Alberta Minute: Pipeline Ruling, Art Protests, and Corporate Welfare

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

This Week In Alberta:

• The Legislature is still on break, but the Government House Leader has now filed the 2020 Sessional Calendar and, while this is always subject to change, the plan is for the Legislature to return on February 25th - two weeks later than previously anticipated.
  
  
• While the Legislature won't be back for another five weeks, Committees will return this week, starting with a meeting of the Standing Committee on Legislative Offices this morning and the Special Standing Committee on Members' Services this afternoon.
  
  
• While the provincial government released an interim budget in October, their first full budget is due this Spring and they would like public feedback on what it should include. An online consultation is live and open for comments now and will remain open until February 7th. 2020.

Last Week In Alberta:

• The Supreme Court of Canada's Chief Justice delivered an incredibly clear 9-second judgment that unanimously ruled against B.C.'s bid to block the Trans Mountain pipeline. The entire ruling read simply: "We are all of the view to dismiss the appeal for the unanimous reasons of the Court of Appeal for British Columbia."
  
  
• A tiny art store, operating out of the Legislature building in Edmonton, was revealed to have lost almost a million dollars. How does a tiny store lose almost a million dollars? By being government-run, of course! The government plans to shut the store down, but Alberta artists are planning a "silent protest". Maybe instead of protesting, they could focus on selling some of their art?
  
  
• Speaking of expecting taxpayers to cover the bill, an Edmonton tech company CEO complained that the government didn't send representatives to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to help support his business, even though other provinces did. But just because every other province hands out hard-earned taxpayer money to corporations, doesn't mean Alberta should too. Corporate welfare doesn't work.

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