Alberta Minute: Red Tape, Stage Two, and the Fair Deal Panel Report

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

This Week In Alberta:

• The Legislature will sit today, with Bill 21 (Provincial Administrative Penalties Act), and Bill 22 (Red Tape Reduction Implementation Act) currently in Second Reading.
  
  
• Bill 7, Bill 15, Bill 16, Bill 17, Bill 18, and Bill 19 are at Committee of the Whole, while Bill 2, and Bill 4 are at Third Reading.
  
  
• We are also expecting the hotly-anticipated Fair Deal Panel report to be released sometime this week. We don't have an exact release date yet, but the provincial government promised it would happen as soon as the State of Emergency ended in Alberta, which happened this morning, so it could drop at any time.

Last Week In Alberta:

• The Government is finally getting to the meat of their election platform with significant changes to Charter Schools a few weeks ago, and now a new omnibus Red Tape bill. The Red Tape bill, amongst other things, works to remove the politicization of oil sands project approvals by taking the decision out of the hands of Cabinet. It also ends the province's wasteful energy efficiency agency.
  
  
• Overshadowing some of this good work, however, are deteriorating relations in the Legislative Assembly where the government is no longer even giving the Official Opposition advanced copies of bills. Governments and oppositions should engage in debate based on the merits of their ideas and providing the opposition access to bills and briefings is an important part of the democratic process.
  
  
• Alberta entered Stage 2 of the government's COVID relaunch strategy on Friday. This means more surgeries, community halls, instrumental concerts, gyms, organized sports, casinos and bingo halls, libraries, rec-centres, and theatres are open - although this may still be qualified by local ordinances.

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