Fear, not immigration, is the problem

"So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." – Franklin D. Roosevelt in his inaugural address, 1933

Franklin Roosevelt was among the first of the
"new politicians" to make extensive use of
mass media to explain his policies.

When times are tough, people do retreat into fear. Especially, I believe, when people are unwilling to believe in their leaders. What follows is a tendency to shrink the connections we trust, to circle the wagons and to distrust the people outside of the circle.

It is simple fearfulness that has made Canadians lose their trust in Canada as a land of immigrants, and to diminish the value we place in our diversity.

Government polling on Canadian attitudes toward immigration is extensive, and detailed. If the government doesn't seem to like StatsCanada very much, they still place a high value on watching our opinions on the issue of immigration.

I say that's a good thing, because good leaders need to know if a seed of social unrest is taking root, or becoming organized, so they can move positively at its early stages. 

And that appears to be the case today, both in the rise of perceived fear and in the use of leadership in the face of those fears.

Broadly painted, new polling on our attitudes toward immigrants is still positive, but that support is falling as hard economic times continue, without concrete indications things will get better soon.

A majority of Canadians – 56 per cent – still say immigration has a positive effect on the economy, but that's a drop of 10 points in just two years. Only 40 per cent of Canadians today believe immigration has a positive effect on culture, and that's a drop of 16 to 18 per cent from two years ago.

These figures are from an internal government survey, whose results were released in an access to information request. In other words, it's information we are entitled to have, but only if we force the government to reveal it to us.

The surveys also say that Canadians are generally satisfied with immigration levels as they are, without knowing the real numbers, but when we are told the real numbers, more and more of us are saying 250,000 immigrants allowed into the country each year is too many.

If you're the immigration minister, what do you do with that?

Jason Kenney decided Wednesday to keep the doors open, in the face of rising fears that immigrants are taking too many of our jobs, or are diluting our national identity. He's set the new quota at 260,000, and he's reinforcing rules to filter in a higher proportion of people with skills and training, and those with resources to become entrepreneurs here.

That's because Kenney has to go with the facts on the ground, rather than cede to our fears. 

Immigrants are not taking too many of our jobs. Despite our current high national unemployment rate, Canada is short of skilled workers. In Newfoundland and Labrador, a region with a high potential for growth, the St. John's Board of Trade recently used crisis language to beg the government to open its doors.

The TD Bank says the federal immigrant quota needs to be raised to 350,000 in four years, to offset the looming demographic change in the nation as baby boomers start reaching their 70s.

This, even though the bank knows – and Kenney knows – that most immigrant families in Canada are not wealthy by any means.

My own ancestors were "dirt poor, but land rich" when they arrived in Canada. And likely, so were yours. They got a chance to succeed, and they did.

The economic situation when FDR won his first term of presidency in 1933 was pretty bad, a lot worse than it is here today. But he recognized that in hard times, people still need to stay rational and stay positive.

That didn't happen in Europe, where fear expressed itself in racial hatred.

I take it as hugely positive that our government chose to look past the rising level of fear in our society, rather than to feed it for quick political gain. It gives you something to believe in.

Lacombe to dance with alligator hunters?

It would be interesting to watch a citizens group take over Lacombe, while being filmed for a reality TV show – in the same way people are fascinated by horrific crashes on Hwy 2, a tsunami in Japan, or a superstorm over New York.

And if the citizens of Lacombe allow this stupid (and probably illegal) experiment to proceed, they would get the wreckage they deserve.

I know if there were goofballs trying to do this in Red Deer, I would join a group mounting a legal challenge to the arbitrary appropriation of my tax dollars.

The Lacombe Taxpayers' Association is apparently organized and highly-enough regarded for aTV production group Force Four Entertainment to propose that Lacombe's city council abdicate and allow the malcontents to take over city management, and really get priorities straight.

As if. 

"Municipalities, they don't respect taxpayers anymore," says Blaine Dushanek, the association's spokesman. "They don't respect that's where the money comes. They just feel it's their money and taxpayers should not take any interest."

I don't think the taxpayers or council members in Lacombe are really all that different in perspective or priorities than Red Deer's. We have a diversity of views of what's important in this city, and we allow that diversity full expression. We also have our share of gripers and nay-sayers who get far more attention and wield far more influence than they deserve.

Do you believe Lacombe is really that different than Red Deer? Here's an overview of Red Deer voters, from this year's Ipsos Reid survey on quality of life and taxpayer satisfaction:

• 84 per cent of Red Deerians say we get good value for our tax dollars

• 93 per cent say they are satisfied with city services

• 53 per cent say they would support tax increases to maintain or improve city services

• 30 per cent of people would cut services to maintain current tax levels

• 8 per cent would cut services to reduce taxes

• 72 per cent of Red Deerians either walk (35 per cent) cycle (21 per cent) or use transit (16 per cent) to get around

• 51 per cent support growing alternative transportation routes in Red Deer, including bike lanes

• 43 per cent want Red Deer to be a more walkable city

• 90 per cent of Red Deerians are somewhat satisfied (65 per cent) or very satisfied (25 per cent) with snow removal as it is in the city

You can get the full report on the city's web site and cherry pick the stats that interest you. But the picture this paints for me is that people who complain – about council wasting tax dollars, or that progressive policies toward services and amenities are wrong – are quite in the minority here.

The flood of complaints recently to city council over bike lanes, the killing of a community centre in Clearview Ridge, the demands that the city remove a local bus route, community opposition to building neighbourhood schools, these views do not represent our city in general. And if these are the kinds of forces behind Lacombe's Taxpayers' Federation,  I believe they do not represent the majority view in Lacombe, either.

Red Deer actually tried an experiment similar to what's being proposed in Lacombe. From 1993-2007, council put a moratorium on capital spending for over a decade, to keep tax increases at zero.

The only exceptions were the public library expansion in 1995 (a project that included quite hefty public fundraising), plus the city's portion of building the Collicutt Centre in 2001 (another project that required a lot of public fundraising) was paid in cash out of savings.

But many people who "saved" the money were no longer around to enjoy the Collicutt Centre, and thousands of new residents after them got a facility they did not really pay for. Capital costs had increased over the period of the moratorium, eating up a chunk of the savings, plus debenture income was rolled out of capital accounts and into operations, further depleting the city's capital potential.

Those years of so-called "restraint" ended up costing us hundreds of millions in extra taxes to recover an infrastructure and services deficit that dogs our city budget to this day. We lost in real dollars, big time, from that failure of vision, from trying to plan for only one budget goal, only one year at a time.

If Lacombe allows this interest group to take over city management, they will get the debacle they deserve. I say people would do better with a TV show about Canada's worst drivers who think they can dance with alligator hunters.

Quarry petition should be buried, now

I have a petition to present to city council, though for now it only has one name on it. My petition is that council formally ask the residents of the Quarry apartments to please get a life.

Oh, and as an addendum, I'd like council to please protect the owners of the condominiums in Cronquist Industrial Park from whoever it is that wants to devalue properties in the entire district by eliminating transit service to their area.

Condo resale values are fragile enough in today's market. The neighbourhood – which is slated to become more and more residential in the next few years – cannot be viable without bus service.

People, you live in the very centre of Alberta's third-largest city. There is traffic, there city sounds, the wind brings in the dust that falls from the sky onto your sealed window frames.

Why on earth would any sane property owner want to dispose of bus service, and replace it with higher density auto traffic?

Saturday's Advocate reported a petition from Quarry residents complains about noise, dust, and the cost of running empty buses. Noise and dust you will always have with you; in fact, transit buses are a solution to traffic noise and dust as they only pass every half hour, not as a constant stream of cars and trucks.

The complaint about empty buses is a lot more empty than the buses themselves. The city reports about 30 riders a day board in the area, and that number will only increase as more people move in.

When Cronquist Park becomes more residential, it will become an ideal location for college students to rent apartments. It's an easy walk to the local theatre, and to downtown amenities (once council solves the sticky problem of pedestrian access over Taylor Drive). The nicest part of the city's bike/hike trails run through it, linking Cronquist via the pedestrian/cyclist route to more than two-thirds of the city in less than a 20-minute ride.

In short, Cronquist, and the regions to be developed immediately beside it, will be among the most desirable locations to live, within an 100 km radius. And some seriously selfish and misinformed people don't want transit there? Because of the dust? Cough, cough.

The 30 people a day (and soon to be more) using transit from the Cronquist bus stops, what do the petitioners suggest for them? If these riders are property owners, their taxes pay for city transit, and they are entitled to have it, regardless the objections of the sticks in the mud with their views overlooking the riverbank.

If those people are renters, and they decide to move, what does the lack of transit access do to the investments of the landlords, much less the equity of all other landowners in the city, whose property values are tied to location and access to city services?

If council agrees to this petty and mean-spirited petition, I personally will be glad there is an election year coming. We need a city council that governs for the entire city, including its future residents.

Please, city council, bury this request from the Quarry. That is my petition.

Our measure of skin in the game

Here's an item that flew under the radar, while Canadians were obsessing with the U.S. presidential election, feeling slightly worried that we haven't been very excited about the World Series, or sitting back to ponder if we really miss NHL hockey all that much.

Barring a last-minute change of heart in the Senate, Canada is about to legalize a new form of gambling. Bill C-290 is a private member's bill that has already cleared Parliament and two readings in Senate. It will allow the provinces to issue betting forms for single game events.

That means you may soon be able to go to your local lottery kiosk, lay down a toonie or two and risk your hard-earned cash on the outcome of each game in the Stanley Cup playoffs (six of them this season, presumably). That's instead of going online and making the same bet with a bookie operating a computer server and bank accounts in a place where nobody checks financial statements.

Betting of this type isn't legal in most of the United States, except for Gomorrah, which they call Nevada.

Every party supports this bill – a private member's bill couldn't clear Parliament otherwise. Apparently, the NDP likes single-event gambling as a job-creation enterprise. Those would be jobs where people declare their incomes and pay their taxes.

It's safe to say the Conservatives like the bill because it fights crime, and keeps more money inside our economy.

Here's what's really funny, at least two professional sports leagues in Canada don't want this made legal: Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League.

The Globe and Mail reported that two MLB executives appeared before the Senate Wednesday to argue against passing that crucial third reading. They say that any increase in betting on single games would increase the likelihood pressures being brought on players to throw games, or shave points.

The unknown billions currently being wagered through web sites offered by organized crime groups have not been enough to do so, but a guy like me putting a fool's dollar on the Edmonton Eskimos could just to the trick. That's their premise, and they're sticking to it.

NHL executives apparently are looking for an opportunity to say the same things, if they could only pull themselves away from the bargaining table for long enough.

Paul Beeston, president of the Toronto Blue Jays said fans with skin in the game may become suspicious of "every strikeout or error, and the game's integrity would be open to question, play by play."

I say, if you had one room full of MPs and Senators, and owners of pro baseball and hockey teams in another, which group would arouse your suspicions most?

The feds have the least to gain by passing this law. Gambling is a provincial matter. In Alberta, our taxes would have to be raised by $1.4 billion this year alone, if gambling proceeds were not put into general revenues.

Red Deer has schools being built, roads being upgraded, and bike lanes removed, paid for in part by gambling profits.

I'm not in favour of legalized gambling, any more than I am of prostitution or marijuana sales – at least not as drivers of employment. But I'm a whole lot less in favour of these activities being the revenue base of criminals. That aspect is already costing me a whole lot of money I'd rather keep or have government spend on something else.

There is already a history of criminal groups sullying the reputations of people involved in pro sports. Enough said there.

Played through government offices, at least some of the revenue can be used to mitigate the damage caused by gambling in the first place. And better single game betting, than video lottery machines.

Democracy pushed under the omnibus

As a voter who holds views that (to describe it politely) often put one in a minority camp, it's easy to understand Don Hepburn's frustrations with what we (politely) describe as democracy in Canada. Minority views get very little consideration at the government level, except of course, when that minority happens to hold a majority of seats.

Prime minister Stephen Harper crows that "Conservative values" are the same as "Canadian values" since his Conservative Party holds a majority in Parliament. But we know that simply is not true. A majority of Canadians voted for anything other than "Conservative values" in the past election – it's just that our flawed electoral system rewarded the Tories with a majority of seats.

Just the same, Harper has the power to spit on democratic principles with his so-called omnibus budget bills, and condemn anyone who can't accept the bad seed he mixes with the good seed in his giant grab bag.

When we moan about poor voter turnout at elections, an honest thinker has got to acknowledge the futility of voting in elections that all but nullify the citizenship of the minority view.

I've showed up for every election held since I came of age, but did so in the knowledge that principles I hold dear will never be reflected in the outcome. In Canadian government, the collective minority view (which almost always adds up to more voters than those who supported the winning candidates) gets no attention whatever.

So why bother voting at all? 

That's the question Hepburn and other members of the nonprofit group Fair Vote Canada want to address.

Here's an example of how Canadian federal elections are anything but democratic.

If the Parti Quebecois gets just six per cent of the national vote, they are rewarded with 40 seats in Parliament. The Green Party needs 12 per cent of the national vote to elect just one member. That's according to a calculator on the Fair Vote web site. 

Now, we know that Green Party leader Elizabeth May didn't get anything near 12 per cent of the national vote, but there she is, occupying the farthest seat in Parliament.

That's an anomaly I was able to exploit in the Fair Vote calculator, to make a point. But you don't need to be a Green Party supporter to understand how unfair and undemocratic our current electoral system can be.

You just need to be one slight step left of centre in Alberta to understand that point, acutely.

It's thought that "big tent" parties – which the current version of the Alberta Tories are trying to be – have already made the minority view considerations needed to expand their tent into majority status.

That's a nice thought, but a proportional electoral system forces party leaders to be more open and honest about who's the best bed partner in a coalition. If parties can agree in enough areas to form a proportional coalition, at least everyone knows those areas are supported by a majority of voters.

You can't say that about the mishmash packed into Stephen Harper's omnibus.

Changing Canada's electoral system would be harder than pushing a giant rock up a hill. It's more like pushing a huge pile of gravel up a hill, while trying to keep it all together.

If people like Don Hepburn can keep pointing out that what we have in Canada isn't exactly democracy, then it's worth it to still keep voting – if only to let him know some people think he's right.

It's not about the plan

Red Deer is a city that likes to plan. And people like me complain that city council spends millions  building plans and charters – only to back away from them when the grouches start barking.

It's pretty hard for good ideas to get planted under those conditions.

But I have to confess that I benefited from living in a neighbourhood where the grouches were able to intimidate City Hall into backing away from changes planned for my part of this city.

Reading Tuesday's Advocate article Affordable housing rejected, I had to remind myself that people in Clearview Ridge are citizens and ratepayers. They have a right to influence how our cherished city plans unfold.

After all, citizen influence worked for me. In the big picture, it's not about the plan anyway. It's about the goal.

The Red Deer Native Friendship Society supports aboriginal people who live away from the reserves in an urban environment, to ensure that everything they know and understand about their culture is not stripped away. Both goals are worthy: helping people survive away from the antiquated and often violent reserves, while keeping all the good parts of their identity.

If the current plan doesn't help everyone reach their goal, we'll build a new one. Otherwise, someone will just have to compromise.

When we bought our house in 1978, we didn't check the area's master plan. We just wanted a house we could afford.

On moving day, we were greeted by the president of the Waskasoo Ratepayers Association, who asked me for a dollar membership fee. He loaned me an engraver to put my driver's license number on our appliances, in case thieves broke in. Red Deer was worried about appliance crime in the boom of the 70s.

And he promised me the association would pack city council chambers with angry ratepayers, to keep apartment projects out of our neighbourhood. Renters and crime, you know.

Today, a new generation of owners is redeveloping Waskasoo, one home reno at a time.

In our early years, there was a plan to make a house in Waskasoo into a group home for former Michener residents. Neighbours objected, not even knowing there was already more than one group home in our area, operating peacefully and under everyone's radar.

De-institutionalizing the handicapped ran the route identified by other observers regarding all new ideas in cities: first, it was considered stupid, then radical, then progressive – and at last, obviously necessary. 

The fearmongering then included outright lying about the dangers handicapped people represented. Plus, parking would become non-existent, property values would plummet. Today, we simply accept that group homes are obviously necessary.

Red Deer had to be publicly shamed into finding a location for a detox centre for people seeking to get off drugs. Now, we only fear the drug rehab centres.

Last Sunday, CBC Radio aired a story about Baba Yaga House. It's a six-storey housing project for women between 60 and 80 in Paris, where the residents do the home care themselves. They make their own rules, cook and clean, help disabled residents – many of the tasks government pays staff to do. They keep their dignity and independence deep into their final years.

This kind of residence is not in any city plan here. Therefor, if we listen to some city councillors and some potential neighbours, Red Deer should never have the like.

The goal is for Red Deer to be a modern, efficient, caring, clean, safe city. That's not negotiable. The plans are. The game should not be primarily about what we oppose, but what we support.

Trading on education

Students entering high school might not pay a lot of attention to lifetime earnings expectations or even their job possibilities upon leaving school. I figure they're pretty well occupied with classes, exams, and social activities.

I expect that an article in Saturday's Advocate (Teaching teachers) will far more likely grab the attention of parents, concerned as they are with the future success of their children.

News articles are easy to find questioning the so-called "million-dollar bonus" confered on the lifetime earnings of a university graduate, over someone who only has a high school diploma. Last year, a study reported in the Globe & Mail upped that ante to $1.3 million, but in the next sentences suggested the number crunchers were filtering results through rose-coloured glasses.

The high tuition costs, the high average debt load required to complete a degree, the years spent out of the workforce (especially for those seeking an advanced degree), and the declining employment prospects for careers related to the field of study should be enough to give a high school student pause before jumping into a university-track program. But they don't. Entrance numbers at universities continue to rise, while trades go begging for skilled workers.

A new program at Red Deer College looks like it might cause some students – and their parents – to pause a little longer.

RDC will complete its first year of a pilot project next June, wherein high school teachers get specialized training in teaching five different trades: hairstyling, cooking, welding, automotives and carpentry. You need an education degree to take the one-year course, and when you come out, you will be qualified to teach that trade to the point where a high school grad could have their first year apprenticeship already signed off.

Instead of graduating high school and entering a trade, the students of these teachers are already qualified to enter the workforce at a higher salary. What's bonus on that?

I looked up a federal government employment site, and the numbers look pretty impressive, especially in the first years.

The site put a first-year construction worker's pay in Calgary at up to $57,000. The top rate of pay – third level – came to $66,500. A starting electrician makes anywhere from $45,000 to $63,000 (don't ask me why the range is so large). A welder starts out at $57,000, according to the site, although that seems a little low, from what I'm hearing of the trade.

A graduating engineer can start out at $69,000, with pay at peak of career at around $140,000. Quite a premium over the trades, don't you think?

But you need a minimum four years of university, requiring an average $40,000 of student debt – and I've seen engineering grads take more than a year to find a job after graduating. In that space of time, a welder's pay can approach six figures, with a career head-start of earnings well over a quarter-million dollars, and no debt incurred to get it.

It would take a long time – a lifetime – for the engineer's million-dollar bonus to be realized.

Here's my point: high school students should be thinking more about how their education can help them achieve their goals in life, rather than believing the only career path that's worthy of them goes through university. 

In my time, high school was mostly aimed at preparing people for university, and the trades wing was definitely considered the "secondary" part of secondary education. Today, if we're using high school to prepare students for success, the trades route is looking a whole lot more attractive.

Good on those teachers involved in the RDC program. Their extra year of education can bump their pay by another $3,000 a year – which represents a pretty high rate of return on the investment.

The bonus for their students will be substantial. Enough to give their parents pause in any serious discussion held with high school-aged students about what they want to do after graduating.

Rock on, Rockerfellers

Since Enbridge cannot yet begin laying steel from Bruderheim to Kitimat via the Northern Gateway pipeline, it must content itself with laying irony by complaining about how groups opposing the pipeline project are being funded.

Here's an old political cartoon I found about the relationship 

between the Rockerfeller kingdom and the U.S. government. 

Change the names and the faces, and this looks a lot 

like Alberta today. Now, imagine a tiny squirt from this 

money hose, going to aid environmental research 

and lobbying. Enbridge apparantly has much to fear.

For my part, I'm neither for nor against Northern Gateway. As consumers, our opinions are pretty well irrelevant anyway; we live very well on the avails of massive energy use, and it's a pretty duplicitous consumer who wants to deny bringing more energy to market.

Politically, my vote for or against pipeline projects will never be asked, much less counted. So basically, what will happen, will happen. Besides, when have you ever heard of big corporations not getting what they want, especially when energy resources are concerned? 

The irony reported in the Advocate Tuesday, however, was so thick and rich, I almost pushed a spoonful of organic steel-cut oatmeal back through my nose laughing about it over breakfast.

The non-profit groups and think tanks pushing their campaigns against a bitumen pipeline through B.C. did not invent their tactics. They learned them from industry.

Setting up non-profit lobby groups, funded through back doors and third parties to make it harder to trace the money, was invented by industry to move public opinion and to grease the political processes of the industrial agenda. To accuse modern-day hippies dressed in their hemp underwear of doing the same thing – as if that were something bad – is perfectly laughable.

It's even more funny when you think about the evil places Enbridge says their money is coming from.

Dark money from the Rockerfeller Foundation? You've got to be kidding. That foundation got its billions from perfecting vertically-integrated monopolist control over the entire petroleum industry. In 1911, the American government forcibly broke the Rockerfeller kingdom – Standard Oil – into pieces, so there could be some free market competition in the oil biz again.

The Rockerfellers pushed free-market economies into evolving the anti-trust powers of government. Without those powers, companies like Enbridge would likely never have been able to come into existence today.

And today, the Rockerfeller Foundation, plus the charitable arms of the families that founded companies like Hewlett-Packard, Intel and KING Broadcasting are putting little bits of their vast wealth into groups engaged in the exact same activities that industries use to get what they want.

Is Enbridge afraid that once people get some research money, they will uncover uncomfortable facts about pipeline megaprojects, and their real costs? Is having more information bad, or is it just bad when information cannot be filtered through one certain type of sieve?

In the end, all the oil in the world will eventually be burned. There is still room at the top of the income ladder for people who make it possible for all of us to burn it.

In the meantime, adapt or die, Enbridge. But don't make yourself look stupid by attempting to vilify the corporate barons who put a little money into groups doing the exact same enterprises the barons themselves invented.

Enough swiftboating over bike lanes

Like most people in Red Deer: I'm almost glad for the killing frost last week, so we can think about the onset of another winter, and get back to our normal lives griping about the city's lousy snow clearing program.

A supposition on my part, but I figure everything that could be said about bike transportation in Red Deer has been said, and written, too many times already.

A good, old-school hardtail mountain bike,
with fenders and studded tires. Add a cleanup,
tuneup, put the back and front lights back on,
and we're ready for winter.

Except that there's been so much misinformation and outright swiftboating on the issue, that before the last words are spoken, that an overview would probably be a good idea.

Let's talk first about the $800,000 council supposedly wasted on the bike lanes pilot project. (A good portion of that money was indeed wasted, because a major portion of the project was reversed before any data could could be collected.)

The city's total budget this year is something like $367 million. That's what it costs to run a city; that's what we are all taxed for.

Out of every tax dollar you pay, nine per cent is spent on public works. That comes out to just over $33 million for maintaining our streets, traffic lights, parking, snow clearing, bridge maintenance -- things like that. 

We already know that 90 per cent of all transportation in Red Deer is by car, that 90 per cent of commutes are one person per car, and that the vast majority of those trips are five km or less. That's the congestion you live with on the roads. And we all know it's going to get worse, not better as the city grows.

And it's caused by cars, not bikes or bike lanes. 

Just the opposite. Bikes and bike lanes are the solution. Part of it anyway. Studies done on transportation infrastructure in the U.S. point to a 30 per cent reduction in perceived road congestion, with a three per cent drop in car numbers on the streets. That drop can be achieved with better use of car pooling, public transit, walking -- and cycling.

When we talk about Red Deer's $200 million debt, most of that is for more streets and roads to relieve current congestion and allow for growth. It also includes strip-mining a mile of natural land on the riverbank for a new bridge, destroying the last link in the wildlife corridor between the river and Gaetz Lake Sanctuary. 

But nobody gripes about the cost of that. Most of us agree that's what we need to let our city grow and keep it livable.

How about this? If we can agree that three per cent of Red Deer commutes are by bike through much of the year, wouldn't fairness to those taxpayers suggest that three per cent of the public works budget be spent on infrastructure for them? That's just under a million per year.

Especially if you consider that reducing the number of car commutes makes city travel safer, faster, more pleasant, and ultimately cheaper for the taxpayer.

People who have studied city maps and bikeways have discovered that homes in U.S. cities that are close to public paths and bike lanes receive an average 11 per boost in property values. That's a direct subsidy, courtesy of taxpayers, paid on every home sold in those areas.

So let's end the swiftboating about the cost of this pilot project, OK?

A million words have been published lately about the ambiguous status of cyclists in Red Deer. Some really nasty words have been written saying cyclists should just use the sidewalks. Other writers say cyclists who ride on sidewalks are cretins who ought to be grease spots.

The solution for this is totally in council's hands. Pass a bylaw forbidding sidewalk cycling, and pass another saying no vehicle can pass within 1.5 meters of a cyclist when they ride on the streets. To settle the issue, you need both.

Failing that, there can be no change, so everyone should just shut up. I'll try to do that myself. Besides, I've got a tune-up to get done on my winter bike.

Greg Neiman is a former editor of the Red Deer Advocate. Email greg.neiman.blog@gmail.com