Alberta

"Campers Village first opened in 1963 in Edmonton as a storefront for Northwest Tent & Awning, which since 1921 had been selling and manufacturing supplies and basic shelter for settlers new to Alberta via their factory on Jasper Avenue in downtown Edmonton."

As camping became more popular, the company evolved to offer recreational supplies. In 2021, it rebranded as Breathe Outdoors “to promote the many benefits of getting outside, exploring, trying something new and taking a moment to simply breathe outdoors.”

🌈

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/alberta/article-alberta-insider-rcmp-launch-investigation-into-ahs-contract-and/

According to available information, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) have initiated an investigation into procurement practices at Alberta Health Services (AHS), focusing on contracts awarded to private surgical clinics and medical supply companies. This probe follows allegations made by former AHS CEO Athana Mentzelopoulos, who was dismissed on January 8, 2025. Mentzelopoulos claims her termination was linked to her internal investigation into these procurement practices, including over $600 million awarded to MHCare Medical.

In her wrongful dismissal lawsuit, Mentzelopoulos alleges that Health Minister Adriana LaGrange issued directives preventing AHS from negotiating private surgery contracts and mandated rates exceeding those of comparable agreements. She also raises concerns about a private clinic in Edmonton, Alberta Surgical Group (ASG), which, despite underperformance, was reportedly on track to overbill AHS by approximately $3.5 million.

Additionally, the lawsuit highlights potential conflicts of interest involving Jitendra Prasad, particularly his influence on AHS contracts related to MHCare. Prasad was reportedly referred to as "his guy" by Marshall Smith, then chief of staff to Premier Danielle Smith, and was allegedly positioned at Alberta Health to ensure the government could "get contracting right."

Both Health Minister LaGrange and Premier Smith dispute these claims. The RCMP investigation is ongoing, and no further details have been released at this time.

Seriously, do it. Go get your Jack (bleah), your Aviation gin, your California wines, whatever you want.

Every store with those items on the shelf has already bought the products from AGLC. They can't ship it back, and they can't recover their costs except through sales.

The AGLC is no longer buying booze from the US, which means every bottle available is money already sunk - and for small stores, it can be a lot of money.

So go to your local shop, buy what you want, and tell the owner that you know it's not on them to throw away their purchased inventory.

Residents of Alberta seem to be the most open to the concept of Canada joining the US as a new state, an idea US President Donald Trump has repeatedly floated over the past couple of months.

A new poll conducted by Research Co. on tariffs in Canada asked whether respondents were on board with the notion of initiating a formal process for Canada to become an American state, and Alberta led the pack in being the most responsive to it.

Alberta leads Canada in support of joining the United States, with 12% of respondents saying they would “definitely consider it,” followed by 7% saying they would “probably consider it.”

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/17534053

Summary by AI:

• Calgary mayor Jyoti Gondek expresses uncertainty about the future of the Green Line LRT project due to disagreements and the resignation of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
• The federal government has committed $1.5 billion to the project, but clarification is needed regarding their support for the revised provincial alignment.
• The revised alignment, proposed by the province in December, is 76% longer than the previous plan and features no tunneling through downtown Calgary.
• The city and province have different cost estimates for the project, with the city stating the revised alignment would cost $7.5 billion, $1.3 billion more than the provincial report suggests.
• A meeting between the city and province to discuss the new plan has not been held, and the city is requesting clarification on several matters before considering a vote on the provincial plan.

Between Sept. 1, 2023, and Aug. 31, 2024, more than 300 COVID-19 outbreaks were declared at Alberta Health Services and Covenant Health acute care facilities throughout the province, according to data from AHS obtained through a freedom of information request.

~

Dr. Joe Vipond, an emergency physician in Calgary and co-founder of the Canadian COVID Society, said it is worrisome that patients are being harmed and that steps aren’t taken to adequately protect them.

“The reality is that people are dying from COVID in our hospitals, and we really are doing very little to prevent them getting ill and getting infected,” Vipond said. “And we wouldn’t do the same for any other infectious disease.”

“We have sporadic implementation of protection for patients. And if I was somebody’s daughter, and my dad went into hospital with a hip fracture and came out in a casket or had some kind of long-term disability from getting COVID in hospital when we know how to prevent it, I would be very mad at the system.”

~

Vipond said in an ideal world there would be an independent third-party audit of the health system that would determine what is going wrong.

“But instead, what seems to have happened is that our politicians, and therefore society, have decided that COVID is no longer an issue for anyone, and that includes vulnerable patients in hospitals.”

Smith’s government dumps a load of denial and new risks just before Christmas.

The Alberta government gave its citizens an Australian sack of “modern” coal for Christmas, as well as a load of misinformation accompanied by a mountain of disingenuousness.

In an abrupt news conference held Friday, Energy Minister Brian Jean and Environment Minister Rebecca Schulz declared the government was changing mining policy for Alberta because the world needed more metallurgical coal.

“It’s a big day,” said Jean, who has been lobbied relentlessly by the Coal Association of Canada and Australian billionaire and mining magnate Gina Rinehart to support coal mining in the Rockies.

~

During the conference, neither Jean nor Schulz made any reference to what the public really wants. Repeated surveys have consistently shown that most Albertans don’t support coal mining of any kind in the eastern slopes of the Rockies.

In fact, most believe the government’s only priority should be the protection of critical watersheds.

Jean admitted Friday that coal development in the past has been “bad,” but that something called “responsible resource development” — a catchphrase for every speculative project in Alberta — would prevent selenium pollution, a multi-billion-dollar bane of metallurgical coal mining in neighbouring B.C. and many parts of Alberta. No viable technology has currently solved this environmental problem.

~

Corb Lund, a popular musician who lives in southern Alberta, described the government press conference as “an Orwellian word salad meant to calm the public right before Xmas.”

“It is all greenwashing bullshit,” Donahue told The Tyee. “It is a way to push the UCP’s original 2020 plan to open the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains to coal mining, and now we’ll make a case for it again.” He called the announcement “a farce.”

A UCP government report said the province was entitled to $334 billion. Canada’s top actuary says not even half that.

Mount Royal University political science professor Duane Bratt weighed in on Bluesky with the opinion that “the Smith government will quietly abandon the APP [Alberta pension plan] when there is a change in the federal government. The APP rears its head when there are Liberals in Ottawa, and buries its head when the Conservatives are in office.”

I am not so sure. The UCP brain trust has been singularly focused on the huge sums that could become available to prop up Alberta’s oil and gas sector if it got its paws on CPP assets, so don’t expect this divisive scheme to go away any time soon.