UCP needs to get to work on the big issues in province
By Lethbridge Herald on June 10, 2023.
OUR OPINION
The election is over and now it’s time for the provincial government to get back to work on the big issues facing Alberta.
Obviously quality healthcare is a top priority for everyone but the shortage of physicians in Lethbridge and the province is an issue that’s affected the entire country for a multitude of years.
Alberta has to be competitive if it wants to attract general physicians and specialists just as local police departments have to be competitive to catch the attention of recruits graduating college.
It has to be acknowledged there is competition for many qualified workers in this country.
When it comes to healthcare, perhaps there needs to be much less red tape so physicians who have worked overseas can more easily set up practices here.
We need to see progress on the cath lab that was promised before the election for Lethbridge. Is this going ahead as promised? Let’s hear some details from the provincial government when it gets back to work.
Is the promised SCAN unit still in the works for the city?
Will the UCP continue to guarantee Albertans won’t have to pay out of pocket for a doctor?
And what about any funding for a design study on a third bridge that has been requested? Is there any chance of that coming?
Will the UCP extend the pause on the provincial gas tax?
What about crime and homelessness? These are huge issues in Lethbridge where behaviours of some have many concerned, especially in the downtown core.
Will the province implement its “Safe Streets Action Plan?”
Will the province move ahead with its so-called compassionate intervention act which would let people with severe addictions be forced into treatment?
Public safety is paramount and we need to see the province is taking crime seriously. We need to see that the recovery-focused addictions strategy is being put into place so Lethbridge residents can have some hope.
The numbers of people hanging around in doorways and alleyways downtown is getting alarming. We’ve recently heard about gang activity going on in broad daylight with people chasing others on one occasion down alleys with bats and other weapons. People in Lethbridge should feel safe when they come downtown to work, shop or play. Many don’t and won’t until definitive action is taken to address this situation.
Encampment season hasn’t even started yet but there are arguably more people sleeping rough downtown than ever before.
Some feel in this community that another brick-and-mortar supervised consumption site is the answer, some feel the government should be handing out “safe” supplies of free drugs to better ensure addicts aren’t getting contaminated product.
But how can any illicit drug be considered safe? Even alcohol, the most widely used drug of all, isn’t safe as study after study about health issues shows. So cocaine, meth and fentanyl are safe if they’re pure?
What we need is a government that acts on its words, that takes the issues of Albertans seriously and makes a concerted effort to deal with its problems.
We need solid environmental protections to make sure our water supplies aren’t contaminated by mining activity, we need infrastructure to make conversion to electric vehicles more palatable to the average consumer.
If government wants people to protect the environment and lessen their carbon footprint, government needs to help ensure there are enough charging stations in the province to lower range anxiety of those who feel reluctant to buy an electric. People can’t be expected to use less oil when they still need to commute or travel. Infrastructure is critical for getting Albertans to go electric.
We have so many needs in this province and now that the election is over, we need action.
24-23
Great questions.
I agree . . . it is time to implement the promises made!
In several polls that were NOT done by the city, who appeared to skew the polls by wording the questions to get the outcome they desired, over 70% percent of the 1,000 or close to 1,000 who responded they don’t feel safe coming to the downtown area.
You can have a well planned encampment strategy, but as proven in other centers, and now being realized by others, you need enforcement of the laws to make it effective.
The costs of these issues in this province alone have cost taxpayers and continue to cost taxpayers billions annually . . . money being burned up by band-aid solutions and programs that only enable addicts to slowly kill themselves while gangs and organized crime increase, increasing drug dealing, human trafficking,illegal weapons sales, stolen goods brokering, etc. that all impact the stress on our undermanned police forces, EMS/fire responders, while devastating families and impacting businesses.
The encampment policy will only work if loitering/vagrancy laws are enforced on our streets and our police are aleady stretched . . . we need to bolster their support somehow.
Portland has made many of the mistakes BC made, including the decriminalization of drugs, which failed and saw an increase of 56% in fatal overdoses just in the first year it was implemented, and those stats continue to increase.
They have had a major encampment issued, but now Council there has moved to make outlaw encampments in steps. The first being to outlaw daytime encampments in parks, public areas, etc.
They allowed the issues to grow so large that it is now a monumental task to resolve.
Lethbridge needs to be firm not to allow it and if all the promises and policies are implemented, we will slowly recover!
Watch this:
Portland’s Meltdown: A Progressive Experiment That ‘Has Gone Colossally Bad’https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9478Uqe7co
Read this:
https://www.opb.org/article/2023/06/07/portland-oregon-approves-ban-daytime-street-camping-homeless/
Then watch what is happening in our own country due to bad decisions.
‘Canada is Dying’ gets political, calling out political parties for their continued poor desicions which cost Canadians billions of dollars annually, but ignore the politics in this documentary and see what is really happening on our streets. It is factual! This is better than the Vancouver is Dying by Aaron Gunn.
We need to stop this before it takes over our city!
Watch ‘Canada is Dying’:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RaWzJUeT0o
It is time to see those campaign promises implemented!
There is not a campaign promise that will save us from ourselves. Neudorf, Phillips all demand safer streets, they know exactly how to solve that problem, just as Marshal Smith (chief of staff to UCP Premier) knows how to solve this problem. But, is it worth the backwash that would be created by the non-profits? Obviously not or they would have done something by now!
Every city in Canada is going through the exact same problem. Why is that? Because we do the exact same thing in each city, that is why. If you intend to live for free off the taxpayer, as addicts do. Then taxpayers should have an input that is totally separate from the nonprofits.
Without that input, you get the same result over and over again. Non profits like the setup, they depreciate land by supporting the existing process, they get to purchase the same land after killing businesses and employers/employees and by creating an ever increasing problem guarantee ever increasing subsidies from the Fed/Prov and taxpayers.
So we pay these people to destroy our society and then get handed the bill!
All the police forces in the world, all the Political promises ever made cannot fix this. It is why no one has, and no one wants too, period!
Actions speak louder than words!
Lets see action! While the province has plans to implement we must also look at the City administration.
Another ill thought out plan to build a playground for over $660,000 for children in an addict controlled park, where multiple fatal overdoses happened/happen within 150 feet of the planned playground and without careful thought for the safety of the children, who now are the guinea pigs in this plan to force people into the park, blindly believing the addicts will move along. It won’t work and failed in the US and in BC!
How many lawsuits will this bring? This cost adds to the money blown that is taxpayer dollars, not free money as well
Perhaps the administration has been making too many trips to the cannabis stores and their heads are fogged by THC!
They allowed the addicts to take over this large, beautiful park and destroy it and instead of taking it back, they spent over $10 million to ‘revitalize’ 3rd avenue and another $1.4 million for Festival Square, which is a little end piece of a city block, while the addicts are allowed to control the park, sleeping in it, urinating/defecating where they want, writing graffiti on all the buildings, damaging the infrastructure/foilage, leaving needles and garbage all over and taking over the tables.
The addicts have the park and we get a small piece of a street!
That is our city brains at work!
I forgot to add that I went downtown to see their great celebration event funded by the taxpayer and put on bySAAG and the DBRZ I assume to celebrate the first year. I watched for 4 hours and at no time did I see 100 people there and often half of that. What part do you not understand as you continue to blow taxpayer dollars that people don’t feel safe downtown.
Clean up the issues on our streets, then revitalize! Money just doesn’t fall from the sky- it comes out of our pockets!
Thank you for a great letter of your opinions which touched on so many points, facts and actions needed. It is time all levels of government worked to put an end to this crisis that impacts everyone.
Most of the issues downtown are never reported and many are not aware. They come downtown, take a stroll and then think they have seen it all and now know it all.
I do applaud the police, the Watch, fire/EMS and all those on the front lines dealing with the issues directly which include D.O.T., security, Clean Sweep, etc., who are often never acknowledged for all of the hard work and jobs they face in trying to deal with issues downtown . . . they have a very tough job and do so everyday, with no thanks. They need our support!
Thank you for the great work you are doing everyday!
SCS’s safe supply, decriminalization are all admissions of failure of a system that those that preach Harm Reduction insisted worked. It does not, and never will.
So as time goes on and we are continually confronted with failure after failure in Harm Reduction we get calls for more and more escape clauses.
I have beaten this horse to death, the response “eyerollers” who know better even though what they know has failed over and over again. But we have a group of bleeding hearts who must hold the hands of those that deserve stricter measures, and ignore their own community as it struggles to survive.
I find it more than interesting that “we” embark on the same failures of every other city under the instructions of a single person in Edmonton (Marshal Smith) who believes he can fix everything, doing the same thing but under a different banner.
So his position NO SCS’s but he slides in OPS’s. An OPS and SCS are identical, in fact an OPS has somewhat greater powers. One is provincially licensed and the other Federal. So Smith and others stand firm NO SCS (which I agree with) then they slide an OPS into the backdoor of the Blood Tribe Shelter by the railway tracks on Stafford?
We then get the groups that make all the money serving addicts in our downtown. The last thing they want to see is an idea, concept, or development that removes addicts from the City. So rather than support a “facility” outside the city, where DO NO HARM actually applies to more than an Addict. They eyeroll in unison knowing full well they are about to shaft the entire city businesses and residents with their OLD IDEA.
They rally together and say “you can’t tell people where to live”! Really? We tell people where they are going to eat everyday. We tell people if they want shelter, they can’t sleep in the Holiday Inn, its the shelter or the streets! If you move the soup kitchen to the Parellel Church, how many skeletons do you think would be hanging onto the old soup kitchen door? So as long as you are destroying other peoples lives its acceptable?
Its okay because as long as you are percieved to be doing God’s work it makes it so much more enjoyable and acceptable to crush your fellow Lethbridgian who is struggling with a business downtown, as your God’s work superecedes his/her/they/them/it and his/her/they/them/it employees livelihoods.
As for vagrants, addicts, tent cities, crime, get used to it because the comeback is; well we are a city now, and we should expect it! I am truly amazed how at 99,000 it would be unacceptable but at 100,001 people its expected and the eyerolling continues down its idiotic path.
Love the stupidity of calling on the Province to Save us, yet we demonstrate daily we are too lazy to save ourselves! We only have one group to blame, not the Feds, not the Province, its us, we are allowing this, remember that!
Leth Herald, call for a rally of those that oppose this stupidity and watch how no one shows up. Complacency will kill our society and you are watching it unfold at lightning speed, but not a whisper from anyone of size to influence City Hall! So it must be what Lethbridge wants, right?