Opinion
Red Deer is fading away in the hands of politicians like Marty’s family in Back to the Future III
In the show, Back to the Future III, Marty has picture of his family and the members are fading away. Is the city of Red Deer fading away in the show, Provincial Politics 2018?
The 2018 Provincial Budget makes you think that Red Deer has pretty much faded away. Little money (1 million) for the hospital over the next 5 years. No new schools, perhaps our declining population may have something to do with that.
Red Deer College will be allowed to grant university degrees, to be in the same category as Grand Prairie and Lethbridge, but that will be a few years down the road.
If Marty had a picture of Red Deer, it would show the citizens gradually fading away. Red Deer will be hosting the Canada Games in 2019 and we have updated and replaced some facilities but it feels like preparing for the senior prom, an event not a reason to stay.
Red Deer has not built a new community recreational facility since 2001. It rebuilt the downtown arena, but it hasn’t built a new public owned facility since Collicutt opened in 2001.
The city is looking at building a new Aquatic Centre, and it is looking at the possible option of building a new facility and not just rebuilding the downtown pool. It should be opened in 2021 twenty years after the Collicutt opened and 40 years after the Dawe pool opened.
Here is where the city could step up to the plate, put on their big city pants and make their presence known.
Lethbridge and Medicine Hat along with many other cities, have both spent money building man-made artificial lakes to avail themselves of tourism activities and to promote growth. Red Deer has a lake, Hazlett Lake.
Hazlett Lake is a natural lake that covers a surface area of 0.45 km2 (0.17 mi2), has an average depth of 3 meters (10 feet). Hazlett Lake has a total shore line of 4 kilometers (2 miles). It is 108.8 acres in size. Located in the north-west sector of Red Deer.
The thousands of acres north of Hwy 11a could be home to 25,000 new residents and Hazlett Lake is visible from Hwy 2 just north of Hwy 11a and could offer up Red Deer as a tourist destination.
Red Deer could stay on the road to apparent insignificance in the eyes of citizenship, the province and the federal government or we could invest in our city, offer something to the residents more than a prom or more of the same. We could invest in growth like growing communities like Blackfalds, Penhold and Sylvan Lake and perhaps we would stop fading away.
Time is now to step up to the plate.
By Cindy Harper
The platform’s age checks are part of a bigger push to create online spaces policed by biometrics.
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The rollout begins this week as an optional process and will become compulsory in December in countries including Australia, the Netherlands, and New Zealand, reaching the United States and other regions by early 2026.
The company says these steps are meant to make its vast online world safer for younger audiences, restricting how players of different ages can interact inside user-created “Experiences.”
To take part in chat features, users must now verify their age either by scanning a government-issued ID or recording a short facial video through Persona, an outside verification company.
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Conversations are limited to others in the same or adjacent age groups unless users connect through “Trusted Connections,” which verifies they have a real-world relationship.
Roblox says the goal is to limit unsafe interactions and hopes the model will become “a new industry standard.”
While promoted as a safety improvement, this model also signals a move toward identity-linked participation in online spaces.
Digital ID verification effectively removes the anonymity that has long been part of internet culture.
It ties access to personal credentials, leaving fewer opportunities for users to interact without surrendering identifiable data.
The same technologies now appearing on entertainment platforms are increasingly being discussed by US policymakers as potential requirements for accessing social media, adult content, or even general-purpose platforms.
Several US states have already passed or proposed laws mandating age verification or digital ID checks for online activity, a trend that privacy advocates warn could erode personal freedom and create databases of sensitive personal information.
According to Roblox, “information uploaded to Persona is retained for a period of 30 days” before deletion.
Persona’s privacy policy indicates that it may collect extensive information, including device identifiers, geolocation data, and records from brokers and public sources.
This wide net of data collection extends well beyond what is required to confirm age, deepening concerns about how biometric and ID data could be reused or shared.
The company has not specified exact rollout dates for all markets but expects global enforcement to be completed within a year.
This makes Roblox the first major online platform to require facial age checks for chat participation.
The move comes as Roblox faces ongoing lawsuits and public pressure related to reports of grooming and child exploitation on the platform.
On the same day the company revealed its latest update, advocacy groups UltraViolet and ParentsTogether Action hosted an online protest, submitting a petition signed by 10,000 parents and grandparents calling for stronger child safety rules.
Roblox also introduced a new Safety Center, described as “a dedicated resource for parents and caregivers that provides clear guidance and tools to help them make informed decisions, set up Parental Controls, and support their child’s online experience.”
Still, the underlying trade-off remains significant. Roblox’s “Facial Media Capture Privacy Notice” confirms that it may conduct “other facial media processing” for “safety, assurance, or feature-specific purposes,” though the company says “Roblox does not use such facial media to identify you personally.”
Yet by normalizing ID scans and biometric checks, the company moves closer to a model of online life where anonymity is the exception rather than the rule, a change that could permanently alter how people experience privacy in digital environments.
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