Alberta

If the Alberta government built a nuclear reactor near your home, would you want to know the facts informing that decision? If Alberta gives millions, or billions, to private industry, would you want to know why? What risks and rewards did the government consider when choosing the ground beneath your home as an ideal place to store carbon dioxide?

Under new legislation, you might never have the tools to find out.

As the fall sitting of the legislature wrapped up, and the day after Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s government announced Bill 34, which lays out new rules for freedom of information in the province. Once passed, the government will be able to censor factual information used to make decisions and restrict the power of the commissioner who can challenge its censorship.

The move, in some ways, would simply legalize the years-long practice of suppressing information in violation of the existing freedom of information act. But it would also make it easier to suppress more information, more often.

The changes would make it all but impossible to learn why the premier and her ministers make important public-interest decisions and would shield an undefined class of “political staff” from any oversight.

Only six animals may be left in the Wabasca herd of northern Alberta, where their range may soon be drilled — over the objections of Elders

Alberta NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi is about to make headlines again.

After languishing for the past six months in the role of Opposition leader without a legislative seat, Nenshi appears poised to run in a yet-to-be called byelection in Edmonton-Strathcona.

Yes, that’s the seat held by former NDP leader Rachel Notley who announced this morning she’d resign her seat Dec. 30.

No, as I write this Nenshi has not confirmed he will run to succeed Notley. But it’s just a matter of time.

Nenshi has coyly been suggesting for months he’d be interested in running in Edmonton-Strathcona, one of the safest NDP seats in Alberta. But he didn’t want to be seen trying to push out Notley who has been serving as his key senior advisor.

By running in Notley’s old seat, Nenshi would be filling a vacancy that was bound to come up sooner or later and he wouldn’t need to ask an MLA in Calgary or Edmonton to step down to trigger a byelection.

He’d also be countering the narrative that as a former Calgary mayor he is a stranger to Edmonton.

The UCP government is already welcoming it with open arms — and celebrating it as the biggest investment in Alberta’s history. “Excited to see this incredible project led by Kevin O’Leary coming to Wonder Valley, located in the Municipal District of Greenview,” Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said on social media. “With Alberta’s low taxes, free market, abundant natural gas and skilled labour force, we’re positioned to be a world leader in AI data centres.”

First things first: this “incredible project” is, for now, just a website and a letter of intent signed between O’Leary Ventures and a small rural municipality. So far, it seems far more like an attempt to shake incentives and subsidies out of local governments and capitalize on the global investment community’s fascination with AI right now than anything real or tangible.

But at full capacity, it would require 7.5 gigawatts of power, which is almost 40 per cent of what the entire Alberta grid can currently provide — and that’s with increasingly frequent brownouts and some of the highest electricity prices in Canada.

Where, exactly, would all these additional electrons come from? Not wind and solar, which the provincial government has spent the last two years actively undermining with its new regulations — ones whose standards around land use and reclamation, curiously enough, don’t apply to oil and gas operations. Instead, they’d come mostly from additional gas-fired facilities, which just happens to suit the UCP government’s pro-fossil fuel agenda perfectly.

“Transgender people are 0.25% of the population, yet governments like the Smith government have a focus on transgender people like they’re a threat to civilization,” Brownsey told PressProgress. “Here she’s simply playing to a very right-wing religious base.”

Sweeping reforms are expected through Bill 22, The Health Statutes Amendment Act. The bill amounts to a restructuring of the Alberta health care system that will break Alberta Health Services up into four parts, each reporting to the health ministry. The new sectors are primary care, acute care, continuing care and mental health and addiction.

“I’m glad we have a Premier that thinks she knows better than the medical community,” Brownsey said. “It’s a bit disturbing that our government doesn’t run on rationality. Instead of what medical doctors say, who actually know what they’re doing, this government just wants to meddle. It’s absolutely bizarre.”

Fae Johnstone, Director of the advocacy group Queer Momentum says the new rules are an example of government overreach. “There’s a hypocrisy underneath this where on one hand Premier Smith says she wants to support the role of parents, then on the other hand she’s putting her government’s decision-making above the parent. The parents might have to leave the province,” Johnstone told PressProgress.

“They’re not targeting the care, but on the trans young folk’s ability to access that care. These interventions are provided in other circumstances and it’s fine, but it’s the fact that the patients happen to be trans that the government is taking an issue with.”

When Jason Kenney’s United Conservative Party government passed the Critical Infrastructure Defence Act in 2020, critics warned it would lead to more criminalization of protests in Alberta. Now the Alberta Federation of Labour says that’s happening as the government has introduced amendments that could bar health-care workers from picketing hospitals and other health centres.

“That’s significant, because at this moment there are more than 250,000 Alberta workers at the bargaining table. A large proportion of those are people who work in the health-care system.”

“We think that the UCP has introduced this legislation to make it harder for them to exercise that right,” McGowan said. “It’s clear to us that they want to stop nurses and other health-care workers from setting up effective picket lines, because we’ve received legal interpretations of Bill 31.”

The interpretations suggest that if the bill is passed, picketers could be arrested, McGowan said. But that could open the door to a legal challenge arguing the legislation violates Canadians’ constitutional right to protest, protected in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

In a Tyee interview, Alberta’s premier discusses the ‘Turkish Tylenol’ fiasco and who’s got all that public money.

I am a researcher. I report any crimes I discover to police. All people are innocent until proven guilty. FLC is a forum on the darkweb. AOC is an acronym for ‘age of consent’. This group changes Facebook locations regularly.

BARRHEAD, Alta. — Residents of a northern Alberta town have voted in favour of a bylaw banning Pride flags and rainbow crosswalks from municipal property.

The town of Barrhead, located about 120 kilometres northwest of Edmonton, says 1,145 votes were cast in the plebiscite, with 653 in favour of the proposed bylaw and 492 opposed to it.

Edmonton Journal via The Canadian Press

Hunters can now kill cougars in a provincial park in Alberta. The move to allow a cougar hunt in Cypress Hills Provincial Park, along the border with Saskatchewan, is part of a trend in Alberta to open more land and more species to hunting, under the direction of Alberta Parks and Forestry Minister Todd Loewen — who is a hunter and whose family owns a hunting business.

“This is a change that encourages hunting of a species that is isolated, has declined, and is maybe just starting to recover, but there’s no evidence that we need a hunt or that this will in any way manage the population,” Ruiping Luo, a conservation specialist with the Alberta Wilderness Association, said in an interview.

I am a researcher. Crimes uncovered in the course of my research are reported to police. Those who I share information about are innocent until proven guilty.

Lifted by country tunes of rebellion, locals filled an historic hall to say no to Australia’s richest mogul.

I’m a researcher. to my knowledge pji is a type of law firm or legal fund, unconfirmed.

Postmedia has learned from multiple sources that McFee has told the Edmonton Police Commission of his intention to leave the job in February, after six years in the post.

He was initially hired to the role in February 2019. His current contract was set to expire in 2026.

Shortly after Postmedia’s story was published, the commission put out a news release confirming McFee’s departure on Feb. 21.