Alberta Minute: Portfolio Changes, Election Results, and Food Courts Confused

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

This Week In Alberta:

• The Alberta Legislature's break continues until October 25th, with no committees scheduled until then either. There's plenty going on in provincial politics though, with rumours that Premier Kenney's position is in trouble, and government MLAs openly calling for his resignation.
  
  
• Food courts operators may be forgiven for suffering from whiplash this week. Last week, they initially assumed they would be able to continue operating under the Province's recent COVID restrictions, only to be left out of the Restriction Exemption Program, forcing them to be takeaway only (which seems odd for a food court!) We've since seen documents from AHS suggesting food courts will now be allowed to participate in the REP, but there's been no official statement, so we're keeping our eyes on this one.
  
  
• Alberta Culture Days started over the weekend and are continuing throughout the province this week. There are many events to check out in your local community, including shows, museums, artistry, and heritage.

Last Week In Alberta:

• It was, of course, the federal election last Monday, which saw Alberta send 30 Conservative MPs (down from 33), 2 Liberal MPs (up from 0), and 2 NDP MPs (up from 1) to Ottawa. Overall not much changed though, with an almost identical Liberal-led minority being the overall outcome.
  
  
• In a stunning reversal, the provincial government's "definitely not a vaccine passport" vaccine passport program was introduced throughout Alberta. Of course, if we had to have a vaccine passport (we didn't), giving everyone just five days' notice and then changing the rules halfway through the introduction was probably not the best way to go about it.

• Perhaps relatedly, Premier Kenney announced that Tyler Shandro would no longer be Health Minister. He was replaced by Jason Copping, who was the Minister of Labour and Immigration, where Shandro will now replace Copping. It seems unlikely this "cabinet switch" rather than "cabinet shuffle" will placate those Albertans who are dissatisfied with the government and calling for Premier Kenney to be the one to lose his job.

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