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“Red Deer Revitalization Society” urges city to move homeless population away from downtown

Published

3 years ago

6 minute read

This letter submitted by the Red Deer Revitalization Society

The Red Deer Revitalization Society is a group of approximately 40 concerned Red Deer business people.

A few years ago, a collection of concerned members of the Downtown Red Deer Business Community came together after the drug-addicted and homeless population were crippling their operations. These meetings took place concurrently with the City and Provincial initiatives to establish safe injection sites, permanent shelters, and other similar institutions. The volume of people in Red Deer who require assistance makes it obvious that there is a need for these services. The problem however is with their location. We write this to help motivate the relocation of the permanent shelter from the proposed 4934 54 th Ave site.

We are of the view that this proposed site will have two disastrous consequences. First, an increase in residential property tax rates. Second, the slaying of the City’s Capstone Development. A recent history of the Downtown shows that the business community and the homeless and drug-addicted community cannot peacefully coexist. This is – and has been – an underappreciated concern that affects everyone in the City of Red Deer. Over the last 15 years, Downtown Red Deer has witnessed a mass exodus of businesses. The once thriving Downtown core has become repulsive. In speaking with colleagues who have vacated the Downtown, their motivation is always taxes and vagrancy. Who can
blame them? It is difficult to attract enough customers to cover the tax bill (and other costs) when their front door is littered with drug paraphernalia and loiterers. The trend shows that a concentration of social services forsakes the area where they are located and thus surrounding businesses will take their investments elsewhere. This exclusion of business is dangerous for all of us.

Most people do not appreciate how the City makes ends meet. We all know that taxes must be collected – but how does the City determine which property owner pays what? The owners of all properties, whether commercial or residential, pay tax at an amount that is determined using various formulae which all boil down to the property’s true value. Historically, the commercial properties in Downtown Red Deer were valuable enough and producing enough revenue that they bore the brunt of the taxes. But what happens now? The exodus of business replaced with social chaos renders the Downtown Properties valueless. If the owners of these properties cannot be asked to maintain the City’s reserves, the City will have no choice but to look elsewhere. Unfortunately, residential owners will have to see their property taxes increase dramatically for the City to run. The proposed permanent shelter location is yet another mainstay for drug use and vagrancy in a downtown that is nearly dead. This will likely be the last nail in Downtown’s coffin and a direct cause of increased residential property taxes.

Another underappreciated concern is the viability of the City’s Capstone Development. The perpetual bare piece of prime real estate is the City’s crown jewel. It presents a unique opportunity to rejuvenate the Downtown and neglected Red Deer Riverfront (another letter to the editor is required to discuss the City’s squandering of opportunity in the Capstone area over the past 25 years). The proposed permanent shelter is in the shadow of the Capstone Development – where the City has invested a tremendous amount of money. In fact, some say that the City has already invested upwards of $42 Million in the Capstone Development, which is being branded as a business and family-driven part of
town. If that’s the goal, how could it possibly make sense to put a permanent shelter right beside it? We appreciate that services like homeless shelters and safe injection sites are unfavourable, and people generally have the “not in my back yard sentiment”. However, if you sit back and allow City Council to locate the shelter at 4934 54 th Ave., you will see Capstone remain undeveloped, you will continue to see the mass exodus of businesses from downtown Red Deer and you will see a significant increase in your residential property taxes.

How can you ensure that your residential property taxes decrease instead of increase? Contact City Council and your elected MLA’s and tell them that you disapprove of 4934 54 th Ave., and any other downtown location, being chosen for the permanent shelter. Time is of the essence.

Sincerely,
Red Deer Revitalization Society

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Worst kept secret—red tape strangling Canada’s economy

Published on February 22, 2025

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From the Fraser Institute

By Matthew Lau

In the past nine years, business investment in Canada has fallen while increasing more than 30 per cent in the U.S. on a real per-person basis. Workers in Canada now receive barely half as much new capital per worker than in the U.S.

According to a new Statistics Canada report, government regulation has grown over the years and it’s hurting Canada’s economy. The report, which uses a regulatory burden measure devised by KPMG and Transport Canada, shows government regulatory requirements increased 2.1 per cent annually from 2006 to 2021, with the effect of reducing the business sector’s GDP, employment, labour productivity and investment.

Specifically, the growth in regulation over these years cut business-sector investment by an estimated nine per cent and “reduced business start-ups and business dynamism,” cut GDP in the business sector by 1.7 percentage points, cut employment growth by 1.3 percentage points, and labour productivity by 0.4 percentage points.

While the report only covered regulatory growth through 2021, in the past four years an avalanche of new regulations has made the already existing problem of overregulation worse.

The Trudeau government in particular has intensified its regulatory assault on the extraction sector with a greenhouse gas emissions cap, new fuel regulations and new methane emissions regulations. In the last few years, federal diktats and expansions of bureaucratic control have swept the auto industry, child care, supermarkets and many other sectors.

Again, the negative results are evident. Over the past nine years, Canada’s cumulative real growth in per-person GDP (an indicator of incomes and living standards) has been a paltry 1.7 per cent and trending downward, compared to 18.6 per cent and trending upward in the United States. Put differently, if the Canadian economy had tracked with the U.S. economy over the past nine years, average incomes in Canada would be much higher today.

Also in the past nine years, business investment in Canada has fallen while increasing more than 30 per cent in the U.S. on a real per-person basis. Workers in Canada now receive barely half as much new capital per worker than in the U.S., and only about two-thirds as much new capital (on average) as workers in other developed countries.

Consequently, Canada is mired in an economic growth crisis—a fact that even the Trudeau government does not deny. “We have more work to do,” said Anita Anand, then-president of the Treasury Board, last August, “to examine the causes of low productivity levels.” The Statistics Canada report, if nothing else, confirms what economists and the business community already knew—the regulatory burden is much of the problem.

Of course, regulation is not the only factor hurting Canada’s economy. Higher federal carbon taxes, higher payroll taxes and higher top marginal income tax rates are also weakening Canada’s productivity, GDP, business investment and entrepreneurship.

Finally, while the Statistics Canada report shows significant economic costs of regulation, the authors note that their estimate of the effect of regulatory accumulation on GDP is “much smaller” than the effect estimated in an American study published several years ago in the Review of Economic Dynamics. In other words, the negative effects of regulation in Canada may be even higher than StatsCan suggests.

Whether Statistics Canada has underestimated the economic costs of regulation or not, one thing is clear: reducing regulation and reversing the policy course of recent years would help get Canada out of its current economic rut. The country is effectively in a recession even if, as a result of rapid population growth fuelled by record levels of immigration, the GDP statistics do not meet the technical definition of a recession.

With dismal GDP and business investment numbers, a turnaround—both in policy and outcomes—can’t come quickly enough for Canadians.

Matthew Lau

Adjunct Scholar, Fraser Institute
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Business

‘Out and out fraud’: DOGE questions $2 billion Biden grant to left-wing ‘green energy’ nonprofit`

Published on February 22, 2025

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From LifeSiteNews

By Calvin Freiburger

The EPA under the Biden administration awarded $2 billion to a ‘green energy’ group that appears to have been little more than a means to enrich left-wing activists.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Biden administration awarded $2 billion to a “green energy” nonprofit that appears to have been little more than a means to enrich left-wing activists such as former Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams.

Founded in 2023 as a coalition of nonprofits, corporations, unions, municipalities, and other groups, Power Forward Communities (PFC) bills itself as “the first national program to finance home energy efficiency upgrades at scale, saving Americans thousands of dollars on their utility bills every year.” It says it “will help homeowners, developers, and renters swap outdated, inefficient appliances with more efficient and modernized options, saving money for years ahead and ensuring our kids can grow up with cleaner, pollutant-free air.”

The organization’s website boasts more than 300 member organizations across 46 states but does not detail actual activities. It does have job postings for three open positions and a form for people to sign up for more information.

The Washington Free Beacon reported that the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project, along with new EPA administrator Lee Zeldin, are raising questions about the $2 billion grant PFC received from the Biden EPA’s National Clean Investment Fund (NCIF), ostensibly for the “affordable decarbonization of homes and apartments throughout the country, with a particular focus on low-income and disadvantaged communities.”

PFC’s announcement of the grant is the organization’s only press release to date and is alarming given that the organization had somehow reported only $100 in revenue at the end of 2023.

“I made a commitment to members of Congress and to the American people to be a good steward of tax dollars and I’ve wasted no time in keeping my word,” Zeldin said. “When we learned about the Biden administration’s scheme to quickly park $20 billion outside the agency, we suspected that some organizations were created out of thin air just to take advantage of this.” Zeldin previously announced the Biden EPA had deposited the $20 billion in a Citibank account, apparently to make it harder for the next administration to retrieve and review it.

“As we continue to learn more about where some of this money went, it is even more apparent how far-reaching and widely accepted this waste and abuse has been,” he added. “It’s extremely concerning that an organization that reported just $100 in revenue in 2023 was chosen to receive $2 billion. That’s 20 million times the organization’s reported revenue.”

Daniel Turner, executive director of energy advocacy group Power the Future, told the Beacon that in his opinion “for an organization that has no experience in this, that was literally just established, and had $100 in the bank to receive a $2 billion grant — it doesn’t just fly in the face of common sense, it’s out and out fraud.”

Prominent among PFC’s insiders is Abrams, the former Georgia House minority leader best known for persistent false claims about having the state’s gubernatorial election stolen from her in 2018. Abrams founded two of PFC’s partner organizations (Southern Economic Advancement Project and Fair Count) and serves as lead counsel for a third group (Rewiring America) in the coalition. A longtime advocate of left-wing environmental policies, Abrams is also a member of the national advisory board for advocacy group Climate Power.

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