The Ice Bucket Challenge: great, but what will you do for us tomorrow?

There are people around the world who cannot even say Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, don't really know what it means (and perhaps don't even care that they don't), who are posting online videos of themselves dumping buckets of ice water over their heads.

And then challenging others to do the same. Or pay a donation to the ALS Association in the United States.

A lot of these people are doing both — dumping the ice water and sending a donation. The Ice Bucket Challenge is the fundraising phenomenon of the year, an example showing the potential growth of an idea in our online world.

This is the kind of thing the prophets of social media said would happen, when people use their online connectivity in an out-of-the-box way.

The box may have a short shelf life, but like a virus, it's extremely powerful.

As of this week, fundraising to the ALS Association topped $88.5 million. In the past week, they had a 10-million-dollar day. Last year, before the Ice age, their total fundraising was about $2.2 million.

Since friends of baseball team captain Pete Frates apparently sparked the phenomenon this summer, “explosive” hardly describes its growth.

A-list celebrities got involved, supermarket stores sold out of ice, and spinoffs spun off. In Gaza, people douse themselves with buckets of rubble, to support victims of bomb attacks. In India, ice is too precious, so people give a bucket of rice to a poor family instead. In Florida, an actor dumped a bucket of bullet casings over his head to protest senseless gun violence.

And the ALS Association has the makings of a permanent foundation to fund research into an incurable neurological disease that slowly strips people of their ability to make their muscles move.

All of which is fantastic.

Meanwhile, down inside the box, the grunt work of non-profit fundraising carries on.

I'm just winding down from completing another year as a committee member for an annual fundraiser for a couple of local non-profits. It's been six years now for the fundraiser bike ride that has become the Berry Architecture Wellness Ride, thanks to a naming sponsorship from an enthusiastic local business.

Before that, we sold raffle tickets for a cruise, sold cash calendars, held silent auctions, organized a road rally treasure hunt. Anything we could think of.

Forget a phenomenon like the Ice Bucket Challenge. Here's how a fundraiser works.

Our event is in August. It's a one-day event, but we begin the planning and organization in February. For some larger annual events, the planning and organization stage begins almost immediately after each event is completed.

You contact businesses and supporters for grants. Every agency that does this has a contact list, and everyone's list obviously overlaps. You secure your venues, get your licences (for an organized bike ride, you need permission from Alberta Transportation to use the road). This can take months of calls and applications.

You line up a celebrity attraction, if you can. You set up your registration system, shop for supplies, and — most important — line up volunteers.

The goal is to give your participants the best possible experience. They're the ones out there gathering their own sponsorships, from people and businesses that you don't know.

And then you rally your volunteers to make the event day run smoothly.

And then you do it again.

This is life for people supporting hundreds of local non-profits, who make your city liveable for tens of thousands of your neighbours who can't make it on their own, or for whom there isn't enough (or any) government support.

Thank goodness for volunteers, in a city of volunteers in a province that has the highest rate of volunteerism in the country.

Collectively, this work comprises Red Deer's biggest industry. By far.

The Ice Bucket Challenge has been called “slacktivism.” You really don't have to do anything. You really don't have to care about anything. You join a flash mob, post a video, send a donation (maybe), and feel good about yourself.

That's great. It really is. I hope the money finds a cure for ALS.

But every day of the year, one committee or another in Red Deer is holding another meeting, reporting on progress of who did what job, or looking for the next big idea that will get people behind their cause.

Caring is a full-time job. And there are more people doing that job than you may imagine. Joining them takes more than being willing to dump ice water on your head, while someone records it on a cell phone. Can you take that step yourself?

We don't need term limits, as much as we need active voters

When was the last time you heard a politician say something interesting during an internal party leadership campaign?

If you're not a keen follower of politics and policy, the most likely answer is: not ever.

Alberta Tory leadership candidate Jim Prentice said something interesting to a gathering of party members in Edmonton last week. He said that if he became premier, he would bring in a bill imposing term limits on provincial politicians.

Current MLAs would be grandfathered, of course, but a new MLA would be allowed a maximum of three terms, and two terms for a premier.

He also spoke of the end of single-source contracts and a doubling of the “cooling off” period for ministerial staff and public service employees (to one full year, from the current six months) who leave office, before they could return to a government paycheque in some other form.

It's strange that a candidate seeking to extend the the world's longest freely-elected parliamentary dynasty would talk about introducing Canada to the thought of term limits for elected officials. But that's not the only non-traditional thought he uttered that day.

Prentice is actually quoted as saying the government he intends to lead — which has been in office since 1971 with continuous landslide majorities — is “out of touch” with Albertans.

A quick observation: it is more than likely the government has indeed “lost touch” with the general populace. Given human nature and the nature of power elites throughout history, that's inevitable.

But unless there's been a seismic change recently, you could also suggest Prentice is making a massive misreading of the Alberta psyche.

For all the talk about our so-called “independent, free-thinking Alberta spirit” the reality is that Alberta voters have never wanted a new broom in government, or a rollover of new people with fresh ideas.

What Alberta has wanted from government, ever since confederation, was to just hand the keys to a populist leader, and to walk away. If we want a change, we'll call you. And we almost never do.

The globe will experience major earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis. Entire countries fall apart and disappear, with new countries springing up in their place. Entire species go into extinction and the world's climate can change.

But Albertans do not change governments.

And Jim Prentice wants to bring in term limits, to institutionalize change? Just who is out of touch here?

Peter Lougheed led the Alberta Tories for 20 years. He was premier for 14 years and extremely popular the entire time.

Before he took power, Social Credit had ruled Alberta for 36 years, all but 11 years of that under Ernest Manning.

Between the Socred and the Tory eras, Alberta voters have decided only one change in government since 1935, for gosh sakes. Just one.

Even party insiders will agree the last full term of Ralph Klein's 14-year tenure as premier was less than dynamic, but that's still a far sight longer than the eight years he would have been allowed under the proposal by Jim Prentice. And right to the end, he was always popular with Alberta voters.

The truth is, Albertans don't like change. Up to today, perhaps.

One Central Canadian columnist remarked a while back that whoever wins this leadership race, that person had better be able to walk on water (like Lougheed and Klein), or he will drown.

Perhaps Prentice is trying to change the water's depth.

All the candidates wishing to be Alberta's next premier are working hard to put new product into the Alberta Progressive Conservative package. Just enough change to satisfy Alberta's small historical appetite for it.

But anyone looking for a new broom to sweep the dust out of the Alberta Legislature will first need to convince voters that it's worthwhile for them to keep one hand on the keys to the building.

I'm not sure Prentice can force that, through legislated term limits. This is a responsibility Alberta voters need to take on themselves. If they want it.

'Undecided' on Michener makes sense — but not for long

Of the candidates campaigning to become leader of the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party and our next premier, Jim Prentice happens to be the only one who makes sense on the issue of what's to become of Michener Centre. He says he's undecided.

When you think about it, until a judicial review is completed in November, any position on the government's earlier decision to close the place is moot. But as the months have passed since last year's announcement that the remaining severely handicapped residents (at first reported to be 125) would be moved to new homes, the situation becomes more of a fait accompli than a policy point.

Since then, in consultation with families and guardians, some residents have been moved to new homes. This week, at least one more resident was scheduled to move to a group home outside of Red Deer, to live closer to relatives.

Prentice says he wants to make a private tour of the remaining residences and talk to families affected by potential moves, and then determine what he'd do going forward, if he's elected premier.

A good choice, even if not deciding is a sort of decision.

Let's look at what happens when an unsupportable decision gets made.

Fellow leadership candidate Ric McIver said last week he would cancel the plan to close Michener. More, he would give those who have already moved out, the opportunity to return.

This, he says, fulfills a government promise made years ago that all residents whose families and guardians wished them to stay in their known and comfortable environments, could stay.

In every discussion we must note the people we are talking about are aging, frail and at risk of some level of personal trauma when big changes are made in their lives.

The second part of his promise makes no sense. The moves made so far were negotiated, planned and made at no small cost. They were agreed moves. What is gained by going through that process twice?

The first part is not supportable for the long term, either. No government can keep a 300-acre twin campus facility open indefinitely in the centre of a city, for 125 people. The buildings are generations old and must cost hundreds of thousands a year just to sit there. It's not good stewardship of that land.

That sounds cruel. Perhaps it would be kinder to spend ten or twenty million to build new, proper housing consolidating these residents elsewhere, so the white elephant of the vast majority of the centre could be shut down. If that's so, is it really different than moving people to existing care spaces, probably closer to families?

Candidate Thomas Lakaszuk would keep Michener as it is for current residents, and possibly even expand its scope as housing for people with disabilities, mental health issues and others.

Has this idea been considered and costed out? Yes, it has. That's why the decision to close Michener was made in the first place. We don't institutionalize people anymore. And if we did, it would be in better facilities than exist now at Michener Centre.

If Michener must close, Lakaszuk says current residents could stay, up to a reasonable point. Managers that Albertans pay six-figure salaries to decide that “reasonable point” have already done so.

That doesn't mean the managers are automatically right. But someone has to study things and make recommendations. The work of these professionals should not be summarily dropped as part of an election campaign.

So, not deciding a policy point on Michener Centre's future right now looks like a pretty good idea.

I don't want to suggest the “reasonable point” at which housing these frail people in our care, on 300 acres of city centre land is no longer reasonable. Is it 50? 20? Just one?

That's why governments pay big dollars for professional managers.

In November, the courts will decide if the government was out of line in breaking a solemn promise to families of severely disabled people that their loved ones would be cared for at Michener for the rest of their lives.

Meanwhile, one at a time, some people are being moved to new quarters, with the agreement of their families and guardians.

However cold and uncaring things may seem to be now, sitting back and waiting for the passage of time to decide for us — is that really the best plan we've got?

An economic case for gimme gimme

I don't generally like debates in print between individuals. I say readers ought to have the last word. Exceptions can be made, though, when the public record needs correcting.

This is the case with a recent letter to the Advocate taking issue with my proposal that it's worthwhile spending public money on bike infrastructure. The concept was too easily dismissed with a derisive “gimme gimme.” There was no insight in my argument, the letter said.

Well, allow me to provide some numbers, if not insight.

The proportion of non-car commutes is small, but rising every year. A study released in Edmonton and Calgary last week points to a drop in the number of Albertans aged 15-24 who hold a driver's licence (from 90 per cent in 1991, to about 75 per cent to day).

Getting a licence and owning a car are too expensive and bothersome for a growing contingent of people. Other options have gotten more safe, accessible and pleasant.

About two thirds of Canadians tell pollsters they would like to use a bike for their daily commutes more often. The other third is divided between hard-core riders and people who wouldn't ride a bike if you paid them. (Which, as a matter of fact, is just what would happen if they did ride. Please read on.)

Those same polls show 82 per cent Canadian support for public spending on infrastructure to make cycling safe. The top barrier to cycling, we are told, is concerns around safety. Make cycling safe, and more people will ride.

You could spend days studying reports that come up on a search for the economic benefits of cycling infrastructure. I will cite just few highlights.

• A report by Richard Campbell and Margaret Wittgens in 2004 titled The Business Case for Active Transport is a Canadian study that echoes many other international studies calculating the economic benefits of cycling infrastructure. Savings to health care was found to be a top benefit.

Just over 2.5 per cent of total health care expenses result from poor physical activity. Cycling and walking in daily commutes is the easiest and cheapest way to increase activity. Campbell & Wittgens report each one per cent increase in physical activity in the general population equals $25 million saved in health care costs nationally.

They cite a potential 32 per cent savings in costs related to colon cancers and 35 per cent savings in costs related to Type 2 diabetes, if Canada achieved 15 per cent of all commutes being active (biking and walking), which is the current rate in Victoria.

If all of Canada walked and biked like they do in Victoria, taxpayers would save $178 million in health care costs. Every year. Gimme gimme.

• Studies worldwide say bike commuters generally arrive at work more on time, take fewer sick days and are more productive than inactive people. Workplaces that support physical activity among staff report on average $513 return per year per worker, over inactive workers. Gimme gimme.

• Campbell & Wittgens say total savings to Canadian municipalities in road repairs (4 cents for every kilometre ridden by cyclists), plus reductions in parking subsidies, impact of tourism, increased retail sales in pedestrian and bike-friendly areas, boosted property values of homes near bike infrastructure and more) adds up to about $3.6 billion a year in Canada today.

If we were all like Victoria, cities and their residents would have about $7 billion a year extra to spend on things other than closing roads every summer to repave them, building costly parkades and the rest. Gimme gimme.

• The cost of traffic collisions, considering all effects to property and people was $10.5 billion in 1998. At our current rate of not using cars for commutes, we save $45 million a year, because collisions not involving cars cost way less. At the “Victoria” rate, those savings would be $301 million a year. That's money in peoples' pockets and a whole lot less grief in our lives. Gimme gimme.

• Parking spaces costs thousands of dollars a year to buy land for, build and maintain. At the rate Canadians leave their cars at home now, they collectively save municipalities $1.28 billion a year in direct parking costs, plus tax subsidies for parking spaces that aren't built because we don't need them. The “Victoria” rate would be $2.47 billion a year. Gimme gimme.

• The impact of all this adds up to jobs when the savings are spent. Per 100,000 households, that's 462 jobs created by that new disposable income. It would be about 900 jobs if we were all like Victoria. Open your car window and say “gimme gimme” to someone who can't find a job.

• Homes near bike infrastructure sell faster and for more money than homes that are not. In Surrey B.C., the differential ranges from very small (one per cent) to a whopping 20 per cent over the same type of homes, but in neighbourhoods that are only driveable. That's instant equity. Gimme gimme.

• The European Cyclists Federation tallied direct and indirect benefits of cycling infrastructure investment in the Eurozone at 400 Euros per person, per year. That's about 200 billion Euros, or the entire GDP of Denmark, per year. That's at just 7.4 per cent of all trips in Europe being made by bike. But look at that number. Gimme gimme.

The people coming out to the RDABC bike ride Sept. 13 are not just a bunch of takers. They are taxpayers. Bike commuters put more into Red Deer's economy than the cost of a few bike lanes — and a lot more than people give them credit for.

Check bikereddeer.com for details on the ride. Maybe you'd like to have a slice of those benefits for yourself.

Recycling needs to pay, to work

If your European vacation involves much walking or cycling off the major tourist routes, you will find community trash recycling sites at pretty regular intervals.

Large bins are usually set up where residents separately toss their waste paper, glass, and metals. This is in addition to local neighbourhood garbage pickup, as far as I could tell.

A good idea, I thought, except that most people need to drive to the site as a separate errand in their daily lives. Such a program likely wouldn't get much compliance here.

Visiting Miami, I noticed pickup sites had separate dumpster bins for paper, metals (including beverage cans — there are no deposits and no depots to recover them), glass and plastics, as well as for household garbage.

Good idea, I thought. At least there's centralized collection. Except when the garbage truck arrived, all the bins were dumped in together and taken to the mountainous landfill north of the city. Compliance from citizens, but not the city.

So if Red Deer's Waste Management Master Plan isn't rolling out on schedule, the only waste we're still creating is the waste itself. We may be not be recycling as much as we thought we would be at this point, but at least we're not wasting money creating systems that are not used.

As of last year, we were supposed to be able to throw almost all of our plastic waste into the Blue Box, where it could be ground up and sent off to a plant to be made into new things. Not quite.

A report to city council last week says that part of our recycling effort is delayed, because there's no secure market in which to sell ground-up mixed plastics. So we're stuck with only recycling the white No. 2 plastic jugs, such as those that have the vinegars and cooking oils we use.

Plastic milk containers carry a deposit, and you can get your money back on them when you take them with your other returnables to the depot.

But if there's no back end market, there can be no front end collection program, and these things just end up in the landfill.

Years back, when thinking green and urban recycling programs were much in their infancy, good old (and now-defunct) Alberta Report denounced efforts to reduce landfill waste as a waste of money.

They pointed to mountains of paper, pyramids of crushed glass and piles of plastics with no place to go. Another do-gooder scheme to milk money from the taxpayer, the magazine said.

The campaign drained support for more such programs, and set back efforts to curb our municipal waste problems.

Meanwhile, Zhang Yin became a self-made billionaire buying huge bales of compacted waste paper at U.S. west coast ports, shipping it to her native China, to be recycled into the boxes that contain all that stuff we buy from China.

If you can make money recycling waste, recycling works.

Right now, Chinese recyclers who used to buy ground-up mixed plastics are no longer doing so. And a local scheme to convert them into diesel fuel and electrical power just devolved into a bad dream.

No financially-viable end-use for what is essentially a resource, no program to collect it. So most of the plastics in our homes and businesses will all eventually end up in the landfill.

Right now, plastics makes up about 12 per cent of the volume going to our landfill. Paper — despite our Blue Box program — makes up about 20 per cent.

The largest portion of our garbage is organics. Some of that can be composted at home, but overall, compostables are not a very big slice of the total waste pile (it's a small part of the 30 per cent of garbage produced by residences — still very useful in the garden, but not an earth-saver on its own).

Fortunately, there are local efforts to make it financially worthwhile to convert organic waste into fuel. We wish those efforts far more success than that achieved by Plasco, whose name is not uttered with favour in municipal offices.

Alberta produces a lot of garbage — 1,122 kg per person, against a national average of 777 kg, according to city documents. Red Deerians each produce 812 kg of garbage a year, and the goal is to reduce that to 500 by 2023.

Most of that has to be achieved on the commercial side, which produces 60 per cent of all Red Deer's waste.

But it's not going to happen until someone can make a good buck doing it.

So, as reported Monday, Red Deer is behind the master plan's schedule for recycling plastics.

Not great, but better than creating recycling programs whose products have no end-use, or setting out separate bins where people self-sort their recyclables, which are simply dumped together in a mountain of trash anyway.

Redford takes one for a desperate team

Albertans can now see what desperation looks like. Former premier Allison Redford got a 77 per cent endorsement at her last leadership review, but today she officially has no friends.

About the kindest things said about her when the news broke Wednesday of her resignation as MLA: people expressed disappointment over “lost promise” followed by a quick “it's time to move forward.”

Current premier Dave Hancock got a preview of a report from auditor general Merwan Saher, that was to be released publicly Thursday. Parts of it had already been leaked to CBC News — which in itself is a measure of how the Tories have lost control of the internal workings of government.

The leak reported that for at least a dozen flights on government aircraft taken by Redford when she was premier, the seats were booked by “ghost passengers” whose names were removed before takeoff, so that Redford could fly alone.

If that's true, then we're looking at fraud, right? That's why Hancock quickly called in the RCMP to do its own investigation.

In some cases, the entourage of fellow MLAs and other officials going to some far-flung event in the province needed to be booked on another flight, or even — gasp — had to drive.

For our government, booking a second flight is no problem. Alberta has a fleet of four aircraft at its beck and call, a situation unique in Canada. B.C. and Saskatchewan, for instance, don't have any government aircraft; when flights are needed, they charter. It's cheaper. And more transparent.

Redford didn't go out and buy those planes. Ralph Klein did — and he and his government used them. A lot. And you can reasonably surmise not always strictly on official business.

But last week, a poll in Calgary voted former premier Klein as Alberta's greatest citizen.

People everywhere are talking about the PC Party of Alberta's sense of entitlement. Redford didn't invent that. She likely used (abused?) it egregiously, but in the broad sense, she wasn't doing anything that hadn't been done by others, for years.

The difference? The leaders before her had friends. Today, Allison Redford looks pretty alone in the world.

I say that's a function of desperation within the party.

She amply deserves it, but I think Redford is taking one for the team here. A person with the arrogance and entitlement that has been attributed to Redford wouldn't give up her seat without taking the transition allowance due to her. I's a $179,000 hit to her own retirement plan. But she did it.

It's icing on a farewell cupcake for a party that wants to distance itself from its own past. Not one party member is coming boldly forward with any regrets for Redford here. Everyone wants to show that somehow the leopard has changed its spots, that the party now is something other than what it has been.

Not the party that became the longest, most secure dynasty in western democratic history. Not the party that's only the fourth government since Alberta joined Confederation.

But a party that is trying to convince itself — and us — that it can deny how decades of power might be a corrupting influence.

A desperately tall order.

I think it's quite amazing the restraint being shown by the opposition parties at this point. Most likely, they're saving their arrows for a time after the auditor general's report (which Redford herself had ordered) is fully digested, or after the RCMP investigation (which her successor had ordered) is completed.

Until all the facts are in, that is.

Not so for the PCs. The bloodletting is well under way. All the party leadership hopefuls are crying “Not me! Not me!” and voters are going to see a campaign to convince us that former premier Allison Redford alone is the author of her demise (which, in large measure she is, but by no means completely).

In her letter of resignation, Redford said “mistakes were made.” Not “I'm sorry.” She did say she takes responsibility for her decisions, which is easier to say than “I'm sorry.”

Right now, that doesn't sound like enough to absolve the party that created the environment in which she rose to be leader.

At this point it looks to me like Redford is taking one for the team. I wonder if the team, which chose her, then left her friendless, appreciates the gesture.

Follow Greg Neiman's blog at Readersadvocate.blogspot.ca

Lament for a bike lane lost — why we need your help to find solutions for cyclists

Early this summer, city road crews brought out their grinder and erased the lines and road symbols on the bike lane on 39^th Street. Just one more overpayment on the so-called $800,000 pilot project looking to examine solutions for safe, accessible bike commuter transit in the city.

The money was spent; expensive lines were painted — and more expensively erased — but the pilot project itself never really existed. Other than the torrent of online rants to the city's web site and calls of outrage to city staff and councillors about the project, no data was collected.

As with other lanes similarly erased in other parts of the city, there was zero enforcement of the painted lines anyway, so they may as well have never existed, even as an experiment to see if they could work.

So was the whole project a waste of time and money? Only if you look at the erasures, and only if you want to believe the issue is dead.

There are still parts of the pilot project in existence, some of them freshened up with new paint. Parts of Phase One of the pilot, the unheralded “bike lanes to nowhere” are still there. For the most part unnoticed by auto traffic, which flows as it has always done.

But of the project as a whole, the section on 39^th Street was a special case.

That particular street directly feeds students to two elementary schools and two middle schools. It is a regional neighbourhood passage to three high schools, and a link to bike lanes leading downtown. As well, it is a link eastward to bike lanes leading out of town, to some of the most favoured recreational and fitness cycling routes in all of Central Alberta.

It still is, though without the (unenforced) protection of even painted lines, cycling there when the traffic is busy takes a certain amount of confidence. You can forgive parents for adding to that area's well-documented traffic congestion by driving their kids to school.

That's why 39^th Street, along with several other sections of city pavement, remain of special interest to groups like the Red Deer Association for Bicycle Commuting (of which I happen to be president).

You can look at the erasure of the bike lanes on 39^th as a waste, a loss. Or you can look at it as an opportunity to try something else, that works better.

The documented experience of cities around the world shows that the many benefits of increasing bike traffic are best achieved when solutions are introduced by increments, with different solutions used in different areas, depending on local conditions. Experience also shows that physical separation of cars, bikes and pedestrian traffic works best for all concerned.

The part of 39^th Street where the lanes have been erased wold be an ideal place to demonstrate lessons learned from the experience of other cities.

For those few blocks, we could make use of the space between sidewalks (where they exist) and the road, to add a road-level bike path separated from traffic by a physical barrier — a curb, series of pylons or series of parking barriers.

No space to traffic would be lost. No conflict with pedestrians would occur. Safety laws would become more clear, especially at intersections, which are the greatest danger zones in any city.

Bikes would be off the sidewalks, and auto traffic would plainly see them at intersections, which become zones of shared use. Bikes and pedestrians would have the right of way moving straight through, with auto traffic waiting for the intersection to be clear before turning.

Would there be a cost to trying this? Of course. But given the many millions spent just this summer on city road improvements, with many millions more planned for the years to come, when did safe traffic flow come with such a low price tag, that trying this solution in this short section of the city becomes untenable?

Especially when this idea has demonstrated itself to work well in many other cities?

RDABC and city cyclists haven't “lost” with the erasure of the lines on 39^th. Our “to-do” list just got a little longer. There is still plenty of room for civil discussion in this city, and lots of opportunity to find ways for Red Deer to realize the well-proven benefits of increased bike commuting.

That increase is going to happen anyway, with or without a serious look at the means to make this safe, accessible and pleasant for all.

On Saturday, Sept. 13, RDABC will host its fifth annual bike parade. We will meet at 10 a.m. in the parking lot of the Cultural Services Centre at 3827 39^th Street.

We'll ride westward, down a part of the area where the bike lanes were erased, across 40^th Avenue, to link up with a bike lane that still exists. We'll follow it to Spruce Drive, and from there to City Hall Park.

There will be the usual speechification, and a chance for people to meet other cyclists, and to join RDABC.

And with your help, the quest for workable solutions will continue.