We can't prevent disasters, nor change human nature

Like millions of people who live in cities that have been built along rivers, I live on a floodplain.

There hasn't been a flood in Red Deer to equal that of Calgary or High River in all our written history. But if you sink a spade just about anywhere on what remains of natural ground in our valley centre, you'll find evidence the Red Deer River once flowed there.

I've been told the area where I live, near the base of Michener Hill, was once called the Chinese Garden, for the family-run market garden that for a time was a local landmark.

It's a good place to have a garden, because there's no bottom to the topsoil here. It's all river silt (with patches of gravel) deeper than any basement foundation. My garden makes it look like I know what I'm doing there.

A long time ago, the Red Deer River flowed right below Michener Hill. Over time, it moved slightly north, leaving behind the oxbow lakes in the Gaetz Lakes Sanctuary. But while it was moving, it must have flooded many times, leaving behind a legacy of deep fertile silt on a pancake-flat valley bottom.

Good place for a garden, or a town. Right?

Adrian Gordon is the former president and CEO of the non-profit Canadian Centre for Excellence in Emergency Preparedness. The centre just happened to be running an international conference in Toronto this week, becoming the go-to place for journalists looking for perspective on Alberta's new natural disaster.

The gist of what he and others are telling reporters is this: Canada's network of public infrastructure, valued at about a trillion dollars, is not hardened against natural disaster events that we know have happened in the past, and that we know will happen again.

Think about the ice storm in Quebec a few years back. It downed all the power lines, caused massive blackouts, and hundreds of millions in losses and damage to property.

Quebec responded as we all would — they cleaned up, fixed up, restored the lines. All that new infrastructure is standing there, waiting for the next ice storm — which we know could happen any given year.

The power lines could have been buried, but that was considered too expensive. More costly than replacing them all again, the next time the weather turns ugly?

That observation contains the subtext of what Gordon and other emergency preparedness experts are saying about Calgary. Make that all of the Canadian prairies.

If 100-year floods now happen every 10 years, why should people like me be allowed to return to our homes on the floodplain?

Insurance companies are asking the same question. They answer it by saying they won't insure homes on floodplains against the kind of flooding nobody even remembers seeing before.

But that doesn't stop people like me from living in these areas. Biblical-level flooding wasn't on the radar when we moved here 35 years ago.

Looking at how many people live in the valley, and how many businesses have grown here, it hasn't been for anyone else, either.

We've never had a Calgary-level flood, with muddy water above basement ceilings, enough to make the entire downtown a no-go zone. But as we have seen, that's not evidence we never will.

Delegates to the Toronto conference have their own data on major disasters around the world. In no case, we are told, are local or national governments completely ready to deal with these events.

In fact, no government anywhere is keeping up with the cost of maintaining infrastructure — roads, bridges, power, water supply — under even normal conditions. Whatever developments we are making are almost all pay-it-forward, never mind paying for recovery from a multi-billion-dollar disaster loss.

Garrington Bridge west of Bowden is just one of thousands of weak links in the transportation chain, in zones where flooding has occurred in the past and where it will probably occur again.

The town of Sundre knows full well how a river can move when the mountains get too much rain all at once.

But would Sundre move? Would Calgary homeowners dealing with a horrible, stinking, muddy mess right now? Would Vancouver, sitting along a geological fault line ripe for an earthquake? Would I?

Human nature trumps Mother Nature, at least in the decisions we make.

The Canadian Centre for Excellence in Emergency Preparedness is doing a very good job, but the tide of human nature is as strong as the tides of the Earth.

The best we can expect is that people make decisions, knowing all the risks.

Disaster aid: Things get better when we pull together

David Suzuki often quotes himself to repeat his notion of the flawed way we measure the progress of our economy. By this time next year, Suzuki would tell us that Alberta's gross domestic product will show a huge boost from the devastating floods that have swept the southern half of the province.

Even Red Deer got a GDP shot in the arm in the past week, with berm-building and the overtime paid to city staff and police needed to keep people from getting too close to the limited flooding we received here.

But we all can agree this is economic activity we would much rather do without.

Nevertheless, the financial exchange is going to be substantial. As the first group of families returns to their flooded homes and businesses, we are just beginning to see the damage done by the water and mud of the flooded Alberta rivers.

When 100,000 people are forced to flee a natural disaster, that represents an awful lot of material left behind to be ruined.

Consider what's in your own basement and multiply that by tens of thousands. That's just the beginning of what Albertans will need to replace. That's just the stuff you can see.

The province and the municipalities affected can probably multiply that again in infrastructure costs; roads, power systems, water and sewer line repairs, not to mention the person-hours of staff working exhausting hours trying to keep civil society intact through a period of chaos.

Reporters are already asking officials for estimates of the damage done by the flooded rivers. But you can understand why giving an answer now is pretty well impossible.

Through this, Alberta must reckon the value of pulling together in times of disaster.

Foreign reporters have commented on an apparent lack of preparedness of our towns and cities to cope with an event like this. They asked: where are the shelters to house 100,000 displaced people? Where are the tents, the cots, the pyramids of bottled water we can photograph?

Many thousands of those spaces ended up being the bedrooms and living rooms of citizens willing to take in a stranger in need.

Just as we cannot measure the cost of flooding like this, we cannot measure the value of volunteers hoisting sandbags, cooking meals and providing their own homes as emergency shelter.

Economists will not measure these things as GDP, but their effect on the well-being of people can be as powerful as a flood.

In that regard, the unmeasured investment of our cities and their people is just beginning.

In times of crisis, people want to help. The task for all of us not directly affected by the flooding is to ensure that our help is effective.

Our hearts go out to the people we see gutting their homes, and putting everything that was inside them into a dumpster. In many cases, that even includes the wires in the walls. The scale of loss is difficult to imagine.

It is by no means certain how much of this loss will be covered by people's home insurance policies.

But people do not need new TV sets or sofas in the basement right now. They need clean water, food, shelter and the basics of life restored.

We do not need to provide these things directly. Far better to support the agencies who make a profession of dealing with disaster.

That would be the job of agencies like the Canadian Red Cross. It is quite easy to reach their web site online. An average $50 donation from even half of Red Deer's homes would translate into huge support.

There are other avenues to give assistance, but be careful to ensure that “instant charities” do not compound the loss by siphoning off the help you give.

And those families who continue to house people displaced by the floodwaters are providing a public service that literally cannot be measured in dollar terms.

Considering the scope of what has happened, it is amazing the loss of life has thus far been limited to three tragic deaths. Think of the flooding that occurred in India, which has wiped out more people than the population of Red Deer!

The people at work directly on the disaster so far must be exhausted. But for the rest of us, our work and our contributions are just beginning.

A huge portion of recovery will never be counted in federal and provincial disaster aid dollars, insurance claims and goods and services bought.

The best of this recovery will come through communities that pull together.

Electric cars may be green, but they provide little green for government

Kudos to the Red Deer Lodge and Conference Centre for installing a recharging station, so that hotel guests can boost their electric cars for free. Electric car owners can also tank up for free at the Red Deer Peavey Mart.

The trend toward electric cars is definitely at the thin edge of the wedge in Alberta, wedded as we are to our pickup trucks. But if the offer of another 300 km or so of free fuel can attract them a little more business, more power (pardon the pun) to them.

Right now, electric cars only comprise about .2 per cent of the total Canadian vehicle fleet. But when that figure rises to significant degree, expect a little pushback.

Here's the rub: electric car owners pay no fuel taxes. And as regular gas-burning vehicles get more and more efficient, provincial and federal revenues on fuel taxes per kilometre driven have been steadily dropping.

Alberta raised $760 million in the 2010-2011 fiscal year from fuel taxes, which sit at 9 cents a litre for gasoline. The federal tax is 10 cents, plus GST, for a total of 20 cents a litre of the pump price of gas in our province. That's the lowest in Canada, except for the Yukon.

The revenue does not go specifically toward roads or transportation infrastructure. All our revenue goes into the general pot, and budget considerations are made out of that pot. Besides, total the provincial transportation budget comes to way more than $760 million a year.

But money is money, and the province together with all its municipalities need a lot of it to spend on roads. Sooner or later, people will start asking (erroneously) why electric car owners should get to use the roads “for free.”

Government started asking that same question a long time ago. We of a certain age can remember the first time the price of gas made us look twice.

During the global energy run-up of the 1970s and ’80s, a fad grew in Red Deer to convert gas cars to propane, which was much cheaper, and on which there was no fuel tax. The response was quick enough; there's a fuel tax now on propane, and if you use that fuel for other uses, you can apply for a rebate.

Good luck to all you barbecue owners, now that it's grill season.

In the U.S., the State of Virginia charges electric car owners $64 a year in lieu of fuel taxes. Washington State charges $100. Arizona Senator Steve Farley wants to impose a one-cent-per-mile levy on electric cars that travel state highways.

It's never been easy, being green.

If you drive an electric car because of concerns over emissions, there's also the knowledge that our electricity is overwhelmingly coal-generated. Dirty oil, you say? Dirty power, too.

More green power gets added to the grid every year, and technologies are improving all the time to solve the problem of storing large amounts of potential energy, to smooth the peaks and valleys of solar and wind power.

But for the foreseeable future, the more efficient your car, the better for the environment and your pocket, but the worse for the provincial budget.

It takes a certain nerve to suggest fixes that would disincentivize a more efficient road fleet. But sooner or later, someone in every province is going to do it.

One gambit has been to disincentivize gas guzzlers even more. P.E.I., Manitoba, Saskatchewan and B.C. (along with the cities of Victoria and Vancouver) all charge an extra carbon tax on fuel. This certainly makes the (apparent) payback faster on a more efficient vehicle, but it doesn't solve the revenue problems of the governments involved.

Others have suggested killing fuel taxes altogether and making all roads toll roads, so that highway building and upkeep can truly be pay-as-you-go.

That could work for municipalities, too, which spend hugely on infrastructure for streets, roads and bridges, but get barely a whiff of fuel taxes.

For myself, I'm willing to pay a nominal annual fee to ride my bike, on top of whatever fuel taxes or road tolls I might pay for the family car. Riding already saves me the price a new bike every couple years. But that would have to come with a paid-up guarantee of full — and safe — passage, free of harassment from drivers.

If every bike in Alberta carried a “road tax” it might encourage more cycle commuting, because people make greater use of things they've already paid for. I know I'd want to get my money's worth.

But this is still the thin edge of the trend. There's time to consider the fairest way to build and maintain good roads, no matter how we use them in a hopefully greener future.

Red flags and red herrings over taxing the rich

Canada's famous Peter Munk debates hold a special place in our national public discourse. That's not just because of the range of questions involved (Religion is a force for good in the world; The European experiment has failed) or the skill and eloquence of debaters invited to take part.

What I think is special about this debate is that it keeps score.

The audience is polled upon entering the theatre, and polled again at the end of the debate; the winning side is that which changes the most minds.

In that regard, the team of Henry Kissinger and Fareed Zakaria set a debate record in 2011, by arguing against the premise that the 21^st Century will belong to China. They convinced a vote swing of 22 per cent.

This year, as Advocate guest columnist Brian Lee Crowley informed us June 11, the question was a resolution that we should tax the rich more.

Crowley wrote against the resolution, but George Papandreou and Paul Krugman managed a 12-per-cent vote swing with their arguments to win the day.

I will hazard that the audience in the Roy Thompson Hall in Toronto was decidedly above-average in income, so a swing to the pro side of the question meant the arguments were quite able to overcome vested interests of the “rich” in the crowd that voted. They must have been pretty persuasive.

Of course, the Munk debates are not expected to be the final word on any issue. Their purpose is to also to stimulate further debate. So let's debate with Crowley.

The first red flag when assessing a debate is an attempt by one side to re-frame the question. Crowley opens his argument with just that tactic.

Instead of looking at “we should tax the rich more,” he wants to debate “how do we get the best value for society out of scarce resources?” His is a good question, but this is not what the night was about.

In fact, I would suggest he might have gone with “what kind of society do we want to live in?” That's an even better question, in my view.

But we're talking about the need for governments to raise revenue here, in an environment of growing polarization of income. Whether government or private enterprise are more efficient at achieving goals is a side issue.

Crowley takes us further down the side road, not with a red flag, but with a red herring. Seemingly out of the blue sky, he asserts that every dollar taxed from the rich costs society $1.20 in lost investment.

Those lost investments are obviously recovered, then, in the billions of dollars rich Canadians have been hiding from the taxman in secret offshore bank accounts, right? I sincerely doubt Crowley — or anyone else — can show a benefit to the poor (or even to Canadian society in general) from that.

Rather, we should remember one of the first laws of economics: every dollar eventually gets spent.

Crowley asserts that paying civil servants to manage tax funds for projects that democratically-elected governments deem important, is waste. It's part of that 20 cents he tacks on every tax dollar.

But we know that civil servants pay taxes on their income. They pay down their mortgages, the power bills, school fees and grocery tabs. Every business that receives payment from a civil servant pays taxes, and wages to people who in turn pay taxes and buy stuff.

How is the employment of a civil servant — at whatever their salary — a waste, when the multi-million-dollar bonuses to CEOs and upper management of private enterprise is not? Especially if many of these people hide their income offshore?

All money gets spent somehow, sometime. So a taxed dollar is not $1.20. It is a dollar, no more, no less.

The question the Munk committee wanted to examine regarded the fairness of specifically targeting the top percentile of wage-earners for a greater share of government revenue. On this question, the pro side wins.

The top income percentile already pays a lion's share of the income tax revenue that all governments collect. As Crowley quoted, that's where the money is.

We can also see that the current top-weighted tax regime has not affected the increased share of national wealth that the top income earners possess. Quite the contrary, the rich get richer, faster, than ever before these days.

Therefore, if we in our democracy agree that some income redistribution through “tax-and-spend” government is a good thing, government will have to go where the money is.

We can debate how much redistribution is actually warranted, and get angry at how much money is siphoned off through inefficiency and corruption. But that was not the question asked May 30 at the Munk debate, no matter how much Crowley wishes it might have been.

Red flags and red herrings did not win this one.

Red Deer's potential: it is what it is

While the staff at the Red Deer Advocate was compiling its 13^th annual Report on Central Alberta, Urbanics Consultants was compiling its report for the city in general.

Both were issued this week. The theme of Report on Central Alberta is our Centennial and the special issue records many of the milestones and important historic events of Red Deer and area. As a city, we've come a long way in our 100 years.

The Urbanics report reads more like the report cards issued to school students. Our city is young, says the report, and it has a way to go to reach its potential.

But isn't that what all report cards say? “Potential” is very much a moving target.

In many ways, Red Deer could be the avatar for the entire province. We have a young population profile, our economy is tied to the industries around energy exploration and development, and as such our city's character is defined around the way people live when they work in the energy field.

Do you recall how national reports have been saying for years that crime — especially violent crime — is on the decrease? Well, nationally, it is. Demographers claim that's largely due to an aging population.

Middle-aged people and seniors don't get involved in robberies and such, not in the same proportion as young adults. The young adult population that much of Canada used to be has grown up, has learned from its mistakes.

That Red Deer's crime rates are reported by Urbanics as so much higher than the provincial or national averages is most likely a reflection of our young population profile. It's also a reflection of our economy.

We have a young population, and we have a population with a low rate of post-secondary education. And we have a larger proportion of young adults with less education earning wages a person with a masters degree or even a PhD could scarcely dream of.

A decade of university will not get you the paycheque of a pipeline welder with a journeyman's ticket. Don't even think about it getting you a job that includes the overtime rate of a heavy equipment operator. 

Studies that say higher education leads to higher pay don't reflect the Alberta economy. In that regard, Alberta is not like the rest of the world. And Red Deer now stands as its avatar.

Thus, we have the combination of a young population, with many of our citizens earning other-worldly salaries, who have not had to invest in four to six years of university at $40,000 a year.

What does that lead to? Higher crime, for one thing. This kind of cash-rich, young, and active environment attracts more than just skilled tradespeople. Comes with the territory.

Does that mean we're not reaching our potential? I don't think so. As they say, it is what it is.

So why bother with the report card?

In my opinion, the Urbanics report confirms a great deal of the direction our city council has taken in its long-term planning.

Our greatest economic strength — a strong cohort of young, high-income families — also highlights our biggest challenges.

Red Deer needs to diversify its economy more, says the report. Where have we heard this before, like, a million times?

Easier said than done, in the Alberta experience. If we want to grow that part of the city which has more education and is more entrepreneurial, we have to be the kind of place where those people want to live. That isn't easy to achieve. Or cheap.

The Urbanics report approves of council's emphasis on renovating the city's core, of putting more housing close to downtown. This — so the plan goes — attracts more of a diversity of business to the area.

But the infrastructure has to be there. And infrastructure alone will not convince more people that they would rather go to school and do high-tech stuff, and do it here, than do it in a large city. As opposed to picking up a trade and buying a house in the suburbs with a garage big enough for a truck and RV — before you're 30 years old.

In making his report to council, Phil Boname, president of Urbanics Consultants did not answer this disconnect. Not his job, really.

Red Deer's “potential” does indeed include more people with degrees living in it, and better promotion of our central location in the province as a place for diverse businesses to locate and grow. There are no city councillors and no business leaders in Red Deer who are not fully aware of that.

Issue all the reports you like, but cultures and economies are very hard forces to turn. Planning, observing and building supportive infrastructure is the best you can do.

In the meantime, Red Deer is what it is. On the whole, it's where I want to be. Who wants to live in a city that's already achieved it potential?

Why should survival be the property of the rich?

In Canada, if you have a heart attack, you have a 15 per cent chance of dying within the next 10 years. That's if your income is $60,000 a year or better. If your income is $30,000 a year or less, your chances of dying with in the next decade jumps to 35 per cent.

That's the gist of a two-page news story in the Globe and Mail last Thursday.

Even though all Canadians, rich and poor, have the same access to health care, demographers can track and predict outcomes from heart attacks, based on income.

The Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences identified 1,368 Ontarians who had suffered a heart attack between 1999 and 2003. Then they examined the 2013 stats and counted how many of them had died.

The pattern of markedly increased survivability based on income showed up. When the numbers were screened for education, the same pattern appeared, but to a lesser extent. In essence, despite universal health care, the rich are doubly more able to survive heart attacks than the poor in Canada.

The study could not pinpoint the actual mechanism income played. Researchers could only surmise that wealthier people generally make better lifestyle choices. That includes the desire, ability and personal support to get therapy (let's just call it exercise) to get better, after that severe personal warning about the mortality of us all.

Canadians should not need reminding that regular exercise is the cheapest and best medicine to both prevent cardiovascular disease, and to recover from an attack. That much is medical gospel.

But an active lifestyle should not have any connection to income. Exercise is as cheap as a second-hand bike or a good pair of shoes. That, plus a desire to live.

Heart disease is the Number One killer of Canadians. About 60,000 Canadians suffer heart attacks each year, says the health Agency of Canada. Some 16,000 die right off, and the rest become the subject of 10-year survivability studies.

Last week, Canadians were also invited to take part in a national challenge to increase their own physical activity, in part by changing the way they get to work and run their daily errands.

Across the country 21,708 people registered to take part in the annual National Commuter Challenge. Logging in their daily commutes by bike, by walking, car pooling or transit, the algorithm on the Challenge web site determined participants logged over 2 million km of alternate commuting over the week, thereby reducing their collective carbon footprint by about 348 tonnes of carbon dioxide.

(I was one of the local co-ordinators, so I got regular updates on Challenge progress.)

Red Deer happened to end the week as the top city in our population category. The 104 Red Deerians registered in the challenge logged 6,385 km of commuting that did not include a single person in a single car. We relieved the air of 718 kg of additional carbon dioxide, reduced fuel consumption by 292 litres — and burned 68,000-plus calories' worth of good, clean (and cheap) exercise. Mostly, just on the way to and from work.

If someone were to offer to increase your yearly take-home pay by $500 (or more) tax-free, make your car last years longer before needing replacement, take about 10 pounds of fat off your frame in the first year and double your chances of surviving the nation's Number One deadly disease, would you at least consider it?

Walking or riding to work regularly can do that. Why should simple survival be the privilege of the rich?

River Bend too valuable to let it go

If you were entrusted with 420 acres of riverfront property within the city limits, on which millions had been spent refurbishing, what would you do with it?

Anyone who's been to the River Bend Golf and Recreation Area knows that it's not just a golf course. In addition to also having the only driving range within short reach of the city, and a mini golf links, there's the locally unique waterfall and play area at Discovery Canyon, an extensive hiking trail, cross-country ski course, and riverside pickup and embarkment area for people floating on the river. Plus, there is a footbridge linking the area to more than 100 km of recreational trails through the city.

That's a whole lot of amenities to look after, year round.

And there's also a clubhouse, restaurant, banquet hall and small sport shop on the site.

I wouldn't want to embarrass myself by even trying to estimate the value of the total package, especially considering its location. Neither would I attempt to put a dollar figure against its intrinsic value to the well-being of the city. But either calculation would figure large.

So, if the group that's been designated to look after all of this on your behalf tells you they don't have the cash flow to make payments on their business licence, plus a $1.7 million loan you've given them, what do you do?

It seems your options are pretty limited.

You could fire the whole management group, and operate River Bend yourself while you look for replacements. Good luck with that.

You could sell the entire lot, and hope to recover maybe half of what you've spent on it by now, and then hope the new owners operate the park in a way that fits the original mandate for building it in the first place. That seems like a pretty good way to both lose millions of dollars in investment value and lose control of what was once a valuable public amenity.

Or, you could trust the group you have in place, give them some leadership and guidance through a rough economic patch, and believe that this 420 acres of riverfront park and amenities are worth keeping, worth maintaining and worth a bit more judicious investment.

That's the course city council has agreed to.

The non-profit group that manages the site will continue to operate for another three years. They'll have to pay their business taxes, but the city has agreed to waive $337,800 a year in licence fees. The city will also defer receiving payment on a $1.7 million loan for improvements to the clubhouse.

The society is responsible for the operation of the whole site, but golf and non-golf activities will be managed separately. The city will pay a fee for service for the non-golf amenities, like the popular water park and trails. That comes to just over $12,000 a month for the next three years.

There will also be some capital costs to the city, for things like keeping the water park, trails and boat landing in good condition (the city owns these things, not the society).

All in all, that's a pretty significant investment in city recreation.

So, what if you don't golf all that much, or you don't have children or grandchildren of an age to enjoy the waterfall park? What if sitting on your wet butt in an inflatable raft in cold river water for several hours isn't your idea of fun? What if you don't want to drive to a park, just so you can go for a walk? What if the hills on the cross-country ski trail are a little too steep for your skill level?

If you're a taxpayer in that category, what's in this for you?

The answer is the same as I would give to taxpayers who don't do hockey, figure skating, speedskating, swimming, slow-pitch fastball, minor football or soccer. The answer is that for a city to have any pride in itself at all, it needs these things, and it needs them in a quantity and quality that makes them useful.

When an old, exhausted gravel pit on inside bend of the river right on the city doorstep comes available, you take it. You spend the money to make it as nice a golf course as you can, and you add everything to it that makes sense, so that the greatest number of people can enjoy it.

Pretty well everyone who uses the area remarks on how nice it is, and how it makes living in Red Deer better for them. That makes River Bend an asset very much worth keeping.

It also reinforces the burden on the society operating the area to find ways to have it make some financial return to the taxpayers who own it, while keeping the whole area accessible to the public. A golf course with a publicly-available clubhouse and banquet room ain't a ball diamond in a neighbourhood park; it has to find a way to pay for its upkeep.

They've got three more years to figure that out.