Alberta Minute: Family Day, Camping Reservations, and a New Tourism Plan

Alberta Minute - Your weekly one-minute summary of Alberta politics.

This Week In Alberta:

• Today is Family Day and, if you're in Edmonton, you can take your kids down to the Legislature between 11:00 am and 4:00 pm for free activities. The Legislature is on break, but the building will be open to visitors to explore the architecture, portraits, and more, and there will be stories told by Métis storyteller Naomi McIlwraith and Rocky the Ram. At the Queen Elizabeth II building,  there will be entertainment throughout the day, including magic shows, circus acts, and dance and musical performances.
  
  
• Finance Minister Nate Horner says that Albertans will find out this fall what the federal government believes to be our share of the Canada Pension Plan's assets. Ottawa requested the Chief Actuary to determine Alberta's owed amount based on its interpretation of the pension plan legislation, and a panel is being assembled to do just that.
  
  
• Speaking of the Alberta Pension Plan, together with our friends at Project Confederation, we’re hosting Alberta Pension Plan town halls around the province. We know Albertans have a lot of questions about the proposal, so we’ll be providing information, answering questions, addressing concerns, and gathering feedback for potential improvements. This week, we’ll be in Strathmore on Tuesday at 6:00 pm and in Lethbridge on Thursday at 6:00 pm. The events are free, but registration is required due to capacity limits. You can register for Strathmore here and for Lethbridge here. Registration is also open for Edmonton next week.

Last Week In Alberta:

• Alberta Parks has transitioned its online camping reservation system to a new cloud-based platform, aiming to provide a more stable and user-friendly experience. The 15-year-old previous system struggled to meet growing user demands. New features include tools like "Camping This Weekend" for last-minute reservations, a "favourite" function to mark enjoyed sites, and expanded payment options. Users are advised to create a new account on the platform before booking campsites, as personal information and past camping history won't migrate from the old system.
  
  
• Ottawa said it is considering significant updates to its proposed net-zero electricity regulations after months of consultation. The draft Clean Electricity Regulations, initially released last August, set rules for transitioning Canada's electricity grid to net-zero by 2035. Rebecca Schulz, Alberta's Minister of Environment and Protected Areas, however, said that there have been "no meaningful corrections to the most destructive piece of Canadian electricity regulation in decades”. Our friends at Project Confederation have a petition running to Stop The Clean Electricity Regulations. You can sign it here.
  
  
• The Alberta government unveiled a new five-part plan, aiming to more than double the value of the province's tourism industry by 2035. The plan seeks to achieve an economic impact of $203 billion in visitor expenditures, a $159-billion impact on the province's GDP, and the creation of 190,000 full-time equivalent jobs by 2035. In 2022, Alberta experienced a record $10.7 billion in tourism spending, supporting around 80,000 full-time equivalent jobs.

-----

Donate:

The Alberta Institute doesn't accept any government funding and never will. We think you should be free to choose, for yourself, which organizations to support. If you're in a position to contribute financially, you can make a donation here.

-----

Share:

If you're not in a position to donate, we understand, but if you appreciate our work, you can help by spreading our message. Please forward this email to your friends, follow us on Facebook and Twitter, and help make sure every Albertan knows what's going on in our province.