Category: Uncategorized

Public schools just beyond the city limits are bursting at the seams with student growth, but no new construction funding in this year’s budget means further space crunches and crowding, officials say.

Public schools just beyond the city limits are bursting at the seams with student growth, but no new construction funding in this year’s budget means further space crunches and crowding, officials say.

“Our expectation was that we would get construction funding for at least a couple of the projects we’ve been advocating for . . . but we are very disappointed,” said Norma Lang, board chair at Rocky View Schools.

“We have not been able to keep up with enrolment, which has been triggered by huge population growth in our communities — some are among the fastest-growing municipalities in Canada.”

Lang said that in the past two decades, Chestermere’s population has gone up by 429 per cent, Airdrie by 256 per cent, and Cochrane by 171 per cent.

Rocky View requested construction funding for a new K-8 school in Airdrie, as well as a list of other priorities in Cochrane and Chestermere, but only received design funding for Airdrie.

Alberta Education did approve full construction funding for an independent francophone school in Airdrie.

Lang said she is especially frustrated after Rocky View’s strong advocacy and meetings with UCP government officials, noting that it takes about four years to build a school even after construction approval, and design funding offers no guarantee of building funds the following year.

“By 2026, we will have more students than spaces,” Lang said.

“That’s hard on students and their learning,” she added, noting more schools are using common spaces such as gyms, libraries and cafeterias for classrooms.

Rocky View requested construction funding for a new K-8 school in Airdrie, as well as a list of other priorities in Cochrane and Chestermere, but only received design funding for Airdrie.

Alberta Education did approve full construction funding for an independent francophone school in Airdrie.

Lang said she is especially frustrated after Rocky View’s strong advocacy and meetings with UCP government officials, noting that it takes about four years to build a school even after construction approval, and design funding offers no guarantee of building funds the following year.

“By 2026, we will have more students than spaces,” Lang said.

“That’s hard on students and their learning,” she added, noting more schools are using common spaces such as gyms, libraries and cafeterias for classrooms.

“From FSD’s perspective, we are in an untenable position. Our class sizes are the largest they have been,” Letendre said.

“Today, we are not only looking at a school that is bursting at the seams for at least the next four years, but also our students will continue to come into a high school that is overcrowded, negatively impacting the rich, meaningful learning experiences they all deserve.”

Last week, Alberta Education announced as much as $1.6 billion in capital funding for 58 school projects across the province over the next three years. Of that, up to $372 million will go toward 13 projects that received full construction funding for new schools or modernizations this year.

Education Minister Adriana LaGrange has said the UCP government is funding education at record levels and considers each application for capital funding through a detailed 10-step process.

“We are committed to building schools to help address enrolment growth, classroom complexity and modernizing schools to support 21st-century learning,” LaGrange said at last week’s announcement.

We must build on the past and look towards the future with ambition.
Alberta has among the slowest wage growth in Canada. Under the UCP, capital investment stalled.

We will reinvigorate Alberta’s investment climate. There are massive job creation opportunities – which the UCP is not seizing.

Our proposals will create over 47,000 good-paying jobs and attract an estimated $20 Billion in private sector investment.

Our strategy:

1. Create an Alberta’s Future Tax Credit targeting growth in emerging industrial sectors
2. Supercharge the Alberta Petrochemical Incentive Program we created when in government
3. Use Performance Fast Pass to speed up the approvals of projects for responsible companies
4. Consult with Indigenous communities on expansion of the Alberta Indigenous Opportunity Corporation
5. Repeal Danielle Smith’s job-killing, anti-Canadian Sovereignty Act

The historic incentives in the United States’ Inflation Reduction Act is pulling billions of dollars of investment south.

Alberta must compete. Decisions we make this year will have long-lasting implications for Alberta’s future.

“Universal access to free prescription contraception in Alberta will ensure that women are more in control of their lives, and more in control of their own economic future,” said Notley, marking International Women’s Day

Alberta’s Opposition NDP is promising universal access to free prescription birth control if elected to government in May.

Leader Rachel Notley made the pledge Wednesday at a news conference in Edmonton, saying the program would be modelled after British Columbia’s recent move to cover contraceptives beginning April 1 — a first in the country.

“Universal access to free prescription contraception in Alberta will ensure that women are more in control of their lives, and more in control of their own economic future,” Notley said while recognizing International Women’s Day.

The program will cover oral hormone pills, commonly known as the pill, injections, under-the-skin implants, copper and hormonal intrauterine devices, also known as IUDs, and Plan B — the morning after pill.

Notley estimated that for those who don’t have prescription plans, the proposed program for women could save individuals up to $500 a year.

The question of why provincial funds for Calgary’s downtown were left off the latest budget has been answered by Alberta’s premier.

But documents from the city refute her reasoning.

“It just so happens that we didn’t receive our priority list from the City of Calgary,” Premier Danielle Smith said at an unrelated news conference Monday.

On Thursday at the Calgary Chamber of Commerce, Finance Minister Travis Toews said there was no “business case” presented to the province for funding to go to the downtown of the province’s largest city.

“I’m meeting tomorrow with (Edmonton) Mayor (Amarjeet) Sohi. Mayor Sohi did write me a letter and told me what his priorities are for Edmonton,” Smith added Monday. “And so I’m looking forward to meeting with (Calgary) Mayor (Jyoti) Gondek to find out what her priorities are and I hope we’ll be able to come to a conclusion on that.”

But three and a half months ago, Gondek sent a seven-page budget submission for the province to consider ahead of the 2023-24 budget that was released last week.

Gondek’s Nov. 14, 2022, letter highlighted seven recommendations: “broad” municipal finance reform, enhancing Family and Community Support Services (FCSS) funding, committing to a Bow River reservoir options study, contribution to a multisport fieldhouse, committing funds to income supports and the low-income transit pass, improving access to affordable housing, and a request to match the city’s $100-million investment in the downtown revitalization plan.

That letter was addressed to Toews and CCed to Smith.

“It is a little complicated for me to explain why I would give $100 million to a Toronto-based REIT (real estate investment trust) so that they can renovate their building,” Smith said midday Monday. “I accept that that’s a bit of a complicated argument to be made. And all the minister said is, show me the business case for that.”

The city’s revitalization framework caps funding for any project. For example, a trio of downtown towers got $31.7 million in April 2022 for office-to-residential conversions.

Calgary will get “full construction” funding for only one new school and one modernization as part of the UCP government’s Budget 2023 approvals announced Wednesday.

Among the 58 new projects touted by Education Minister Adriana LaGrange, only 13 complete builds are approved for funding, while others are on a series of lists defined as getting “design,” “planning” or “pre-planning” funds, with no clear commitment as to when money for construction will arrive.

As part of the 13 provincewide projects, the Calgary Catholic School District will get full construction funding for a K-9 school in Nolan Hill, addressing only one of seven top priorities in its three-year capital plan.

The Calgary Board of Education will get modernization funding for upgrades at John Diefenbaker High School — a $29-million project that has been on the board’s priority list for 13 years — addressing only one of four top priorities in its three-year plan

“We are committed to building schools to help address enrolment growth, classroom complexity and modernizing schools to support 21st century learning,” LaGrange said at the announcement in CCSD’s St. Gianna School in Auburn Bay.

Twenty-five projects remain on planning, pre-planning lists

Other projects within the full construction funding list include a new francophone school in Airdrie and a new Catholic school in Okotoks, as well as projects in Lethbridge, Edmonton and others in rural communities.

Another 20 projects were listed for design funding, but again only one Calgary project was included — a Catholic high school in Rangeview, which has been on CCSD’s capital planning list for years.

Meanwhile, a further 25 projects remained on planning and pre-planning lists, defined as funded for site analysis, scope development and conceptual planning. Among those were five CBE projects and three CCSD projects, including the new west high school that Catholic parents have been demanding for more than a decade.

#yyc #calgary #ableg

The Alberta Emergency Alert test sounded off at least five times on Wednesday, but I wonder if anyone in the UCP government actually noticed.

After all, there’s been a five-alarm fire roaring in downtown Calgary for years, yet the provincial government has done little to help.

And there are no clear signs in this week’s provincial budget that aid is on the way.

Last year, the Kenney government allocated $5 million to the cause of Calgary’s downtown. It was, in the words of Calgary’s mayor, a “pittance.”

With an election (presumably) now less than 100 days away and the UCP showing signs of life in recent polls, it’s a particularly odd time to throw a political lifeline to their chief opponents.

Maybe the premier just feels spoiled by the generous political gift from the prime minister and wants to spread the love around. Otherwise, it’s difficult to make sense of her insistence to move forward on a controversial and costly cleanup plan for inactive oil and gas wells.

Politics aside, Albertans have good reason to be concerned about this plan. There’s definitely a need to address this problem, but that doesn’t have to come at the cost of abandoning the polluter-pay principle. The idea that we need to reward companies for doing what they’re already legally obligated to do makes no sense at all. That Premier Smith would choose to pursue such a plan at all, never mind doing so on the eve of an election campaign, raises serious questions about her judgment.

For now, the idea is that this would be a pilot project, but it’s very similar to an idea she had pitched to the Alberta government before re-entering politics. At the time, she envisioned a program that would dangle as much as $20 billion in royalty credits.  

Despite the growing criticism and pushback against this idea, the premier is standing firm. Earlier this month she claimed that this was about cleaning up “the worst of the worst sites” and that “what has happened is the polluter who created the problem is no longer around anymore.” The executive director of the premier’s office has claimed the same, arguing that this is about cleaning up “the worst orphan wells in Alberta.”

This is all rather disingenuous, unfortunately. “Orphan wells” are already the purview of the Orphan Wells Association, to which the oil and gas industry pays into. This is about the cleanup liabilities of existing companies. The Alberta Surface Rights Association says they were told explicitly that in a recent meeting with Energy Minister Peter Guthrie.

In fact, as University of Alberta energy economist Andrew Leach has noted, it’s actually the companies with the strongest balance sheets that stand to benefit the most while penalizing and disincentivizing the companies that have done the right thing.

What’s interesting is that Guthrie’s predecessor, who is now environment minister, had dismissed this idea as a violation of the polluter-pay principle. While such sentiment might be verboten within cabinet these days, it is a sentiment that is spreading. Former UCP and now independent MLA Drew Barnes has called it “corporate welfare.” The head of the Rural Municipalities of Alberta says this “is exactly how a fox would design a henhouse,” and that his members are pushing back against the plan.

There was also a report from Scotiabank earlier this month that warned this plan could “perpetuate negative views against the energy industry” and that it flies in the face of “the core capitalist principle that private companies should take full responsibility for the liabilities they willingly accept.”

None of this seems to have swayed the premier, but she’d be foolish to think that Albertans will just happily go along with this scheme. There is undoubtedly widespread support for the energy industry and the jobs it creates and sustains, but there’s a limit to what that goodwill can buy. Public dollars to subsidize activity that is already mandated will be a hard sell indeed.

There is a substantial amount of cleanup to be done and this is not going to be accomplished easily or quickly. But it’s a false dichotomy to pretend that it’s either this approach or nothing. Even if she can’t see the problems with this approach, the premier would do well to consider the political trap she’s setting for herself.

Alberta’s NDP will make sure the one million Albertans who need a family doctor, get a family doctor.

Today, bad UCP decisions have chased doctors out of Alberta, with no doctors taking new patients in Lethbridge, Red Deer, and the Bow Valley. Recent data shows that more than 650,000 Albertans have no family doctor, and that number is rising.

Physicians and health professionals are counting on Alberta’s leaders to reimagine family health care, so doctors spend less time doing paperwork and more time caring for you.

Alberta’s NDP is standing with family doctors to put forward a new plan to transform family medicine in this province. With Rachel Notley as Premier, we will bring forward an innovative plan for primary care that we call Family Health Teams.

Family Health Teams mean you have access to a doctor who works closely with other professionals like nurse practitioners, Registered and Licensed Practical Nurses, mental health therapists, pharmacists, social workers, dietitians, community paramedics, community health navigators, physiotherapists, midwives, speech language therapists, and more.

This will include expanding current clinics and establishing new clinics in high-demand areas so more Albertans have access to modern, innovative primary care.

Our commitment to integrated team-based care delivered in Family Health Clinics will mean that within ten years, up to one million more Albertans will have access to a doctor within a day or two as part of family health clinics.

The Alberta NDP Family Care Teams Plan will ensure:

• Better care and health outcomes for Albertans.
• Care closer to home.
• Access to a family doctor within a day or two.
• Great places to work and care for patients.
• Doctors who have time to focus more on medical care and less on administration.
• Decreased pressure on Emergency Rooms, EMS, and hospitals and lower costs for the acute care system over time.

For Albertans, our Family Health Teams plan means less waiting, less time running around for referrals, and less repeating your story to one new person after another.

It means ONE location to get all your family health concerns looked after.

Now, not later.

While Danilelle Smith and the UCP find new ways to make you pay to see your doctor, our team is focused on what really matters:

More doctors and better health care, where and when it’s needed.

For you. Your parents. And your kids.

The NDP announced a plan Wednesday to connect one million Albertans with a family doctor – part of the party’s “commitment to rebuild and strengthen family health care in Alberta.”

The plan is “a critical step in ending the chaos in hospitals and ambulances caused by the UCP,” the Opposition party wrote in a news release.

The NDP said it believes its Family Health Teams plan would help people see their family doctor within a day or two when they need medical attention, therefore freeing up space and long lines in the ER and hospitals.

1:33Alberta accepts Ottawa’s health-care funding deal

The plan calls for a transition fund to hire 1,500 non-physician employees immediately into existing clinics, as well as the opening of 10 family health clinics across the province.

People would have access to nurse practitioners, doctors, nurses, mental health therapists, pharmacists, social workers, dieticians, community paramedics, physiotherapists, midwives, speech pathologists and more, the NDP said.

“If patients have access to accurate information, timely screening and regular check-ins with a provider who knows them, then we have a better chance of keeping people healthy and addressing issues early,” said Dr. Alana Luft, a physician who joined the NDP for the party’s announcement.

“If we are able to optimize wellness and reduce incidence of severe disease in the primary care setting, there will be far less stress on hospitals and ERs where the costs to the individuals and the system are much higher.”

Premier Danielle Smith, who is also the UCP leader, has said that health care is one of her top two priorities, and went so far as to say the province would move forward with health-care reform without federal government funding. However, Canadian premiers accepted the federal government’s latest health-care funding proposal Monday.

In a statement to Global News, Scott Johnston, press secretary for the health minister, said the province is “spending a record health budget to add staff and physicians and build capacity across the system,” and added that the province has “record numbers of doctors, nurses and other front-line staff working in our health system.”

Johnston said the province is actively recruiting new health-care staff, mentioning Alberta’s recently announced recruitment plan for internationally trained physicians, as well as adding additional ambulances to the EMS fleet.

EDMONTON — An email probe into whether Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s office interfered with Crown prosecutors took a confusing turn Friday after two government spokespeople delivered duelling statements that raised questions over how far back the search went.

The Justice Department said Monday it had done a four-month search of ingoing, outgoing and deleted emails and found no evidence of contact.

Two days later, Alberta Justice communications director Charles Mainville said in a statement that deleted emails are wiped from the system after 30 days, meaning the search for deleted emails may not have covered the entire time period in question.

On Thursday night, Ethan Lecavalier-Kidney, a spokesman for Justice Minister Tyler Shandro, responded to questions about Mainville’s statement. He said while emails are deleted after 30 days, they live on in the system for another 30 and could have been checked that far back by investigators.

“For example, if an email was deleted on Oct. 17, 2022, the email would no longer be accessible to the user as of Nov. 16, 2022, but would continue to be available to our investigation team until Dec. 16, 2022,” said Lecavalier-Kidney in his statement.

A 60-day search would have stretched back to late November, capturing all but the first six weeks of Smith’s United Conservative Party government. Smith was sworn in as premier on Oct. 11.

But while Lecavalier-Kidney’s statement said investigators could go back 60 days, it did not state that they did so, leaving confusion on how far back they went.

When asked Friday to clarify whether investigators went back 30 or 60 days on the deleted emails, Lecavalier-Kidney did not respond to questions while Mainville reissued the original statements in an email.

The government has also delivered conflicting messages on who was investigated in the review.

Smith promised that emails from all Crown prosecutors and the 34 staffers in her office would be checked.

However, the Justice Department later said emails between “relevant” prosecutors and Smith staffers were checked. It did not say how it determined who was relevant.

The Coutts blockade and COVID-19 protest at the border crossing last year saw RCMP lay charges against several people, ranging from mischief to conspiracy to commit murder.

Smith has said she did not direct prosecutors in the Coutts cases and the email review exonerated her office from what she called “baseless” allegations in the CBC story.

The CBC has said that it has not seen the emails in question, but stands by its reporting.

The Opposition NDP said questions stemming from the CBC story, coupled with multiple conflicting statements from the premier on what she has said to Justice Department officials about the COVID-19 cases, can only be resolved through an independent investigation.

Smith has given six versions in recent weeks of what she has said to justice officials about COVID-19 cases.

Smith has said she talked to prosecutors directly and did not talk to prosecutors directly. She has said she reminded justice officials of general prosecution guidelines, but at other times reminded them to consider factors unique to COVID-19 cases. She has also suggested the conversations are ongoing and that they have ended.

She has attributed the confusion to “imprecise” word choices.

Smith has long been openly critical of COVID-19 masking, gathering and vaccine mandate rules, questioning if they were needed to fight the pandemic and labelling them intolerable violations of personal freedoms.

She has also called those unvaccinated against COVID-19 the most discriminated group she has seen in her lifetime.

Last fall, Smith said charges in the cases were grounded in politics and should be open to political solutions. But she recently said it’s important to let the court process play out independently.