Alberta
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith to consider halting COVID vaccines for healthy children
From LifeSiteNews
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said she will consider the findings of a report she commissioned that called for halting COVID shots for healthy children and teenagers, admitting there are questions about the “efficacy” of the jab in kids.
“I was pleased to see that we had a broad cross-section of doctors able to look at our previous COVID response, identify processes that were in place, identify things that may have gone wrong,” Smith said [24:50 min mark] while speaking to reporters on January 29.
Smith was responding to a question in response to the Alberta COVID-19 Pandemic Data Review Task Force’s “COVID Pandemic Response” 269-page final report released last week.
She said she is looking to “identify things that are now under question, like the efficacy of masks and the efficacy of this vaccine in children.”
Smith added that her government is “going to take a look at” the report’s findings and “obviously we’ll, we’ll make some decisions about whether to move forward on any of the recommendations.”
The report was commissioned by Smtih last year, giving the task force a sweeping mandate to investigate her predecessor’s COVID-era mandates and policies.
The task force’s final report was released last week. It recommended halting “the use of COVID-19 vaccines without full disclosure of their potential risks” as well as outright ending their use “for healthy children and teenagers as other jurisdictions have done,” mentioning countries like “Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and the U.K.”
Among the recommendations of the task force was the call to “(f)urther research to establish the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines is necessary before widespread use in adults and children,” the establishment of “a website and/or call-in center for the vaccine injured in Alberta” as well as establishing a “mechanism for opting out of federal health policy until provincial due process has been satisfied.”
The report also noted that “(c)hildren and teenagers have a very low risk of serious illness from COVID-19. COVID-19 vaccines were not designed to halt transmission and there is a lack of reliable data showing that the vaccines protect children from severe COVID-19.”
Earlier this week, LifeSiteNews reported how Alberta health minister Adriana LaGrange said she will “consider” the findings of a report published last week that recommends immediate halting COVID shots for healthy children and teenagers.
Smith: Doctors’ right to ‘speak their mind’ must be protected
While answering reporters’ questions on January 29, Smith also said the doctors in the province need to be able to “speak their minds without punishment from their colleges.”
“I think that’s going to be important too, otherwise, politicians only bad decisions,” she noted.
The report touched on how many doctors in Alberta who gave opposing views to the mainstream narrative regarding COVID jabs, masks, and the use of alternatives to treat the virus were wrongly vilified.
Smith mentioned that the point of the report was to find out what went wrong during COVID and to not repeat the same mistakes should there be another pandemic.
LifeSiteNews has published an extensive amount of research on the dangers of the experimental COVID mRNA jabs that include heart damage and blood clots.
The mRNA shots have also been linked to a multitude of negative and often severe side effects in children and all have connections to cell lines derived from aborted babies.
After becoming premier in late 2022, Smith promptly fired the province’s top doctor, Deena Hinshaw, and the entire AHS board of directors, all of whom oversaw the implementation of COVID mandates.
Under predecessor Jason Kenney, thousands of nurses, doctors, and other healthcare and government workers lost their jobs for choosing to not get the jabs, leading Smith to say – only minutes after being sworn in – that over the past year the “unvaccinated” were the “most discriminated against” group of people in her lifetime.
From Resource Now
Alberta renews call for West Coast oil pipeline amid shifting federal, geopolitical dynamics.
Just six months ago, talk of resurrecting some version of the Northern Gateway pipeline would have been unthinkable. But with the election of Donald Trump in the U.S. and Mark Carney in Canada, it’s now thinkable.
In fact, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith seems to be making Northern Gateway 2.0 a top priority and a condition for Alberta staying within the Canadian confederation and supporting Mark Carney’s vision of making Canada an Energy superpower. Thanks to Donald Trump threatening Canadian sovereignty and its economy, there has been a noticeable zeitgeist shift in Canada. There is growing support for the idea of leveraging Canada’s natural resources and diversifying export markets to make it less vulnerable to an unpredictable southern neighbour.
“I think the world has changed dramatically since Donald Trump got elected in November,” Smith said at a keynote address Wednesday at the Global Energy Show Canada in Calgary. “I think that’s changed the national conversation.” Smith said she has been encouraged by the tack Carney has taken since being elected Prime Minister, and hopes to see real action from Ottawa in the coming months to address what Smith said is serious encumbrances to Alberta’s oil sector, including Bill C-69, an oil and gas emissions cap and a West Coast tanker oil ban. “I’m going to give him some time to work with us and I’m going to be optimistic,” Smith said. Removing the West Coast moratorium on oil tankers would be the first step needed to building a new oil pipeline line from Alberta to Prince Rupert. “We cannot build a pipeline to the west coast if there is a tanker ban,” Smith said. The next step would be getting First Nations on board. “Indigenous peoples have been shut out of the energy economy for generations, and we are now putting them at the heart of it,” Smith said.
Alberta currently produces about 4.3 million barrels of oil per day. Had the Northern Gateway, Keystone XL and Energy East pipelines been built, Alberta could now be producing and exporting an additional 2.5 million barrels of oil per day. The original Northern Gateway Pipeline — killed outright by the Justin Trudeau government — would have terminated in Kitimat. Smith is now talking about a pipeline that would terminate in Prince Rupert. This may obviate some of the concerns that Kitimat posed with oil tankers negotiating Douglas Channel, and their potential impacts on the marine environment.
One of the biggest hurdles to a pipeline to Prince Rupert may be B.C. Premier David Eby. The B.C. NDP government has a history of opposing oil pipelines with tooth and nail. Asked in a fireside chat by Peter Mansbridge how she would get around the B.C. problem, Smith confidently said: “I’ll convince David Eby.”
“I’m sensitive to the issues that were raised before,” she added. One of those concerns was emissions. But the Alberta government and oil industry has struck a grand bargain with Ottawa: pipelines for emissions abatement through carbon capture and storage.
The industry and government propose multi-billion investments in CCUS. The Pathways Alliance project alone represents an investment of $10 to $20 billion. Smith noted that there is no economic value in pumping CO2 underground. It only becomes economically viable if the tradeoff is greater production and export capacity for Alberta oil. “If you couple it with a million-barrel-per-day pipeline, well that allows you $20 billion worth of revenue year after year,” she said. “All of a sudden a $20 billion cost to have to decarbonize, it looks a lot more attractive when you have a new source of revenue.” When asked about the Prince Rupert pipeline proposal, Eby has responded that there is currently no proponent, and that it is therefore a bridge to cross when there is actually a proposal. “I think what I’ve heard Premier Eby say is that there is no project and no proponent,” Smith said. “Well, that’s my job. There will be soon. “We’re working very hard on being able to get industry players to realize this time may be different.” “We’re working on getting a proponent and route.”
At a number of sessions during the conference, Mansbridge has repeatedly asked speakers about the Alberta secession movement, and whether it might scare off investment capital. Alberta has been using the threat of secession as a threat if Ottawa does not address some of the province’s long-standing grievances. Smith said she hopes Carney takes it seriously. “I hope the prime minister doesn’t want to test it,” Smith said during a scrum with reporters. “I take it seriously. I have never seen separatist sentiment be as high as it is now. “I’ve also seen it dissipate when Ottawa addresses the concerns Alberta has.” She added that, if Carney wants a true nation-building project to fast-track, she can’t think of a better one than a new West Coast pipeline. “I can’t imagine that there will be another project on the national list that will generate as much revenue, as much GDP, as many high paying jobs as a bitumen pipeline to the coast.”
Alberta
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith Discusses Moving Energy Forward at the Global Energy Show in Calgary
From Energy Now
At the energy conference in Calgary, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith pressed the case for building infrastructure to move provincial products to international markets, via a transportation and energy corridor to British Columbia.
“The anchor tenant for this corridor must be a 42-inch pipeline, moving one million incremental barrels of oil to those global markets. And we can’t stop there,” she told the audience.
The premier reiterated her support for new pipelines north to Grays Bay in Nunavut, east to Churchill, Man., and potentially a new version of Energy East.
The discussion comes as Prime Minister Mark Carney and his government are assembling a list of major projects of national interest to fast-track for approval.
Carney has also pledged to establish a major project review office that would issue decisions within two years, instead of five.
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