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Alberta

Whistle Stop Cafe owner challenging lockdown and authorities

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7 minute read

Just a few months ago Mirror, Alberta might have been referred to as UCP heartland.  But things seem to be changing quickly.  One of the hottest spots in the area is Chris Scott’s Whistle Stop Cafe.  The owner, Chris Scott opened The Whistle Stop in the middle of Alberta’s second lockdown back in January.  Still facing legal action from that lockdown, Chris didn’t hesitate to announce he would also be defying Alberta’s third lockdown of indoor dining as soon as that was announced.  Hundreds of supporters showed up on the weekend.  They were treated to music, a beer garden, as well as both outdoor patio, and indoor dining options.
As expected The Whistle Stop was visited by an AHS inspector and RCMP members who noted the violations and informed Mr. Scott of impending legal actions against The Whistle Stop Cafe.  All this hasn’t slowed Scott down one bit.  As of Tuesday morning, the cafe is open and serving customers (who are warned by staff they could be charged for violating indoor dining restrictions) and Chris Scott is planning for another busy weekend.  Scott addresses his massive social media following daily.  His Tuesday morning address shows just how committed he remains despite the obvious impending showdown sure to take place in the coming days between Scott and AHS as well as the RCMP.
In his facebook post, the owner of The Whistle Stop Cafe almost seems to be daring Premier Jason Kenney to make a move:

From the Facebook page of The Whistle Stop Cafe

Good morning everyone! It’s been a busy, stressful couple days for us here. I’m not going into details as they’re irrelevant to our vision of serving delicious food, to beautiful people ❤️ today could be a very big day for us here at the Whistle Stop Cafe in Mirror, Alberta. We’ve got a lot on the go including planning this coming weekends festivities here. Live music, karaoke, and wonderful food prepared with care and attention to detail. All of us here believe strongly in taking every precaution with the way we handle food. As a food “service,” provider our number one priority is ensuring that what we serve its fresh and safe. We also believe in your choice to either venture out in this dangerous world or stay home and limit your exposure to the thousands of risks we encounter every day. Nobody here will ever judge you for making your own choice. As most of you know, Alberta Health Services suspended our food handling permit yesterday, via EMAIL. Now I could have ignored the email and said I didn’t recieved it and made them come out here and deliver themselves, but I didn’t. AHS inspectors are not well received these days. And I’m happy to consider them as human beings and keep them out of situations where they may be subject to abusive language and threats. So I accepted the email as it was written and acknowledge the suspension of my permit. However, as a man and a human being I have the right to engage in commerce. I have the right to Life, Liberty and security. These rights are not conditional on any agency “permitting,” them. We continue to follow best practices in regards to purchase, storage, and preparation of our food. And we continue to maintain a clean environment in which to serve or consume said food. We will not continue to be bullied into submitting to garbage, harmful, baseless restrictions forced on the people of Alberta by those who will never suffer the consequences of their own actions. We are OPEN for business. And we have some great specials today!

Eggs Kenney

Breakfast- Eggs Kenney served with a side of disobedience. 2 eggs poached one way, then changed to whatever we feel like making up at the time. We will give you ham, sausage, and bacon with your eggs Kenney but then we’re going to take back half of it and tell you is for your own good. Comes with hashbrowns on the side, but only if you submit to our stupid rule of clapping three times and saying the word, “knee,” (as in the Knights who say, knee. Because it’s ridiculous and changes nothing.) $5.00 plus a fee of $7.95 for the permit to eat.
Lunch special today is a UCP burger. Our delicious classic burger! But like our government it will be served open and two-faced with an egg on its face. Comes with delicious freedom fries! $11.95
Soup today is Hinshaw chicken noodle. Chicken soup is good for you! And since Dr. Hinshaw seems to think she’s the only person who knows what’s good for us I figured it was an appropriate name.
Supper special is whatever you want. We will prepare you anything you like! Because what you put in your body, and where you choose to eat and do business is YOUR CHOICE!!! Keep in mind our kitchen is small so please don’t go crazy🤣 our supper special is FREE! And if you feel like donating to our cause we would be very happy to accept it. I heard something about “plague rats,” so all donations will go towards cleaning supplies and a consultation with an exterminator because we want ALBERTA TO REMAIN RAT FREE!!!
We’re looking forward to seeing you today!! We NEED YOU HERE. We need your support! We need to push back as hard as we can, knowing that we may get sick but doing OF OUR OWN ACCORD!!
Sending love and freedom from the Whistle Stop Cafe in Mirror ❤️
-Chris

After 15 years as a TV reporter with Global and CBC and as news director of RDTV in Red Deer, Duane set out on his own 2008 as a visual storyteller. During this period, he became fascinated with a burgeoning online world and how it could better serve local communities. This fascination led to Todayville, launched in 2016.

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Alberta

Alberta extracting more value from oil and gas resources: ATB

Published on

From the Canadian Energy Centre

By Will Gibson

Investment in ‘value-added’ projects more than doubled to $4 billion in 2024

In the 1930s, economist Harold Innis coined the term “hewers of wood and drawers of water” to describe Canada’s reliance on harvesting natural resources and exporting them elsewhere to be refined into consumer products.

Almost a century later, ATB Financial chief economist Mark Parsons has highlighted a marked shift in that trend in Alberta’s energy industry, with more and more projects that upgrade raw hydrocarbons into finished products.

ATB estimates that investment in projects that generate so-called “value-added” products like refined petroleum, hydrogen, petrochemicals and biofuels more than doubled to reach $4 billion in 2024.

Alberta is extracting more value from its natural resources,” Parsons said.

“It makes the provincial economy somewhat more resilient to boom and bust energy price cycles. It creates more construction and operating jobs in Alberta. It also provides a local market for Alberta’s energy and agriculture feedstock.”

The shift has occurred as Alberta’s economy adjusts to lower levels of investment in oil and gas extraction.

While overall “upstream” capital spending has been rising since 2022 — and oil production has never been higher — investment last year of about $35 billion is still dramatically less than the $63 billion spent in 2014.

Parsons pointed to Dow’s $11 billion Path2Zero project as the largest value-added project moving ahead in Alberta.

​​The project, which has support from the municipal, provincial and federal governments, will increase Dow’s production of polyethylene, the world’s most widely used plastic.

By capturing and storing carbon dioxide emissions and generating hydrogen on-site, the complex will be the world’s first ethylene cracker with net zero emissions from operations.

Other major value-added examples include Air Products’ $1.6 billion net zero hydrogen complex, and the associated $720 million renewable diesel facility owned by Imperial Oil. Both projects are slated for startup this year.

Parsons sees the shift to higher value products as positive for the province and Canada moving forward.

“Downstream energy industries tend to have relatively high levels of labour productivity and wages,” he said.

“A big part of Canada’s productivity problem is lagging business investment. These downstream investments, which build off existing resource strengths, provide one pathway to improving the country’s productivity performance.”

Heather Exner-Pirot, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s director of energy, natural resources and environment, sees opportunities for Canada to attract additional investment in this area.

“We are able to benefit from the mistakes of other regions. In Germany, their business model for creating value-added products such as petrochemicals relies on cheap feedstock and power, and they’ve lost that due to a combination of geopolitics and policy decisions,” she said.

“Canada and Alberta, in particular, have the opportunity to attract investment because they have stable and reliable feedstock with decades, if not centuries, of supply shielded from geopolitics.”

Exner-Pirot is also bullish about the increased market for low-carbon products.

“With our advantages, Canada should be doing more to attract companies and manufacturers that will produce more value-added products,” she said.

Like oil and gas extraction, value-added investments can help companies develop new technologies that can themselves be exported, said Shannon Joseph, chair of Energy for a Secure Future, an Ottawa-based coalition of Canadian business and community leaders.

“This investment creates new jobs and spinoffs because these plants require services and inputs. Investments such as Dow’s Path2Zero have a lot of multipliers. Success begets success,” Joseph said.

“Investment in innovation creates a foundation for long-term diversification of the economy.”

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Alberta

Alberta government must restrain spending in upcoming budget to avoid red ink

Published on

From the Fraser Institute

By Tegan Hill and Milagros Palacios

Whether due to U.S. tariffs or lower-than-expected oil prices, the Smith government has repeatedly warned Albertans that despite a $4.6 billion projected budget surplus in 2024/25, Alberta could soon be in the red. To help avoid this fate, the Smith government must restrain spending in its upcoming 2025 budget.

These are not simply numbers on a page; budget deficits have real consequences for Albertans. For one, deficits fuel debt accumulation. And just as Albertans must pay interest on their own mortgages or car loans, taxpayers must pay interest on government debt. Each dollar spent paying interest is a dollar diverted from programs such as health care and education, or potential tax relief. This fiscal year, provincial government debt interest costs will reach a projected $650 per Albertan.

And while many risk factors are out of the government’s direct control, the government can control its own spending.

In its 2023 budget, the Smith government committed to keep the rate of spending growth to below the rate of inflation and population growth. This was an important step forward after decades of successive governments substantially increasing spending during good times—when resource revenues (including oil and gas royalties) were relatively high (as they are today)—but failing to rein in spending when resource revenue inevitably declined.

But here’s the problem. Even if the Smith government sticks to this commitment, it may still fall into deficit. Why? Because this government has spent significantly more than it originally planned in its 2022 mid-year plan (the Smith government’s first fiscal update). In other words, the government’s “restraint” is starting from a significantly higher base level of spending. For example, this fiscal year it will spend $8.2 billion more than it originally planned in its 2022 mid-year plan. And inflation and population growth only account for $3.1 billion of this additional spending. In other words, $5.1 billion of this new spending is unrelated to offsetting higher prices or Alberta’s growing population.

Because of this higher spending and reliance on volatile resource revenue, red ink looms.

Indeed, while the Smith government projects budget surpluses over the next three fiscal years, fuelled by historically high resource revenue, if resource revenue was at its average of the last two decades, this year’s $4.6 billion projected budget surplus would turn into a $5.8 billion deficit. And projected budget surpluses in 2025/26 and 2026/27 would flip to budget deficits. To be clear, this is not a far-fetched scenario—resource revenue plummeted by nearly 70 per cent in 2015/16.

In contrast, if resource revenue fell to its average (again, based on the last two decades) but the Smith government held to its original 2022 spending plan, Alberta would still have a balanced budget in 2026/27.

Bottom line; had the Smith government not substantially increased spending over the last two years, Alberta’s spending levels today would align with more stable ongoing levels of revenue, which would put Alberta on more stable fiscal footing in the years to come.

Premier Smith has warned Albertans a budget deficit may be on the way. To mitigate the risk of red ink moving forward, the Smith government should show real spending restraint in its 2025 budget.

Tegan Hill

Director, Alberta Policy, Fraser Institute

Milagros Palacios

Director, Addington Centre for Measurement, Fraser Institute
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