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Sunnybrook has been paying property taxes for 56 years. Was it good value?

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It is easy to travel around Red Deer and see examples of idealism meeting practicality and realism.

Unfinished roads going to non-existent bridges. Neighbourhoods like Timberlands, with a firehall and a high school and way too many undeveloped lots.

Capstone is a decades old work in progress that keeps hitting the taxpayers. In the beginning it was simple, move the dilapidated public works building out of downtown and turn the riverfront property into high end river view properties.

A wonderful vision but reality stepped in. The new public works, went with the high-end vision and the costs soared to north of a hundred million dollars and kept going. Re-aligning the roads took another 50 million, upgrading services, burying lines cost more.

After decades and about $200 million dollars we have 23 acres of empty vision. There is still talk of a $20+ million pedestrian bridge just metres away from Taylor Drive bridge. The costs for this unfinished vision is hitting $10 million an acre.

Enough with the eternal yet to be built projects, as more examples like the Dawe Arena twinning, north of 11A , 50m pool, Hazlett Lake, and the list keeps going.

Let us talk about the city’s tendency to build and abandon philosophy. The neighbourhoods that they cannot maintain.

Our Premier keeps talking or ranting about equalization payments, How Alberta has paid more to Ottawa than they have received back.

Our neighbourhoods can say similar sentiments when it comes to city hall. My neighbourhood, Sunnybrook is 55 years old. Our roads and sidewalks are 55 years old. We have been paying property taxes for 55 years. Did we get 55 years of property taxes back in return?

My 55 year old sidewalk got half of one crack repaired this year. The second time in the 20 plus years that I have lived on this street. I have shrubs growing in my sidewalk, I have pulled saplings out of the street in front of my house. My sidewalk has sunk to becoming a pool or an ice rink depending upon the weather.

The city said it cannot afford to maintain the 800 kms of sidewalks it now has. The population is static, population increase of 195 in 5 years, but we built 1299 new homes with sidewalks at the same time. If the crack is not at least 25mm (1”) wide and poses a tripping hazard it will not be repaired.

The city subsidizes the downtown with our taxes. They feel the downtown is a vital attraction for Red Deer. Sunnybrook was once named in MacLeans magazine as the Number 1 neighbourhood in Canada. Did the city capitalize on this national news item? No, it widened 32 Street and 40 Avenue and isolated and abandoned Sunnybrook.

The Bower Mall was built with the understanding that the Molly Banister drive would be extended to give direct access to Sunnybrook, Anders, Morrisroe, Inglewood, Vanier, Mountview, Deer Park etc. The Bower subdivision was built isolated from Molly Banister Drive by this commercial development.

The city wants to abandon that commitment.

Ideally, in another dimension, the Piper Creek would be this bubbling brook enjoyed by abundant wildlife and environmentally conscious Red Deer residents. Reality sets in.

The polluted, weed infested, algae prone creek by Bower Mall after flowing through 2 landfills, dead falls, blow downs, and a cow pasture, is isolated from the trail that comes out of the woods by Molly Banister Drive. The trail continues south in the grasses parallel with Barrett Drive on the west side.

The east side of the creek will have the old barb wired game proof fence that borders it, be replaced by the rear residential fences of 50 new homes, if the road allowance is removed.

Negating the bridge, eliminating the customer traffic, slowing emergency vehicles, forcing thousands of drivers daily to drive 4 extra kilometres in a city that CBC once reported had the poorest air quality in Canada. (September 9, 2015).

The city talks about a Garden of Eden, this wonderful wildlife corridor, where animals can roam except reality plays a hand. Traffic is a wall less barrier. 10,000 cars per day is the tipping point for wildlife. 32 Street is currently at 23,500 cars per day with expectations of 40,000 per day when it is widened to 6 lanes when Molly Bannister is not extended. 19 Street is expected to be widened to 6 lanes and traffic is expected to soar to even higher numbers.

The thing about 19 Street is that it too crosses the creek in this fantasy wild life corridor, on the south side of Molly Banister. There is no bridge, no tunnel, no safe way for animals to cross. There is talk about a pedestrian bridge for residents to cross. There is talk about a traffic circle for cars to have easier access to 19 Street. Where are the city councillors demands to protect the oft-mentioned wildlife corridor?

The proposed bridge for Molly Banister will take up an acre of land and the road will run along the creek similar to Barrett Drive in Bower and Selkirk Boulevard in Sunnybrook then run parallel with the power lines similar to 22 Street. The alternative being proposed is 50 houses along the creek taking up 16 +/- acres then a road to the power lines. Which is honestly better for wildlife?

The north connector encroaches on wildlife way beyond the Molly Banister Ext. yet silence from city councillors.

Realism plays a dirty hand at times, and the city seems to ignore this and you only need to look at future expenses the city incurred in their quests for unrealistic expectations. The million dollar annual payments for years to come for the winter games, the Exhibition Hall at the Westerner where councillors sat on the board, Capstone, Timberlands, North of 11A, Dawe arena, the unfinished bridge, the bus terminal’s green roof, and the list grows.

There are more options than (1)dream the impossible or (2) build and abandon? You could maintain what you have. Follow through on obligations and stop making rash decisions on immediate schemes.

There 300 families backing onto 32 Street that do not deserve to have their quality of life diminished. The same can be said of the families backing onto 19 St.

Thousands of families in neighbourhoods south of 39 St. do not deserve the traffic congestion forced onto their commute.

19 Street is becoming a valued asset to county businesses and Gasoline Alley will be easier to access than downtown. The downtown needs our help in more ways than subsidies.

I believed that the bigger the picture the more obvious the need for Molly Bannister to be extended.  So did we get good value for our property taxes? Will the attacks on our quality of life end? Does equalization even exist? We will see.

Thank you.

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2025 Federal Election

Inside the Convoy Verdict with Trish Wood

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From Trish Wood is Critical

Peaceful convoy — violent voters. They convicted the wrong people.

TAMARA LICH, CHRIS BARBER AND THE OTHER TRUCKERS INSPIRED THIS: POLICE AND PROTESTORS HUGGING AND SINGING OH CANADA. THE TRUDEAU GOVERNMENT WAS ALREADY SMEARING THEM AS DANGEROUS.

 

In April of 2025, one day after the conviction of Lich and Barber for leading a protest with no violence, our politicians and media finally got what they wanted — division, and citizens absolutely hating each other. Watch these videos if you can, over and over again until it sinks in. View the one above and then the one below and decide who is harming the country.

Two middle-aged women had an “elbows up” fisticuffs yesterday near the waiting-to see-Mark-Carney line before an event. As you might figure, I was not surprised and knew violence was coming — not from a terror group and not from truckers. They pit us against each other with the full collaboration of paid-for media. We are broken, brainwashed and angry. We do not understand why our friends, neighbours and family vehemently support ideas that we know will harm the country.

They think we are monsters. And so it goes. Watch and compare to the scene above. And think about who was convicted this week.

Click image to see video

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Our ideas can’t be discussed civilly and we must remain in our silos so as not to pose a threat to the elites — the way the Freedom Convoy did. This was Tamara and Chris’ mistake. They brought people together.

Liberals, and I would hazard all contemporary pols are not working to actually make our lives better. They seem to have their own agenda — even Trump whom I had some hope for.

Our lives get worse. They enrich themselves spending money overseas for wars we the people don’t want. And it seems they all walk away from “public service” with mucho brass in pocket.

The video of the fighting women shows the bread and circuses is now us. This ancient Roman idiom is defined as:

Bread and circuses” refers to pacifying people with food and entertainment to prevent them from taking action on civic duties.

During COVID-19, until January of 2022, they thought they had this modus operandi all locked-down. Canadians were compliant and some were even enjoying their marathons of garbage Netflix shows and soggy Door Dash deliveries. We were staying home, staying safe, getting fat and dependant on the government. Except the men and women who worked hard to keep the country running — like truckers. And those of us with a fully operative bullshit detector — you know, actual journalists.

There were many suicides, overdoses and other tragedies. Some of us allowed a sick parent to die alone. Our spiritual health declined and we closed off the part of our brain that safeguards our need for fellowship.

And then the Convoy happened and pulled back the curtain to reveal The Great and Mighty Oz manipulating the whole damn thing.

Yes, the Convoy’s presence in Ottawa was dangerous to the elites but not for the reasons they say. Of course it was disruptive for the citizens. Isn’t that what protests are supposed to be? But many forget that they were indirectly saving lives. I know it because people have told me.

The reason the Convoy had to be dramatically taken down and then punished for three years is because they reminded us – that we could push back and we were not alone. But when tyranny comes, united opposition must be crushed.

In the courtroom on Thursday, Justice Perkins-McVey went out of her way to speak highly of Tamara’s non-stop admonitions to the convoy that they stay peaceful, cooperate with police and put love at the top of their agenda. It was in almost every communication Tamara made to a big, burly group of mostly men who listened and then, even during the police violence were nearly Gandhi-like in their resistance. You can see it in the videos.

John Lennon would have been proud and in fact Imagine was played for the protestors who at one point sang along. But according to Judge Perkins-McVey, Lich’s commitment to keeping the peace will work only as mitigation during sentencing in a couple of weeks. She was found guilty of mischief in a definition so broad it includes everyone no matter what they actually did. I still can’t believe it.

The other revelation, I’m being sarcastic here, is that Chris Barber swears when he is talking to other truckers. I was uneasy that Perkins-McVey read out word-for-word an expletive-filled rant by an exhausted and frustrated Barber in which she herself repeated his words in the courtroom, F-bomb for F-bomb, making him sound like a crude, aggressive person. Which he is not. I could see he was embarrassed as his words were never meant for consumption in a setting like that.

It wasn’t necessary and to me, it felt like a swerve to appease the Crown. I have never heard Chris speak that way in front of civilians, even myself and I have been known to F-bomb in front of him on occasion – a kind of tacit permission that he has never accepted. In the heart of Ottawa, a city beset by gentility, it became clear in Courtroom Five that the subtext might be interpreted as — the crudeness of these working class protestors was an assault on the city’s good name and manners.

For all they did in Ottawa and for the country, Barber was reduced in that courtroom to an angry man who couldn’t control his potty-mouth. Talk about prejudicial. Maybe she was giving the defence a gift for the appeal. I hated it on a visceral level. This was not the kindly, thoughtful judge I had been observing through the course of the trial. How could she not know the affect she was having? Perhaps she did.

 

Ready for more?

 

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Carbon Tax

The book the carbon taxers don’t want you to read

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By Franco Terrazzano

Prime Minister Mark Carney wrote a 500-page book praising carbon taxes.

Well, I just wrote a book smashing through the government’s carbon tax propaganda.

It tells the inside story of the fight against the carbon tax. And it’s THE book the carbon taxers don’t want you to read.

My book is called Axing the Tax: The Rise and Fall of Canada’s Carbon Tax.


 
Axing the Tax: The Rise and Fall of Canada’s Carbon Tax 

Every now and then, the underdog wins one.

And it looks like that’s happening in the fight against the carbon tax.

It’s not over yet, but support for the carbon tax is crumbling. Some politicians vow to scrap it. Others hide behind vague plans to repackage it. But virtually everyone recognizes support for the current carbon tax has collapsed.

It wasn’t always this way.

For about a decade now, powerful politicians, government bureaucrats, academics, media elites and even big business have been pushing carbon taxes on the people.

But most of the time, politicians never asked the people if they supported carbon taxes. In other words, carbon taxes, and the resulting higher gas prices and heating bills, were forced on us.

We were told it was good for us. We were told carbon taxes were inevitable. We were told politicians couldn’t win elections without carbon taxes, even though the politicians that imposed them didn’t openly run on them. We were told that we needed to pay carbon taxes if we wanted to leave a healthy environment for our kids and grandkids. We were told we needed to pay carbon taxes if we wanted to be respected in the international community.

In this decade-long fight, it would have been understandable if the people had given up and given in to these claims. It would have been easier to accept what the elites wanted and just pay the damn bill. But against all odds, ordinary Canadians didn’t give up.

Canadians knew you could care about the environment and oppose carbon taxes. Canadians saw what they were paying at the gas station and on their heating bills, and they knew they were worse off, regardless of how many politicians, bureaucrats, journalists and academics tried to convince them otherwise. Canadians didn’t need advanced degrees in economics, climate science or politics to understand they were being sold a false bill of goods.

Making it more expensive for a mom in Port Hope to get to work, or grandparents in Toronto to pay their heating bill, or a student in Coquitlam to afford food won’t reduce emissions in China, Russia, India or the United States. It just leaves these Canadians, and many like them, with less money to afford everything else.

Ordinary Canadians understood carbon taxes amount to little more than a way for governments to take more money from us and dictate how we should live our lives. Ordinary Canadians also saw through the unfairness of the carbon tax.

Many of the elites pushing the carbon tax—the media, politicians, taxpayer-funded professors, laptop activists and corporate lobbyists—were well off and wouldn’t feel the brunt of carbon taxes. After all, living in a downtown condo and clamouring for higher carbon taxes doesn’t require much gas, diesel or propane.

But running a business, working in a shop, getting kids to soccer and growing food on the farm does. These are the Canadians the political class forgot about when pushing carbon taxes. These are the Canadians who never gave up. These are the Canadians who took time out of their busy lives to sign petitions, organize and attend rallies, share posts on social media, email politicians and hand out bumper stickers.

Because of these Canadians, the carbon tax could soon be swept onto the ash heap of history. I wrote this book for two reasons.

The first is because these ordinary Canadians deserve it. They worked really hard for a really long time against the odds. When all the power brokers in government told them, “Do what we say—or pay,” they didn’t give up. They deserve to know the time and effort they spent fighting the carbon tax mattered. They deserve all the credit.

Thank you for everything you did.

The second reason I wrote this book is so people know the real story of the carbon tax. The carbon tax was bad from the start and we fought it from the start. By reading this book, you will get the real story about the carbon tax, a story you won’t find anywhere else.

This book is important because if the federal Liberals’ carbon tax is killed, the carbon taxers will try to lay blame for their defeat on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. They will try to say that carbon taxes are a good idea, but Trudeau bungled the policy or wasn’t a good enough salesman. They will try to revive the carbon tax and once again make you pay more for gas, groceries, and home heating.

Just like with any failed five-year plan, there is a lingering whiff among the laptop class and the taxpayer-funded desk rulers that this was all a communication problem, that the ideal carbon tax hasn’t been tried yet. I can smell it outside my office building in Ottawa, where I write these words. We can’t let those embers smoulder and start a fire again.

This book shows why the carbon tax is and always will be bad policy for ordinary Canadians.

Franco’s note: You can pre-order a copy of my new book, Axing the Tax: The Rise and Fall of Canada’s Carbon Tax, here: https://www.amazon.ca/Axing-Tax-Rise-Canadas-Carbon

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