Alberta

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith received 91.5 per cent support for her leadership from members of her United Conservative Party who voted in Red Deer, Alta., on Saturday.

"Our party is united as it has ever been," Smith told the cheering crowd after the number was announced.

The party said 4,633 ballots were cast in the vote. The result solidifies Smith's leadership of Alberta's governing party and confirms party members agree with the direction she has taken the province since she took over the party two years ago.

CBC

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/32080384

Ken Johnston, mayor of Red Deer, discusses the city’s public engagement to address the budget shortfall with Alberta Primetime host Michael Higgins.

This American Life has a story featuring Alberta. Apparently it is the only populated place without rats!

Jennifer Johnson could return after trans policy reforms pass, premier tells party members

Jennifer Johnson could return after trans policy reforms pass, premier tells party members

He says fraudsters scour social media to find people online, take their voice from certain posts and then track down their grandparents and begin the scam.

Maybe a good time to warn your relatives.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/18732471

New policy would require parents to consent before children under 16 can change their names or pronouns

It’s not hard to connect the dots between the anti-vaccine extremists, including Premier Danielle Smith, who now dominate Alberta’s United Conservative Party and the admission by a beleaguered Alberta Health Services that it is shutting down its long-COVID clinics in Calgary, Edmonton and Sherwood Park.

AHS, once a model of how to run a modern integrated provincial public health-care agency, is in the early stages of being broken up by Smith’s government, which is bent on relitigating the 2020-to-the-present COVID-19 pandemic from a MAGA perspective that denies the reality of the disease, believes life-saving vaccines kill children and views public health measures as a totalitarian control mechanism.

And it is no mere coincidence that this happened only a day after an anti-vax UCP MLA’s incoherent ramblings about how he’d like to see the vaccine banned completely caused a stir on social media. MLA Eric Bouchard has since recanted his apparent claim that an actual plan to ban the COVID vaccine was in the works.

1,328 votes against narrowly beat out 1,194 votes in favour