Alberta Minute: Tracking Apps, Firearms Ban, and a Quid Pro Quo

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

This Week In Alberta:

• Once again, the Legislature is scheduled to sit this week but, as with previous weeks, it's unclear whether they will do so or not. While it's understandable that schedules are irregular during an emergency, transparency should still remain a priority.
  
  
• There is a meeting of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts planned for Tuesday morning. The Committee met last week, but only to work out administrative details around remote meeting participation. This week's meeting will involve substantive work including receiving the Annual Report for the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry.
  
  
• Alberta's reopening has begun, with provincial parks and golf courses already open (with limited service) and non-urgent surgeries, dentists, physiotherapists, speech and respiratory therapists, social workers and dietitians due to open today. If you haven't yet signed our petition on this issue, you can do so here.

Last Week In Alberta:

• We questioned the high cost and practicality of Alberta's new ABTraceTogether app in the media. The app is based on already-developed source code which was recently released publicly for free, and yet, will still cost taxpayers up to $625,000 - an extraordinary amount. There are also huge practical issues with the app, as it doesn't work properly on the iOS devices that slightly more than half of Canadians use.
  
  
• The federal government made a dramatic move to outlaw the firearms of otherwise law-abiding Albertans and Canadians. Premier Kenney and Justice Minister Doug Schweitzer said they will "scrutinize Ottawa's move and explore potential responses", but have not yet taken any action to defend Albertans' rights.
  
  
• Lobbying efforts by government-insiders have led to the Tsuut'ina Nation receiving a $32-million grant from the Alberta government in exchange for dropping their opposition to the Springbank Off-Stream Reservoir. Is it appropriate for the Government of Alberta to essentially pay an organization/group (with our taxpayer dollars!) to drop their opposition to government policy? Let us know what you think by replying to this email!

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