LET THE GAMES BEGIN
EVERYTHING IS BETTER WITH BACON
Rebels prepare to open season B4
Even cupcakes and ice cream B1
CENTRAL ALBERTA’S DAILY NEWSPAPER
BREAKING NEWS ONLINE AT WWW.REDDEERADVOCATE.COM
WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 19, 2012
OFF AND RUNNING
Photo by JEFF STOKOE/Advocate staff
About 3,000 school children from across Central Alberta were expected to take part in the annual Dawe / St. Patrick’s Fun Run Tuesday in Red Deer. Here the grade five girls division starts their three-km run from Heritage Ranch to Great Chief Park. For the past 31 years G.H. Dawe School and St. Patrick’s Community Schools have joined forces to organize this fall run for students in grades 4 to 12. See related slide show at reddeeradvocate.com.
Pork industry facing disaster HIGH FEED PRICES COUPLED WITH LOW HOG PRICES A POTENTIALLY FATAL MIX FOR PRODUCERS BY HARLEY RICHARDS ADVOCATE BUSINESS EDITOR The province’s pork industry is facing a crisis it may not survive, warns an Alberta Pork director who farms near Bentley. Will Kingma of Kingdom Farms said high feed costs and low prices are squeezing many producers out of business. “We really are afraid that our industry could be irreparably damaged,” said Kingma, who has a 2,000sow farrow-to-finish operation. “We’re actually calling it a disaster.” Last week, Big Sky Farms of Saskatchewan and Puratone Corp. of Manitoba — two of Canada’s biggest hog producers — filed for bankruptcy protection. There have also been casualties in Alberta, said Kingma, where some producers are selling their breeding stock. “I think I could comfortably say that there will be
15,000 sows or more leaving the industry in Alberta, because of the hardship of the feed costs. “That number is probably going to be significantly larger.” Those are sows the industry can ill afford to lose, said Don Brookbank, Olymel’s vice-president of procurement for Western Canada. The Alberta herd had already shrunk from a high of more than 200,000 sows to 135,000 as of July, he pointed out. “That’s a significant reduction, when you consider that feeds through to the market pigs. “We’re certainly concerned.” The problem stems from drought conditions in the United States and Central Canada, which has resulted in crop failures and high feed prices. Meanwhile, pig prices have been moving in the opposite direction — dropping about 25 per cent since the end of June, said Chris Panter, a livestock market analyst with Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development. Panter attributes this slide to a sell-off of sows in the United States, where producers are also being
Shearing denied parole BY BRENDA KOSSOWAN ADVOCATE STAFF Parole has been denied again for a Bowden Institution inmate accused of one of the most heinous crimes in Canadian history. David Shearing, 53, received the harshest sentence that had ever been given for second-degree murder after confessing in 1984 to shooting to death an entire family, including two children, their parents and their grandparents. The family had been camping at Wells Gray Provincial Park in the B.C. interior, north of Kamloops. While the court at the time was led to understand that Shearing had been motivated by robbery, he later revealed a much more sinister purpose. Shearing — who now uses his mother’s maiden name Ennis — confirmed during his parole hearing at Bowden Institution on Tuesday that he shot and killed George and Edith Bentley, and their daughter and her husband, Jackie and Bob Johnson in August 1982. He then held Johnson’s daughters, Janet, 13, and Karen, 11, captive in a cabin for six days, sexually assaulting Janet numerous times before also shooting and killing both girls. The charred remains of all six victims were found in a burned-out car early in the school year, weeks after the family was reported missing. Shearing said during his National Parole Board hearing that he had been motivated by violent sexual fantasies. He had revealed previously that he had shot and killed the parents and grandparents to gain access to their little girls. He told the two-member parole board that he re-
PLEASE RECYCLE
alized after six days that his actions had to come to a conclusion. “I knew, if I let them go, that I would be held accountable for everything I had done.” Shearing apologized for the pain he has caused their families and friends and described the steps he has made to change his life and his desire to spend the balance of his time in the service of his community. Supporting him were his wife Heather — a former support worker who married him 18 years ago — and a friend from his youth who promised to provide spiritual, material and financial support. The parole board members gave Shearing credit for the steps he has taken, but said they don’t believe he is ready to be released into the community and are still concerned that he may offend again. Their decision was guided in part by the gravity of his offences, which were described in the decision as a sharp escalation of his previous crimes, including break-and-enter and thefts. The decision states that the board still feels Shearing needs to complete a second high-intensity sex offenders program and that if he is ever to be released, it needs to be done gradually rather than directly from a medium-security prison into either day or full parole. The board also found the plans he has made for his release to be detailed, but inadequate. Surviving relatives and friends who attended the hearing said afterward that they don’t buy Shearing’s apology or his expressions of remorse, even though it was the first time he had ever told them he was sorry for what he did.
Please see PAROLE on Page A2
WEATHER
INDEX
Sunny. High 22. Low 3.
Four sections Alberta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A3 Business. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C3,C4 Canada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A5 Classified . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . D1-D5 Comics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C6 Entertainment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C5 Sports. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B4-B6
FORECAST ON A2
hammered by high feed costs. That’s boosted the supply of pork in North America and pushed prices down. Brookbank doesn’t think sows are the problem, pointing out that those animals go into a different meat market than do market pigs. But there has been a big year-over-year increase in the number of market hogs sold in the U.S., likely because producers can’t afford to keep them. “They’re moving them through as quickly as possible to avoid that high feed cost.” Regardless, the combination of high input costs and low selling prices is squeezing the life out of Alberta’s pork industry, said Kingma. He estimates that producers here will lose $50 to $70 per pig. “Our industry actually is, I think, in jeopardy of complete collapse. It’s a pretty sensitive situation we’re in.”
Please see CRISIS on Page A2
HOMELESSNESS
City programs doing ‘tremendous’ good BY CRYSTAL RHYNO ADVOCATE STAFF Red Deer continues to do its part for people who do not have a place to call home. On Tuesday, the Red Deer and District Community Foundation and the City of Red Deer released the latest numbers from its third annual Report to the Community: Homelessness and Affordable Housing Initiatives. According to the report, 363 individuals, of whom 133 were new clients, were housed or supported in housing through provincial and federal grants. Four homes were found for four youth and 154 youth were sheltered or received services. “I think the programs have done a tremendous amount of good,” said Roxana Nielsen Stewart, housing program co-ordinator for the city. She was unable to provide comparable numbers for the previous year but she said they did house more new clients in the latest period. “It’s been a learning curve to appropriately house people in the right housing units and they have been very successful with that. So we feel very good about the progress we have made to date.” The report covers the period between April 1, 2011, and March 31, 2012, and gives an overview of the programs, services and community activities in the city, with the intent of ending homelessness.
Please see REPORT on Page A2 CANADA
BUSINESS
WATCHDOG MULLS VOTER DATABANK RULES
DEMAND FOR ALL ENERGY GROWING
The federal election watchdog is examining whether regulations are needed to control the use — and abuse — of the massive voter identification databanks assembled by political parties. A5
A speaker at an oil and gas conference says all fuels will be necessary to meet global energy demand over the next 20 to 25 years, even with growth in renewable energy demand. C3