Red Deer 1913 — 2013 Create Celebrate Commemorate
REBELS TAKE ONE ON THE CHIN AGAINST KOOTENAY
ADAPT OR DIE Meet Bumble, the Great Horned Owl that learned how to fish
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Red Deer Advocate THURSDAY, NOV. 21, 2013
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File photos by THE CANADIAN PRESS
FROM LEFT: Prime Minister Stephen Harper, his former chief of staff, Nigel Wright, and suspended Conservative Senator Mike Duffy have differing versions of the events surrounding plans to repay Duffy’s $90,0000 in contested expenses.
‘We are good to go from the PM . . . ’ HARPER’S STAFF, TOP SENATORS COLLUDED TO WHITEWASH DUFFY REPORT: RCMP BY JENNIFER DITCHBURN AND STEVE RENNIE THE CANADIAN PRESS
SENATE SCANDAL
OTTAWA — The prime minister’s chief of staff went to Stephen Harper for approval of a secret plan that would have seen the Conservative party repay Mike Duffy’s contested expenses and whitewash a Senate report, new RCMP documents suggest. When the party balked at the ultimate total of Duffy’s $90,000 bill, however, Nigel Wright stepped in to pay the bill himself — apparently without Harper’s knowledge. Harper has called that a “deception.” But emails included in Wednesday’s explosive
TOP TORY BAGMAN TRIED TO SWAY AUDIT: RCMP A5 ANATOMY OF A SCANDAL A5 new RCMP court filings quote Wright as getting a green light from Harper when the original plan was to have the party pay. The plan was to be kept entirely secret. “I do want to speak to the PM before everything is considered final,” Wright wrote in one February dispatch. An hour later, he followed up: “We are good to go from the PM . . . ”
Asked late Wednesday whether the prime minister was asked in February to approve such a plan, Jason MacDonald, a spokeman for Harper, offered a one-word answer: “No.” The 80-page court filing provides an unprecedented look into the months of discussions that took place inside the Prime Minister’s Office and the Senate on how to deal with the Duffy problem. In several cases, the documents illustrate senators and staff clashing or badmouthing each other behind the scenes as Stephen Harper’s office intervenes directly in an effort to manipulate the activities of Senate committees.
Please see SCANDAL on Page A2
Shelter filled to capacity during cold snap BY RENÉE FRANCOEUR ADVOCATE STAFF
elled 5,500 km to make 18 trips to Calgary. Fuel cost close to $1,000. “I was lucky I could afford to do that. But there’s many families that can’t. A thousand dollars is a lot of money, but they have no choice.” Rideout was thrilled most patients in Central Alberta will now be able to avoid the stress of travel and the cost. About 80 per cent of Central Alberta cancer patients will now be able to get their full treatment in Red Deer at the new cancer centre, located at Red Red Deer Regional Hospital. Central Alberta Cancer Centre is more than 43,055 square feet — four times the size of Red Deer’s older cancer facility — and will handle breast, lung, prostate, bladder and gastrointestinal cancer and cases, as well as palliative patients with bone pain or other chronic discomforts who need symptom relief.
Central Alberta’s Safe Harbour Society for Health and Housing say they are doing as much as they can to avoid turning homeless people away from the filled-to-capacity shelter during a cold snap. Temperatures over the past few days dipped to below -20C overnight and sat at a numbing -30C or -38C with the wind chill on Wednesday morning. People’s Place was at full capacity, as it has been for most of the past few weeks, said Stacey Carmichael, director of housing and outreach services with Safe Harbour. “It’s been challenging. We have been turning folks away . . . Last night we would have had to have turned away about 12 but that wasn’t the case because we got crafty,” Carmichael said. “We can get creative and phone emergency social services or divert them over to our other shelter that might have a bed available or call the RCMP or send them to the hospital, those kinds of things. We also equip them with hefty donated winter clothing so the ones we have to turn away can survive the night in their vehicle. These are the types of the things we’re doing.” On many other nights this month, however, they have been turning away anywhere from six to 12 people who have no place to escape the cold. “Six, 12, eight or one are too many to turn away when its -29C outside,” Carmichael said. The situation for homeless this winter is more dire as funding for Safe Harbour’s seasonal adult Winter Inn program did not come through from the city’s Community Housing Advisory Board. Staff worry about people on the streets freezing to death when the weather takes such frigid turns, especially those who are extra vulnerable due to being under the influence or suffering from mental illness.
Please see TREATMENT on Page A2
Please see SHELTER on Page A2
Photo by SUSAN ZIELINSKI/Advocate staff
Premier Alison Redford and government colleagues toured a radiation vault at the new Central Alberta Cancer Centre during the official opening on Wednesday.
Cancer centre offers new corridor of treatment BY SUSAN ZIELINSKI ADVOCATE STAFF Kim Rideout remembers many days travelling white-knuckled to Calgary through snow storms to access cancer radiation treatment. Rideout, of Red Deer, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2012 when she was 44. “I was fighting cancer but I also felt like I was fighting Mother Nature and it was exhausting because she always won,” Rideout told officials who attended Wednesday’s official opening of the new $46 million Central Alberta Cancer Centre that now provides radiation treatment. “Every morning I would get up and the first thing I would do is look at the road reports.” After six rounds of chemotherapy in Red Deer, she needed 16 rounds of radiation. In total, she trav-
WEATHER 40% flurries. High -8. Low -16.
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Red Deer’s housing market robust: CMHC Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. is painting a bright picture of Red Deer’s housing sector. Story on PAGE C5
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