Alberta Minute: Alberta Day, Policy Survey, and Falling Unemployment Rates

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

This Week In Alberta:

• The Legislature remains on break until October 31st. There are no scheduled committee meetings until the end of October either. Still, there will be plenty of political action in the coming weeks - several of the United Conservative Party leadership hopefuls will take part in in-person town halls in Red Deer on Wednesday and Thursday. The first official all-candidates debate will take place the following week, on July 27th in Medicine Hat.
  
  
• The Pope is coming to Alberta and taxpayers are footing the bill. The Province is expected to spend around $20 million on various road and infrastructure improvements as well as site upgrades in Lac Ste. Anne and Maskwacis, many of which will be temporary. The federal government is also kicking in an estimated $35 million.
  
  
• The first-ever edition of what will become the Alberta Institute's annual Alberta Policy Survey is now open. We'd like your help in determining what kinds of issues are the most important for you today, and what types of solutions you would like to see proposed in the future to solve these challenges. Filling out our Alberta Policy Survey 2022 will only take about 5 minutes, but will give our researchers a world of insight into where we should be focusing our attention as an organization.

Last Week In Alberta:

• A group of 32 Alberta law professors wrote an open letter in support of an articling student who claimed that swearing an oath to the Queen contradicted his religious beliefs. Currently, lawyers who are called to the bar must swear a mandatory oath of allegiance to the Queen. The professors sent the letter to Justice Minister Tyler Shandro asking for the policy to be amended.
  
  
• Outgoing Premier Jason Kenney has announced that September 1st will now be known as Alberta Day. On that date in 1905, Alberta officially entered Confederation and became a province of Canada. While the day will be marked by celebrations, it will not be a statutory holiday.

• The unemployment rate dropped across Alberta last month, to its lowest number since 2015. With 4.9% unemployment, Alberta marked another milestone - it’s the first time since 2015 that the province’s jobless numbers are the same as the overall unemployment rate in Canada. Red Deer has the highest unemployment rate in the province with 5.7%, while Camrose-Drumheller’s 4.2% is the lowest.

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