Alberta Minute: Health Transfers, Municipal Police, and Commonwealth Games Opposition

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

This Week In Alberta:

• There will be afternoon sittings of the Legislature from Monday to Thursday. On the Order Paper are second readings for both the Red Tape Reduction Statutes Act and the Financial Statutes Amendment Act.
  
  
• The 2023-24 Main Estimates Considerations continue. These are a series of Committee meetings scrutinizing the individual budgets for each Ministry. Rather than list the details of every meeting here, we’ve written an explainer that includes a list of which department is attending which Committee meeting and when.
  
  
• The federal government will be withholding $82 million in Canada Health Transfers from the provinces, including $13.8 million from Alberta, due to patient charges for things like telemedicine that Ottawa believes are medically necessary and should be provided at no cost. Alberta Health Minister Jason Copping says discussions about the interpretation of "medically necessary" have been ongoing between the federal government and provinces.

Last Week In Alberta:

• A joint Calgary-Edmonton bid for the 2030 Commonwealth Games has been launched along with the usual claims about how great hosting the event would be for the economy. As has been proven over and over again, however, all the economic evidence and academic literature clearly show that large international events are detrimental to hosts and their economies. That's because every dollar that gets invested "into" an economy for an event is a dollar that first had to be taken "out of" the economy through higher taxes. With so many Albertans unable to afford the basic necessities, spending billions of dollars just isn’t a prudent thing to do right now. That's why we have launched a petition to oppose the use of any public funding on the Commonwealth Games. If you agree, click here to sign.
  
  
• Bill 8, the Alberta Firearms Act, was announced, which would allow the Province to develop regulations to protect and advocate for Alberta gun owners. The Act would provide clarity and sovereignty to Alberta firearms owners, and the role of the Alberta Chief Firearms Officer would be extended to support Albertans. Justice Minister Tyler Shandro said this new legislation will also give Alberta the tools it needs to stand up to the federal government’s increased crackdowns on law-abiding gun owners.
  
  
• Grande Prairie City Council, in an 8-1 decision, voted to replace the RCMP with a municipal police force. Mayor Jackie Clayton said that having a City police service will increase local oversight, cut down on bureaucracy, reduce policing costs, and aid in officer retention and recruitment.

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