Alberta Minute: Public Engagements, Dispatch Changes, and an Abandoned App

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

This Week In Alberta:

• The Legislature's summer break continues with the fall session not due to start until October 26th. The government has, however, announced plans for a one-day sitting on August 27th to debate the long-delayed first-quarter fiscal update.
  
  
• Committees will continue to meet while the Legislature is on break. There are no committee meetings scheduled for this week, but the Select Special Public Health Act Review Committee is due to meet on August 27th and is currently accepting public submissions on the Public Health Act. 
  
  
• There are also 24 open public engagements that you can make submissions on over summer, on everything from Affordable Housing to Fisheries.

Last Week In Alberta:

• The Province announced on Tuesday that they will be completing the consolidation of emergency medical services dispatch centres by transitioning the remaining municipally run sites to one of three Alberta Health Services centres.
  
  
• Statistics Canada's latest Labour Force Survey was released and showed that Alberta's unemployment rate fell by 2.7% to 12.8% in July. Edmonton's unemployment rate dropped from 15.7% to 15.0%, but Calgary's only dropped from 15.6% to 15.5%.
  
  
• We criticized the effectiveness and cost of Alberta's COVID app when it was first announced back in May. Now, after spending $625,000 on it, the government finally agrees with us and is abandoning it and recommending Albertans install the federal government's app instead. Only 5% of Albertans installed the Alberta app, compared to the 50%+ that would have been required for it to have any impact. We predict a similar outcome for the federal app.

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