Alberta Minute: Town Halls, Curriculum Consultations, and the Impact Assessment Act

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

This Week In Alberta:

• Our Can't Stop Alberta Tour continues. We’re headed to Red Deer on Tuesday, and Vulcan on Wednesday. We’ll be discussing K-12 education, Alberta’s relationship with Ottawa, energy policy, and more. Attendance is free, but if you’re so inclined, you can make a donation to help cover our venue hire costs and our travel expenses. We hope to see you at one or more of the events, and if you're not in the cities listed above, don't worry - just check the list online for an event near you.
  
  
• The Province will be holding a number of geographically targeted telephone town halls to gauge Albertans’ interest in a provincial pension plan. The first one takes place this evening and is intended for people living in Northern Alberta. The others will take place on October 24th (Southern Alberta), November 9th (Calgary and surrounding area), November 16th (Edmonton and surrounding area), and November 22nd (Central Alberta). All of the events run from 6:30 pm to 8:00 pm. You can either preregister or visit the website to listen live. The NDP is also having a consultation event online, on October 19th at 6:30pm.
  
  
• Alberta Health Services (AHS) is enforcing stricter masking rules within hospitals to manage COVID-19 outbreaks, but regions and hospitals have the freedom to disregard these directives. The decision to enhance masking for staff, patients, and visitors, along with its extent, depends on various factors such as outbreak numbers and hospitalization rates.

Last Week In Alberta:

• The Supreme Court of Canada declared the Impact Assessment Act, often referred to as the "No More Pipelines Law," to be unconstitutional. Out of the seven justices who presided over the case, five deemed the law to be almost entirely unconstitutional. This law had previously granted the federal government extensive authority to impede the development of various energy and infrastructure projects, extending beyond just pipelines. This decision is a substantial victory for Alberta. Our friends at Project Confederation have more details on their website.
  
  
• Our friends at the Alberta Parents’ Union held a series of online curriculum consultations and more than 800 people attended! They have been calling for genuine, accessible consultation of parents before any changes are made to the curriculum, and were very happy to see the Province open up feedback for Alberta’s new K-6 draft Social Studies curriculum. If you weren’t able to attend a session, you can still take the survey and give the government your feedback. Today is the last day to provide your input, so click here to take the survey.
  
  
• The Alberta government announced $28 million in funding to create 22,500 new licensed child-care spaces in the next five years. Both new and existing non-profit and private facility-based child-care programs are encouraged to apply for the grant. The goal is to create over 60,700 affordable licensed spaces by 2026, reducing fees for families.

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