Opinion
Since 2018, Alberta lost 5.1% employment, Calgary gained 1% employment, Red Deer lost 18.2% employment
2021 is an election year. The municipal election will be in October and a federal election is also expected. No provincial election is expected but with the Premier’s ratings sinking to as low as 16% in some polls before vacationgate, it might also be in the works.
Politics has turned up some things to think about. In the USA Donald Trump has given doubts to blind loyalty to a leader, with dire circumstances. Republicans everywhere are starting to regret keeping their leader in office.
Vacationgate here in Alberta have turned up more things to think about. We have too many elitists, silent seat-warming, self-serving politicians who believe they are above the people they were elected to serve. While we are missing birthdays, weddings, funerals, anniversaries, trips, holidays with family, friends and others at the request of our elected officials, they, themselves, traveled around the world. These silent invisible politicians took our trust and spit on it before crushing it under their heels.
Statscan recently reported that Alberta has lost 5.1% of workers since 2018. The politicians will scream it is the world oil glut and low prices that destroyed Alberta’s job market, but Calgary, Alberta’s oil capital actually saw an increase in jobs of 1%, Edmonton lost 7% and Red Deer has lost 18.2%.
Unemployment rate was reportedly down to less than 10% but I had a nice knowledgeable person explain to me that is because they are not collecting employment benefits because they ran out and others who have simply stop looking for jobs.
Perhaps it is time to look for new blood in our political arenas. A new generation of thinkers and doers. There are some younger people in politics after all the median age in Red Deer is 39.5 years of age, half the population is 40 and older so 40 does seem young. But if you spent your entire adult life in politics then 40 is not young. I once asked about Red Deer; ” Do all we do is build houses and ice rinks?” We do get funding from all levels of governments for ice rinks, but try building a swimming pool.
If Red Deer’s median age keeps rising we will see less need for ice rinks and more need for pools.
So is it possible to get out of the rut of rewarding the old guard, the same parties, the same inner circle that tend to look inwards for answers rather than outwards.
How can we grow if we repeat the same program. Remember there is a difference between having 15 years experience and repeating the 1st year 15 times. Does it matter if we have 12 or 13 ice rinks? Would it matter more if we had the only 50m pool? Can we not at least think about it? Why can’t our silent federal and provincial political representatives find funds for more than ice rinks and sports events?
It takes a village to raise a child, it takes the co-ordinated effort of all levels of governments to help our city stop declining. It takes looking outward, beyond the privileged inner circle to find solutions.
We lost 18.2% of workers in 2 years, can we afford 2 more years without change. We talk about diversification, but someone keeps saying we are an oil and gas city. When I ask about capitalizing on ongoing projects, I have been told things like, we looked at it years ago, and thought it was too expensive. It does not matter that things become cheaper and more efficient these days, but we looked at it once and that’s good enough.
For example I asked about the success of cities putting turbines in their water systems to create power. Red Deer is pumping millions of litres of waste water into the river everyday, so I asked about running it over turbines to create some power, and I was told they looked at it many years ago and thought it was too expensive. I was not talking about $100 million dollar turbines but something smaller. Remember that movie where a boy saved a village by hooking his bicycle light generator to a windmill to irrigate the crops. Could we do something in between?
We lost so much, is it time to rethink our politics? Look beyond parties, look beyond incumbency, look beyond age and look for someone willing to move forward for us.
Red Deer has lost 18.2% of it’s workers since 2018, population has only increased by 195 since 2015, I think it is time look beyond the few and look at the whole. Just saying.
Billionaire Bill Gates — long one of the loudest voices warning of climate catastrophe — now says the world has bigger problems to worry about. In a 17-page memo released Tuesday, the Microsoft co-founder called for a “strategic pivot” away from the obsessive focus on reducing global temperatures, urging leaders instead to prioritize fighting poverty and eradicating disease in the developing world. “Climate change is a serious problem, but it’s not the end of humanity,” Gates wrote.
Gates, 70, argued that global leaders have lost perspective by treating climate change as an existential crisis while millions continue to suffer from preventable diseases like malaria. “If I had to choose between eradicating malaria and preventing a tenth of a degree of warming, I’d let the temperature go up 0.1 degree,” he told reporters ahead of next month’s U.N. climate conference in Brazil. “People don’t understand the suffering that exists today.”
For decades, Gates has positioned himself as a leading advocate for global climate initiatives, investing billions in green energy projects and warning of the dangers of rising emissions. Yet his latest comments mark a striking reversal — and a rare admission that the world’s climate panic may have gone too far. “If you think climate is not important, you won’t agree with the memo,” Gates told journalists. “If you think climate is the only cause and apocalyptic, you won’t agree with the memo. It’s a pragmatic view from someone trying to maximize the money and innovation that helps poor countries.”
The billionaire’s change in tone is sure to raise eyebrows ahead of the U.N. conference, where climate activists plan to push for new emissions targets and wealth transfers from developed nations. Critics have long accused Gates and other elites of hypocrisy for lecturing the public about fossil fuels while traveling the globe on private jets. Now, Gates himself appears to be distancing from the doomsday rhetoric he once helped spread, effectively admitting that humanity faces more immediate moral imperatives than the weather.
(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Stunning Climate Change pivot from Bill Gates. Poverty and disease should be top concern.
Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence venture xAI launched “Grokipedia” on Monday — a new online encyclopedia built to challenge what he says is Wikipedia’s entrenched political bias. The site, powered by xAI’s technology and integrated with Grok, the same AI system behind Musk’s X platform, aims to provide a politically balanced alternative to the long-dominant Wikipedia, which critics have accused for years of leftist censorship and selective editing.
Grokipedia, now live in its beta “v0.1” stage, opens with roughly 885,000 entries — a fraction of Wikipedia’s seven million English-language pages but a notable start for a platform that launched just hours ago. Some users experienced temporary errors upon the rollout, but by Monday evening the site was running smoothly. Musk framed the project as part of his broader effort to restore transparency and ideological diversity to the digital space, echoing his moves to overhaul Twitter into X.
The billionaire’s feud with Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has grown increasingly bitter in recent months. Musk has accused Wales of allowing Wikipedia to devolve into a propaganda outlet that protects liberal narratives while suppressing dissenting voices. “Defund Wikipedia until balance is restored,” Musk wrote in a January post on X. Wales, for his part, has dismissed Grokipedia as an unserious experiment, telling the Washington Post last week that AI-generated content is prone to “massive factual errors” and lacks editorial oversight.
Breitbart News has documented numerous examples of Wikipedia’s bias, from its editors smearing Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk following his assassination to attempts to delete articles about his widow Erika Kirk and Ukrainian activist Iryna Zarutska. One editor even proposed deleting Bible verses, while another added Nazi references to politically conservative entries. The site’s governing “neutrality working group,” announced amid backlash, has ignored allegations of left-wing bias and instead congratulated itself on maintaining “neutrality on contentious subjects.”
Grokipedia vs. Wikipedia on Charlie Kirk.
We all knew Wikipedia sucked, but this hit a nerve.
Grokipedia is the obvious choice. pic.twitter.com/BEWLCNPtp7
— Defiant L’s (@DefiantLs) October 28, 2025
For Musk, Grokipedia represents more than a product launch — it’s another front in his campaign to dismantle what he sees as the internet’s entrenched progressive gatekeepers. While Wikipedia’s defenders dismiss his challenge as quixotic, the early traffic surge to Grokipedia suggests that many users are ready to see if Musk’s alternative can deliver what the old encyclopedia no longer does: balance, transparency, and a willingness to question the narrative.
(Photo/Alex Brandon)
Disabled Canadians increasingly under pressure to opt for euthanasia during routine doctor visits
No Exit Wound – EITHER there was a very public “miracle” OR Charlie Kirk’s murder is not as it appears
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