Opinion

Red Deer’s Hazlett Lake is “Opportunity Lost”?

Published

8 years ago

8 minute read

A lot of words have been written about our state of affairs in Red Deer. The fall-out from a depressed economy, being in a bust portion of a boom-bust cycle. Our declining population. Talk of diversifying our economy away from our continued reliance on the energy sector. Words are not actions, and it is worrisome. Is it fear or lack of vision that impedes us from following up on the words?
No matter how we dress it up, Red Deer is shrinking. Blame the economy, the stars or any number of reasons but it could have been different. Lethbridge is slightly bit smaller in population and area than Red Deer but Lethbridge is growing in this same economy. Lethbridge invested and is today investing in areas appealing to young families including recreational facilities. Lethbridge has a history of investing in facilities to encourage growth, education and tourism. They turned a man made slough into Henderson Lake Park and has never looked back.
Red Deer has a greater opportunity in having a real natural lake. Will Red Deer build a park? NO, they will likely plan on houses, and apartment buildings that may never get built, unless we go into a boom portion of the boom-bust cycle. This is the simplistic, easiest and safest plan with a low return on investment. It ignores the high-profile location and possibilities of the lake, but it has less risk. A wall will be built to hide the lake from Hwy 2’s traffic.
Remember, 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.
Currently on the NADG.com website we will see a residential community around Hazlett Lake. Encompassing about 12 percent of the land north of 11A currently up for development. Phase I of probably 10 phases, will be home to 5,000 residents with the nearest high school on the other side of city on the east end. A K-8 school site to be located north-east of Hazlett Lake currently planned for a later phase.
On nadg.com:
“Hazlett Lake is a 350-acre master planned residential community located in North Red Deer at the intersection of Alberta’s busiest Highway -QE2 and Highway 11A. The community will consist of over 2000 new residential units and will be Phase 1 of Red Deer’s North of 11A Major Area Structural Plan. Additionally, this development will be the first new housing project in North Red Deer in 10 years”
So, please, the next time you drive north on Hwy 2, as you pass the Hwy 11A turnoff, look out the passenger window and check out Hazlett Lake.
That lake is part of the City of Red Deer, and is a portion of a Major Area Structure Plan north of Hwy 11A previously mentioned. So as you drive by, think of what you would like to see done with your lake.
One scenario that could compliment the lake and address the desire for a regional aquatic centre and a 50-metre pool is turning the proposed community centre on the northeast corner of the lake into a Collicutt Centre type of complex.
What is more natural than having an aquatic centre on the lake? You could have your 50-metre pool inside, a lake for scuba diving, kayaking, canoeing, paddle boating, swimming, under-water photography, fishing, sun tanning, races, to name but a few.
The winter could see skating, hockey, to complement the indoor ice rink, as well as ice-fishing and ice sculptures and sleigh rides, again, to name but a few. This would all be visible to the traffic on Hwy 2.
This Major Area Structure Plan takes in much more than a lake. It takes in about 3,000 acres of land for residential, commercial and industrial development. The potential for residential growth if maintained at 17.7 units per hectare and 2.33 residents per unit could see 20,000 new residents if the area split equally between residential, commercial and industrial users.
Collicutt Centre is the top used community venue in Red Deer. It is used by almost 60 per cent of the population. It is in the southeast corner of Red Deer and was a major impetus in the development of the southeast corner of Red Deer. Blackfalds used their new Abbey Centre as an impetus for very strong residential developments that have recently outshone Red Deer’s residential developments.
Would a regional aquatic centre built on Hazlett Lake kick-start development in Red Deer’s north at a time of a slowdown in the energy sector? Would a Hazlett Lake regional aquatic centre, visible from Hwy 2, create a tourism trade that would bolster Red Deer’s hospitality industry? Would a Hazlett Lake regional aquatic centre enhance our position as a sports destination? Would a Hazlett Lake regional aquatic centre ensure that everyone would have an opportunity to enjoy the lake? I hope so.
Then another option would be to close it off to the public, develop around it, build a private boathouse for the home owners holding passes, and build expensive homes to hide the lake from the citizens and allow developers to make huge profits.
It is up to the citizens to let the city know what they would like to see, but time is running out.
I think the Hazlett Lake is worth preserving, and I hope that when my grandchildren drive north on Hwy 2 just past the Hwy 11A turnoff, that they will be able to look out the passenger side window and see Hazlett Lake.
Perhaps they will be able to tan on a beach, watch a naturescape in action, paddle a canoe, swim, skate, maybe have a bonfire on a beach and roast a marshmallow. We do need to act now, before the plans get too entrenched in the least desired direction.
Please contact the city before it is too late.

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Trump says release the Epstein files

Business / 19 hours ago

Liberal’s green spending putting Canada on a road to ruin

Business / 20 hours ago

Carney doubles down on NET ZERO

espionage

Trump says release the Epstein files

Published on November 17, 2025

Todayville

MxM News

President Trump on Sunday urged House Republicans to vote to release any remaining government-held documents connected to Jeffrey Epstein, making clear he believes it’s time to stop allowing Democrats and the media to weaponize the scandal as a political distraction. Posting from his Truth Social account, Trump said the party should “vote to release the files” because “there is nothing to hide,” and told supporters he wants Republicans “back on point” and focused on delivering economic growth, border security, and protecting girls’ and women’s sports from radical gender activists.

Trump emphasized that the Department of Justice has already made public a massive amount of material related to Epstein — “tens of thousands of pages” — and said Democrats are the ones who should be answering questions, naming former President Bill Clinton and Democrat mega-financier Reid Hoffman as figures whose Epstein ties should be scrutinized. Trump also indicated he would direct Attorney General Pam Bondi to examine connections involving Clinton, Hoffman, and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers.

The president said Democrats are pushing the renewed focus on Epstein as a political weapon to cloud the GOP’s record and stall momentum heading into the next legislative fights. Trump pointed to the administration’s achievements — slashing inflation from record highs, lowering prices, delivering tax cuts, rebuilding the military, attracting historic levels of investment back into the United States, restoring border enforcement, deporting criminal illegal aliens, and defending women’s athletics against biological males — as proof that Republicans should not allow the left to drag the conversation into a political circus.

“Nobody cared about Jeffrey Epstein when he was alive,” Trump wrote, adding that if Democrats had any meaningful evidence, they would have used it before “our landslide election victory.” He warned that some Republicans are being “used” by Democrats and insisted the party must stop falling into the “Epstein trap,” calling the scandal “a curse on the Democrats, not us.”

Trump’s comments come as a discharge petition to compel a House vote on releasing additional Epstein-related documents has reached the necessary signatures. Trump concluded his message by demanding Republicans stay focused on results, not theatrics, and rally behind the broader agenda to strengthen the country and “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.”

Business

Liberal’s green spending putting Canada on a road to ruin

Published on November 16, 2025

Dan McTeague

Once upon a time, Canadians were known for our prudence and good sense to such an extent that even our Liberal Party wore the mantle of fiscal responsibility.

Whatever else you might want to say about the party in the era of Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin, it recognized the country’s dire financial situation — back when The Wall Street Journal was referring to Canada as “an honorary member of the Third World” — as a national crisis.

And we (remember, I proudly served as Member of Parliament in that party for 18 years) made many hard decisions with an eye towards cutting spending, paying down the debt, and getting the country back on its feet.

Thankfully we succeeded.

Unfortunately, since then the party has been hijacked by a group of reckless leftwing fanatics — Justin Trudeau and his lackeys — who have spent the past several years feeding what we built into the woodchipper.

Mark Carney’s finally released budget is the perfect illustration of that.

The budget is a 400 page monument to deficit delusion that raises spending to $644.4 billion over five years — including $141.4 billion in new spending — while revenues limp to $583.3 billion, yielding a record (non-pandemic) $78.3 billion shortfall, an increase of 116% from last year.

This isn’t policy; it’s plunder. Interest payments alone devour $55.6 billion this year, projected to hit $76.1 billion by 2029-30 — more than the entire defence budget and rising faster than healthcare transfers.

We can’t discount the possibility that this will lead to a downgrade of our credit rating, which will significantly increase the cost of borrowing and of doing business more generally.

Numbers this big start to feel very abstract. But think of it this way: that is your money they’re spending. Ottawa’s wealth is made up entirely of our tax dollars. We’ve entrusted that money to them with the understanding that they will use it responsibly. In the decade these Liberals have been in power, they have betrayed that trust.

They’ve pursued policies which have made life in Canada increasingly unaffordable. For example, at the time of writing it takes 141 Canadian pennies (up from 139 a few days ago) to buy one U.S. dollar, in which all of our commodities are priced. Well, that’s .25 cents per litre of gasoline. Imagine what that’s going to do to the price of heating, of groceries, of the various other commodities which we consume.

And this budget demonstrates that the Carney era will be more of the same.

Of course, the Elbows Up crowd are saying the opposite — that this shows how fiscally responsible Mark Carney is, unlike his predecessor. (Never mind that they also publicly supported everything that Trudeau did when he was in government.) They claim that Carney shows that he’s more open to oil and gas than Trudeau was.

Don’t believe it.

The oil and gas sector does get a half-hearted nod in the budget with, for instance, a conditional pathway to repeal the emissions cap. But those conditions are important. Repeal is tied to the effectiveness of Carney’s beloved industrial carbon tax. If that newly super-charged carbon tax, which continues to make our lives more expensive, leads to government-set emissions reductions benchmarks being met, then Ottawa might — might — scrap the emissions.

Meanwhile, the budget doubles down on the Trudeau government’s methane emissions regulations. It merely loosens the provisions of the outrageous Bill C-59, an act which should have been scrapped in its entirety. And it leaves in place the Trudeaupian “green” super structure, which has resource sector investment, and any business that can manage it, fleeing to the U.S.

In these perilous times, with Canada teetering on the brink of recession, a responsible government would be cutting spending and getting out of the way of our most productive sectors, especially oil and gas — the backbone of our economy.

It would be repealing the BC tanker ban and Bill C-69, the “no more pipelines act,” so that our natural resources could better generate revenue on the international market and bring down energy rates at home.

It would quit wasting millions on Electric Vehicle charging stations; mandating that all Canadians buy EVs, even with their elevated cost; and pressuring automakers to manufacture Electric Vehicles, regardless of demand, and even as they keep closing up shop and heading south.

But in this budget the Liberals are going the opposite direction. Spend more. Tax more. Leave the basic Net-Zero framework in place. Rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.

They’re gambling tomorrow’s prosperity on yesterday’s green dogma, And every grocery run, every gas fill-up, every mortgage payment will serve as a daily reminder that we are the ones footing the bill.

Once upon a time, the Liberals knew better. We made the hard decisions and got the country back on its feet. Nowadays, not so much.