his contradictions and inability to answer the question of what a woman is, having flip-flopped on saying that a woman can have a penis, due to his support for the transgender movement.

At the time of going to press, neither Starmer nor his deputy Angela Rayner issued a statement about the Supreme Court ruling. There has been no statement issued from the Scottish government either, nor from the office of the first minister.

Transgender activists have expectedly condemned the ruling as “a disgusting attack on trans rights.” One leading transgender campaigner individual told Sky News, “I am gutted to see the judgement from the Supreme Court which ends 20 years of understanding that transgender people with a GRC are able to be, for all intents and purposes, legally recognized as our true genders.”

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International

Tulsi Gabbard tells Trump she has ‘evidence’ voting machines are ‘vulnerable to hackers’

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From LifeSiteNews

By Stephen Kokx

Last month, Trump signed an executive order directing federal election-related funds to be conditioned on states “complying with the integrity measures set forth by Federal law, including the requirement that states use the national mail voter registration form that will now require proof of citizenship.”

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced during a Cabinet meeting last week at the White House that voting machines across the U.S. are not secure.

“We have evidence of how these electronic voting systems have been vulnerable to hackers for a very long time, and vulnerable to exploitation to manipulate the results of the votes being cast,” she said about a half hour into the meeting.

 

Gabbard’s remarks confirm what millions of Americans have long suspected about elections across the U.S.

President Donald Trump himself has maintained skepticism of current voting methods and has called for paper ballots to prevent cheating.

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell was one of only a few voices to publicly argue that voting machines, like those run by Dominion and Smartmatic which were used during the 2020 presidential election, were compromised. GOP Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor-Greene took to X to praise the businessman after Gabbard made her remarks.

“Mike Lindell along with MANY others vindicated!!” she exclaimed on X. “Another conspiracy theory being proven right! Guess what Democrats already knew this and publicly talked about it in 2019! And then lied and lied and lied!!!”

 

Last month, Trump signed an executive order directing federal election-related funds to be conditioned on states “complying with the integrity measures set forth by Federal law, including the requirement that states use the national mail voter registration form that will now require proof of citizenship.”

Congress has also taken steps to ensure election integrity by voting on the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (also known as the SAVE Act) last week. Dubbed “controversial” by the media and left-wing groups, the common sense bill would require persons to show proof of citizenship before voting. The House approved the measure 220-208 with four Democrats in support. The bill now heads to the Senate where it will face an uphill battle for the required 60 votes. Republicans currently have a 53 seat majority.

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