Alberta
The Grey Cup’s Military connection and Operation Tea Cup, a Red Deer Fundraiser perfect for Grey Cup Week


Co-founders of Operation Teacup Michelle Tetreault and Charlie MacDonald
It all started over a conversation about giving back. Before long Charlie MacDonald and Michelle Tetreault decided to combine passions for Canada’s military and Canadian Football and the idea for Operation Teacup was born. “Operation” Teacup is a worthy name for this day long endeavour because it takes the planning abilities of a military mission to pull it off. In fact… the military actually does help pull it off!
Operation Teacup sees soldiers from The Kings Own Regiment out of Calgary make a special trip up to Red Deer. At the first light of day, the soldiers meet a representative from the Canadian Football Hall of Fame with a special package… the Grey Cup! Together, the soldiers and the “Keeper of the Cup” escort Canada’s historic football trophy to various locations around Central Alberta. Businesses and sponsors host events and football fans gather. Together they raise awareness and funds for a very important cause… The Military Family Resource Centre.
The MFRC supports families of the Canadian Armed Forces through programs and services, social activities and events. There are so many challenges for military personnel and their family members to tackle, including family separation and reunification, counselling and crisis intervention. Considering the sacrifices members of our armed forces make for Canadians on a daily basis.. it only seems right that Canadians should step in to help their families out from time to time.
First stop at a sponsor event..
Grey Cup makes an Emergency Stop!
Grey Cup makes a stop in Penhold at Sugar By Tracy in Penhold
Operation Teacup is named after an historic World War II football game between Canadian and American sides… played at a soccer stadium in England in front of over 30,000 confused fans. It was a celebration of football unlike any other. Click to learn more about the 1944 Tea Bowl.
Grey Cup makes a stop at Westpark Lodge
The final leg of the tour… The House on the Hill
Operation Teacup will deploy at this year’s Grey Cup Celebration in Edmonton! Join us Saturday, November 24, as we raise awareness and funds at the Canadian Football Hall of Fame Alumni Event at Enbridge Place as part of the Grey Cup Festival. Proceeds to go to Canadian Football Hall of Fame and Edmonton MFRC. Tickets are $20 each on the Grey Cup Festival website. Click here for information!

Michelle and Charlie present proceeds to Military Family Resource Centre
Your Grey Cup Memory
Alberta
Alberta’s move to ‘activity-based funding’ will improve health care despite naysayer claims

From the Fraser Institute
After the Smith government recently announced its shift to a new approach for funding hospitals, known as “activity-based funding” (ABF), defenders of the status quo in Alberta were quick to argue ABF will not improve health care in the province. Their claims are simply incorrect. In reality, based on the experiences of other better-performing universal health-care systems, ABF will help reduce wait times for Alberta patients and provide better value-for-money for taxpayers.
First, it’s important to understand Alberta is not breaking new ground with this approach. Other developed countries shifted to the ABF model starting in the early 1990s.
Indeed, after years of paying their hospitals a lump-sum annual budget for surgical care (like Alberta currently), other countries with universal health care recognized this form of payment encouraged hospitals to deliver fewer services by turning each patient into a cost to be minimized. The shift to ABF, which compensates hospitals for the actual services they provide, flips the script—hospitals in these countries now see patients as a source of revenue.
In fact, in many universal health-care countries, these reforms began so long ago that some are now on their second or even third generation of ABF, incorporating further innovations to encourage an even greater focus on quality.
For example, in Sweden in the early 1990s, counties that embraced ABF enjoyed a potential cost savings of 13 per cent over non-reforming counties that stuck with budgets. In Stockholm, one study measured an 11 per cent increase in hospital activity overall alongside a 1 per cent decrease in costs following the introduction of ABF. Moreover, according to the study, ABF did not reduce access for older patients or patients with more complex conditions. In England, the shift to ABF in the early to mid-2000s helped increase hospital activity and reduce the cost of care per patient, also without negatively affecting quality of care.
Multi-national studies on the shift to ABF have repeatedly shown increases in the volume of care provided, reduced costs per admission, and (perhaps most importantly for Albertans) shorter wait times. Studies have also shown ABF may lead to improved quality and access to advanced medical technology for patients.
Clearly, the naysayers who claim that ABF is some sort of new or untested reform, or that Albertans are heading down an unknown path with unmanageable and unexpected risks, are at the very least uninformed.
And what of those theoretical drawbacks?
Some critics claim that ABF may encourage faster discharges of patients to reduce costs. But they fail to note this theoretical drawback also exists under the current system where discharging higher-cost patients earlier can reduce the drain on hospital budgets. And crucially, other countries have implemented policies to prevent these types of theoretical drawbacks under ABF, which can inform Alberta’s approach from the start.
Critics also argue that competition between private clinics, or even between clinics and hospitals, is somehow a bad thing. But all of the developed world’s top performing universal health-care systems, with the best outcomes and shortest wait times, include a blend of both public and private care. No one has done it with the naysayers’ fixation on government provision.
And finally, some critics claim that, under ABF, private clinics will simply focus on less-complex procedures for less-complex patients to achieve greater profit, leaving public hospitals to perform more complex and thus costly surgeries. But in fact, private clinics alleviate pressure on the public system, allowing hospitals to dedicate their sophisticated resources to complex cases. To be sure, the government must ensure that complex procedures—no matter where they are performed—must always receive appropriate levels of funding and similarly that less-complex procedures are also appropriately funded. But again, the vast and lengthy experience with ABF in other universal health-care countries can help inform Alberta’s approach, which could then serve as an example for other provinces.
Alberta’s health-care system simply does not deliver for patients, with its painfully long wait times and poor access to physicians and services—despite its massive price tag. With its planned shift to activity-based funding, the province has embarked on a path to better health care, despite any false claims from the naysayers. Now it’s crucial for the Smith government to learn from the experiences of others and get this critical reform right.
2025 Federal Election
Group that added dozens of names to ballot in Poilievre’s riding plans to do it again

From LifeSiteNews
The ‘Longest Ballot Committee’ is looking to run hundreds of protest candidates against Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre in an upcoming by-election in the Alberta.
A group called the “Longest Ballot Committee” is looking to run hundreds of protest candidates against Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre in an upcoming by-election in the Alberta Battle River–Crowfoot riding, just like they did in his former Ottawa-area Carelton riding in last week’s election.
The Longest Ballot Committee is a grassroots group that packs ridings with protest candidates and is looking to place 200 names in the Battle River–Crowfoot riding. The riding was won by Conservative-elect MP Damien Kurek who garnered over 80 percent of the vote, but has since said he is going to vacate his seat to allow Poilievre to run a by-election and reclaim his seat in Parliament in a Conservative-safe area.
In an email to its followers, the committee said “dozens and dozens” of volunteers are ready to sign up as candidates for the yet-to-be-called by-election. The initiative follows after the group did the same thing in Poilievre’s former Carelton riding which he lost last Monday, and which saw voters being given an extremely long ballot with 90 candidates.
The group asked people who want to run to send them their legal name and information by May 12, adding that if about 200 people sign up they will “make a long ballot happen.”
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