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Red Deer City Councillors urged to focus on economic development

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Editorial submitted by former candidate for City Council, Chad Krahn

Where is the focus?

“What gets measured, gets managed.”

As the father of management theory once said, the challenge is focus – where your time and attention go is where results will happen.

When it comes to Red Deer City Council, there has been little focus – and as a consequence even less results – on economic development.

In the last year a lot of focus has gone into social issues, like the location of the homeless shelter, and fair enough, we need a location for the shelter. But when virtually no attention has been paid to the economic health of the city, it’s no wonder that the lack of progress on this file speaks for itself.

In the last year and a half, there have only been two large private sector announcements. The first was the gondola across the Red Deer River, which has since been put on hold, and the second was the downtown casino’s move into the newly minted Red Deer Resort and Casino (formerly the Cambridge Hotel).

That certainly doesn’t speak to a vibrant, growing sector.

The Red Deer Economic Development Strategy was written in 2013 – making it over a decade old. Remember 2013? It was when CFL light bulbs were all the rage. So much has changed in the last ten years, and in the case of Red Deer, not for the better.

Since the Economic Development Strategy was written, the number of businesses in Red Deer has steadily declined from 4,040 in 2013 to 3,534 in 2022. While the number of businesses isn’t a perfect indicator of economic development, it is actually the metric chosen by Council as part of their strategic plan. Clearly, there is some work to do.

There are some things that Council can do and can prioritize right away to improve this situation.

The City tracks building permits, and those too have declined significantly in the last decade. In 2013, the City issued 2,068 building permits and that number has declined every year, so much so that, in 2022, only 903 building permits were issued. The City must work on modernizing the entire permitting system if they want to bolster this number – and make Red Deer more economically attractive.

There must be a guaranteed turnaround time on permits. Council must embrace automation to streamline the process where they can. If the City likes to use the number of permits as a benchmark for development, they can’t continue to be stuck in the status quo when it comes to getting them approved.

Taxes remain a sticking point and, while still competitive in comparison to other municipalities, Red Deerian’s taxes have gone up in the last decade. Even before this year’s new City budget and new tax rate come into effect, the commercial tax rate for Red Deer in 2022 was 14.8% – up from 12.23% in 2013.

Council has an opportunity to create new committees around its priorities. Currently, the City has committees for housing and homelessness, the library, public art, Gaetz Lake, and municipal planning, among others. Why not take the opportunity to create a new committee for Red Tape Reduction? Surely there are old bylaws on the books that could be revamped. Unfortunately, in government, it is always easier to add new laws rather than to take away old, defunct rules, but that’s no reason not to do it!

A committee on economic development is also needed, to begin the work of a new Economic Development Strategy. This committee would work to bring all the partners and economic drivers of the city and region together, and to find a way to present a clear vision of what this city has to offer in terms of economic opportunity. The economic advantages to those of us who live here are plain as day, but the message doesn’t seem to be resonating with those outside. Council needs to identify these advantages and work to convey them to potential investors, entrepreneurs, and would-be residents.

The City brands itself as an entrepreneurial one, and with a little more focus we could be the business testing grounds for Alberta. The city’s size and central location makes this an ideal site. Our city could be the launch pad for businesses for the whole country. Imagine how many more made-in-Red Deer success stories we could have.

We can be so much more – all we need is a little focus.

Chad Krahn is a former candidate for Red Deer City Council.

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2025 Federal Election

Mark Carney is trying to market globalism as a ‘Canadian value.’ Will it work?

Published on

From LifeSiteNews

By Frank Wright

A campaign to appeal to national sentiment is a strange gambit for Liberals – committed as they are to the replacement of the nation with globalist policies.

The storm over Donald Trump’s threatened tariffs over the Canadian border crisis has been baked into a vote-winning meme by Canada’s Liberal Party. Yet with an election only weeks away on April 28, can a sentimental appeal to a vanished Canada secure a win for Mark Carney?  

Trump’s tariffs were expected to hit Canada on Wednesday’s “Liberation Day,” refueling a furor over Canadian sovereignty which has led some to say this is “shaping up to be the trade war election.”

Responding to the tariffs, which ultimately never came to fruition in the way the Liberals were warning, a meme war broke out with Carney responding to harsh reality with a feelgood slogan.  

“Elbows up!” is the new Current Thing in Canada, a media craze designed to stir nationalist indignation in elderly voters who may even remember the 1950s origin of the phrase.  

The elbows refer to those of Gordie Howe – a 1950s hockey legend from Saskatchewan – a conservative province – and from a time when Canada was populated by Canadians.  

It bears all the hallmarks of an “astroturf” campaign – intended to look authentic, but in reality a manufactured mass belief for marketing purposes. 

“Elbows up” seeks to inspire a fighting mood against the threat – or promise – of tariffs on Canadian trade with the U.S.  

Carney will ‘cave’

It is a classic example of the manipulation of popular feeling into political allegiance. How will the feelings of aging voters affect the imposition of tariffs? Not at all. Nor will the Canadian Prime Minister be able to stop them.  

Silence over ‘devastating’ Chinese tariffs caused by Trudeau

Why? Carney has no alternative. He has already “caved” – to China – over the same issue. “Devastating” Chinese tariffs took effect over a week ago in Canada, as Global News reported:  

Canadian agricultural producers are warning of devastating impacts from new Chinese tariffs that began Thursday (March 20th), which they say will compound the economic strain from the U.S. trade war.

The tariffs are severe, and will have a dramatic impact – as China is Canada’s second-largest trading partner behind the United States. 

“China has imposed a 100 per cent levy on Canadian canola oil and meal, as well as peas, plus a 25 per cent duty on seafood and pork,” the outlet reported.  

These tariffs cannot be corrected by hockey memes, and are a response to tariffs placed on Chinese goods by Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The Liberal Party – seeking election over outrage on tariffs – has created a tariff crisis, whose costs will be borne by the people who vote for them.  

There are no “elbows up” against China. In fact, their tariffs have been greeted with silence from Carney, who has said U.S.-Canada relations are at an end. 

Corruption, drug cartels in Canada

Anger at Donald Trump obscures the serious problems which prompted his suggestion that Canada could be absorbed into the United States. “Elbows Up” is a cool way of making Canadians look past the fact that the crisis they inhabit has been created by the Liberals and their globalist agenda. 

On February 1, Trump issued an executive order “Imposing duties to address the flow of illicit drugs across our northern border.”

Terry Glavin, writing in January for Canada’s National Post, dismissed Trump’s earlier claims of a crisis over Canadian “border security and drug trafficking” as a “pretext” for his “…declared objective of exerting ‘economic force’ to annex Canada as the 51st American state.” 

Yet this too appears to be a fantasy inspired by national sentiment – which simply ignores reality. 

As LifeSiteNews reported, Canada’s second bank has laundered over 18 trillion dollars in the U.S. and Canada for Mexican and Chinese drug cartels. The world’s largest fentanyl factory was discovered in Vancouver in February.    

Canada a ‘failed state’?

The serious issue of corruption by Chinese Triads combines with a picture of impotent Canadian law and border enforcement to suggest that Canada may be, as Glavin warned, “approaching failed-state status.” When the memes wear off, this is the reality faced by Canadian voters.  

Canadians have complained since 2017 that life is too expensive to have a family. 

Now “a generation” cannot afford a home, and many struggle to pay for groceries. Help is at hand, however.  

Their Liberal government supports Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) – killing the elderly, poor and ill as healthcare – whilst promoting radical “gender” ideology to help sterilize children. 

Will Carney come to the rescue?  

Carney is a committed “Net Zero” fanatic, and is the kind of “Catholic” who fervently supports abortion.  

His moral integrity is demonstrated further by the fact that his $25 billion “green” investment fund was located in Bermuda to dodge Canadian taxes. 

As the Canadian Catholic Register cautions, “[Carney] is a well-connected globalist with deep ties to institutions such as the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, Bank for International Settlements, and the Financial Stability Board.” 

Globalist ‘Canadian’ values

National identity is a strange appeal to make on behalf of a party which appears to be working hard to replace Canadians with immigrants, and which is now lead by a globalist technocrat.  

It is the values of globalism, of course, which are presented to voters as “Canadian values”: open borders, LGBTQ “rights,” “gender” surgery and hormones for children, and the Net Zero deindustrialization program strongly supported by the Liberal leader Mark Carney.  

How long can this appeal to save the nation of Canada from foreign influence convince Canadians to vote for more of the same? The Liberal Party has led Canada into crisis, presiding over corruption so severe that its police, judicial and border authorities are deemed incapable of being trusted by the USA.   

This is not a charge made solely by the Trump administration, but also under Biden – with Antony Blinken pressing the matter of the insecurity of the Canadian border as far back as 2022. In the coming weeks, the real issues which have consigned Canada to a fond memory may well shrink the Liberal lead reported by the polls. 

What do the polls say?

With some headlines trumpeting an “eight point lead” for the Liberals, others show a narrower advantage for the globalist Carney – and one leading firm has them tied with the Conservatives. 

Abacus Data’s March 30 poll had both parties neck and neck at 39%. Abacus, who describe themselves as “Canada’s most sought-after, influential, and impactful polling firm,” “…were one of the most accurate pollsters conducting research during the 2021 Canadian election.”

A second poll shows a narrower lead, and a clear bonus for Carney for simply not being Justin Trudeau.  

338 Canada showed a four point lead for the Liberals on March 31, and its graph clearly illustrates that their lead relies on disaffected NDP voters – and the collapse of the Bloc Quebecois vote. 

Reality enters the chat 

With the issues at home now overtaking Trump and his tariffs, the cost of living and those allied to mass migration such as housing are returning to the forefront of voters’ minds. The issue of reality – and who is the real Mark Carney – may well overtake the fake nationalism of “Elbows up.”

A campaign to appeal to national sentiment is a strange gambit for Liberals – committed as they are to the replacement of the nation with globalist policies – and of its people through mass immigration. Carney has been powerless to halt Chinese tariffs. He is powerless to halt those of Donald Trump.  

If Canadians can see beyond cringe hockey memes these two issues are clearly a reaction to the actions and inaction of a Liberal-led Canada. This is the reason that Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is campaigning on the harm done to Canadians by the “lost Liberal decade.” If Canadians can be persuaded by the argument presented by reality, it seems unlikely they will vote for another – whatever the polls may say.

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Health

Selective reporting on measles outbreaks is a globalist smear campaign against Trump administration.

Published on

From LifeSiteNews

By Robert Malone M.D.

Ontario has a larger outbreak than Texas. European cases dwarf the Texas outbreak. But the World Health Organization has launched a travel advisory for the United States.

In the currently ongoing outbreak, there have been about 572 measles cases in Ontario, Canada. This is a significantly larger outbreak than the currently hyped one in Texas, which has about 422 cases. The mainstream media has almost completely ignored the Ontario outbreak – their reporting has only focused on the Texas outbreak.

Ontario’s top public health official, Dr. Kieran Moore, does not recommend mandatory vaccination and says the standard public health measures to limit the spread are working. This is a very reasonable response, yet when Sec. Kennedy says something similar; he is viciously attacked.

It is evident by the mainstream media response to the Ontario outbreak versus the Texas outbreak that this is yet another example of the liberal media/pharma machine harassing Kennedy and President Trump.

However, this reporting has an even more sinister aspect – as the media appears to have taken their lead from the World Health Organization.

The World Health Organization has launched a travel advisory for the United States. See the screenshots below (the first screenshot is from an AI summarizer at BRAVE and the second one is from the WHO website):

But what about Canada’s outbreak? Why isn’t Canada mentioned in the travel advisory? Was it an oversight? Did the WHO release a travel advisory just for Canada?

In fact, the AI summarizer at BRAVE is clear that the WHO doesn’t put out travel advisories for individual countries, like Canada… The new normal is that the WHO puts out special advisories only for the United States <insert sarcasm>.

And in fact, a search on the WHO website yields not a single mention of the measles outbreak in Canada.

In fact, the WHO places the 422 measles cases in the United States on par with the earthquake in Myanmar, which may have killed up to 10,000 people, all told.

But somehow the 572 cases of measles in Canada don’t deserve a mention.

But wait – the story gets even more bizarre.

The European Region, which includes central Asia, continues to have a significantly high number of measles cases.

The WHO European Region has a population of approximately 745 million people, and had about 127,350 measles cases last year, or 1 in 5,850 people.

Yet – crickets from mainstream media on this factoid.

Why the outcry over 422 measles in Texas?

Here are some ideas:

  • To reduce support for RFK Jr., Trump, and MAHA by the American people.
  • To scare parents into vaccinating.
  • To increase the money going to public health for vaccine stockpiling.
  • To support the liberal left in their obsessive hatred of anything MAHA.
  • Because the WHO put out a travel advisory.

In the meantime, the WHO has announced that, despite budgetary cuts, they have a $2.5 billion gap for 2025-2027. WHO Director General Tedros correctly blamed Trump for the deficit. However, what Tedros gets wrong is that this deficit is a well-deserved consequence of years of corruption at the WHO leading to this outcome.

This is how it is done, folks.

This is called retaliation by the World Health Organization against the Trump administration.

Another wrap-up smear in action. The deep state and the globalists are pulling out all the stops to attack Trump and Kennedy via “trumped-up” WHO travel advisories and emergency reports that are then reported on breathlessly and uncritically by mainstream media. The propaganda machine continues unabated.

Reprinted with permission from Robert Malone.

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