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Alberta

Happy Halloween! Province gives the go ahead for Trick or Treating

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3 minute read

From the Province of Alberta

Halloween

  • Alberta’s chief medical officer of health is not cancelling Halloween.
  • Outdoor Halloween activities are lower risk and supported by public health.
  • A new tip sheet online will help Albertans of all ages enjoy a safe and healthy Halloween.
  • Printable posters will let people know if you are handing out treats.

For more information and to find the printable posters go to Alberta.ca/Halloween

If you want to know what the province says about Trick or Treating this year watch this video starting at the 9:40 mark.

From trick-or-treating to the double feature picture show, you can enjoy your favourite Halloween activities safely by taking some simple precautions. Leave the terror to monsters, ghosts and evil clowns – not the pandemic.

Trick or treating

Don’t go trick-or-treating if feeling ill, even if symptoms are minor

Choose costumes that allow a non-medical mask to be worn underneath – make sure you can see and breathe comfortably

Minimize contact with others: trick-or-treat with your family or cohort, remain within your community, and stay 2 metres apart

Avoid touching doorbells or railings: call “trick or treat” from 2 metres away, knock instead of using doorbells, use hand sanitizer after touching surfaces

Wash hands and disinfect packages before eating candy

Handing out candy

Don’t hand out candy if feeling ill or isolating

Wear a non-medical mask that fully covers your nose and mouth

Ask trick-or-treaters to knock or call out instead of ringing the doorbell

Use tongs to hand out pre-packaged candy to avoid handling treats

Find creative ways to maintain distance from trick-or-treaters:

Hand out treats from your driveway or front lawn, if weather permits

Set up a table or desk to help keep yourself distanced

Make candy bags and space them out on a table or blanket; don’t leave out self-serve bowls of bulk candy

Build a candy slide, candy catapult or other fun, non-touch delivery methods

Halloween parties

Stay home if feeling ill, even if symptoms are mild

Spend time with people you know – the smaller the group the better

Choose games and activities that don’t use shared items and allows people to stay 2 metres apart

Don’t share drinks, food, cigarettes, vapes or cannabis

Host your party outdoors, if weather permits. If you must stay indoors:

  • reduce your gathering size
  • choose a location that allows for physical distancing between people from separate families and cohorts
  • provide hand sanitizer

Wash or sanitize your hands often

Alberta

The Conventional Energy Sector and Pipelines Will Feature Prominently in Alberta’s Referendum Debate

Published on

From Energy Now

By Jim Warren

Like it or not, the supporters of conventional energy production in the West, even those who bleed maple syrup, will be best served by a substantial leave vote. A poor showing on the part of the leave camp would weaken the bargaining power of the producing provinces and the conventional energy sector in their dealings with Ottawa.

The political dust-up between the leavers and the stayers is about to commence.

The petition calling for an Alberta referendum on separation will get the required signatures. And, the Moe government in Saskatchewan may yet decide to do something similar.

And, there is a good chance the federal Liberals and their allies in the environmental movement will launch an anti-separation/anti-oil campaign in response. The Liberals need merely to reinvigorate the flag waving campaign they ran during the federal election. All that needs to change for that tactic to work is the name of the boogeyman—from Donald Trump to alienated Westerners.  Government subsidized environmental organizations will help do the rest.

This will present something of a dilemma for some supporters of the conventional energy and pipeline sectors. Should they lay low, stay quiet and perhaps avoid becoming part of the controversy? Alternatively, should they face reality and admit oil and pipelines will feature prominently in the debate whether they like it or not. The federal assault on oil, gas and pipelines is after all one of the principal motivations inspiring many who wish to separate.

And, whether we like it or not, the supporters of conventional energy production in the West, even those who bleed maple syrup, will be best served by a substantial leave vote. A poor showing on the part of the leave camp would weaken the bargaining power of the producing provinces and the conventional energy sector in their dealings with Ottawa. This is one of the immutable laws of the negotiating universe. A union that gets only 20% of its members voting in favour of strike action knows it is impotent should management call its bluff.

This is not to say the leave side will need a majority vote to produce a win for the energy sector—a large minority could do nicely. The Parti Québécois’ goal of “sovereignty association” in the 1980 Quebec referendum was supported by just 40.4% of those who voted. Yet, it nevertheless added leverage to Quebec’s extortionate demands on Ottawa and the rest of Canada. Although, after the separatists garnered 49.4% of the vote in the 1995 referendum (aka Canada’s near death experience), Quebec did even better.

True, the two producing provinces on the prairies lack the electoral power of Quebec. In combination with Ontario, Quebec has been integral to Liberal success in federal elections for decades. The power of the West lies in its ability to generate a large share of Canada’s export revenues. That’s mainly why Quebec is able to count on $14 billion in annual equalization welfare. Threatening separation turns the economic importance of the West into a political weapon.

We can expect a highly divisive referendum debate–potentially far more fractious than the federal election campaign. Signals coming out of Ottawa suggest federal-provincial negotiations over conventional energy and emissions policy are about to take a nasty turn. We could be facing a perfect storm of disunity with Westerners bashing Ottawa while Ottawa denounces separatists and resumes its assault on oil, gas and pipelines.

Chances for lowering the political temperature don’t look good. The prime minister has been distancing himself from his initial pre-election pro pipeline position. Early in the election campaign Mark Carney said he would employ the emergency powers of the federal government to get new export pipelines running from the prairies to tidewater. The next week he told reporters Quebec would have the power to veto the approval of any pipeline crossing its territory. On May 14, Carney presented reporters with a word salad that seemed to be saying he would include evaluation of the potential for new pipelines along with other energy policy ideas being discussed. And, if a consensus favouring pipelines emerged, one might be built.

This is not comforting. These statements cannot all be correct at the same time. At least two, if not all three, of them, are disingenuous.

Exactly who will be included in the consensus building discussions is unclear. Will they involve meetings with the premiers of the provinces that generate huge export revenues for Canada. Will they be restricted to the emissions reduction zealots who dominate the cabinet and the Liberal caucus? Or, is it something Carney will work out at Davos when the World Economic Forum next convenes?

The Liberals and their media allies put a lot of stock in the polls once they showed the Liberals in the lead during the election campaign. They briefly acknowledged election period polling that showed 74% of Canadians support the construction of new export pipeline including 60% of Quebecers. But reporting on the growing popularity of pipelines ended after about a week when Carney’s unqualified support for a pipeline to the Atlantic coast evaporated.

Furthermore, the popular vote totals from the federal election demonstrate that Canadians’ support for the Conservatives and the Liberals was divided fairly evenly, 41.3% for the Conservatives and 43.8% for the Liberals. A slim 2.5 percentage point spread. It seems reasonable to assume many Conservative supporters outside of the prairies shared Pierre Poilievre’s strong and consistent support for conventional energy production and pipelines. The fact people in the producing provinces are not alone in seeing the wisdom of new export pipelines strengthens our position.

If the thumping the voters of Alberta and Saskatchewan gave the Liberals in the April 28 election didn’t convince the government its energy and pipelines policies have caused a national unity crisis, maybe a high vote in favour of separation will. Many people will figure this out and will vote strategically to ensure the leave side wins a respectable portion of the vote. Who would want to try to negotiate a good deal for the producing provinces and the conventional energy sector following a weak performance by the leave camp? The Liberals will claim that a big win for the stay camp shows that Albertans are happy with the status quo.

The anti-pipeline misinformation campaign is already underway. Steven Guilbeault was already at it last week. According to Guilbeault, since the Trans Mountain pipeline is not operating at full capacity we obviously don’t need any more pipelines.

Guilbeault knows full well the pipeline is running under full capacity. The reason being the residual fall-out from the $38 billion in cost overruns the government chalked up, which was in turn due to its own regulatory morass and system pains associated with issues like the poor design features built into the Burnaby terminal. The government expects oil producers to pay exorbitant shipping rates designed to rapidly recoup the embarrassing cost overruns. Producers are not prepared to lose money bailing out the government. Guilbeault also knows most producers making use of the Trans Mountain today had negotiated much lower rates with the pipeline prior to its completion.

We can expect the flow of this kind of misinformation to become a gusher in the days ahead.

One hopes there will be adults in charge of both the leave and stay camps. The cause of Western separation can be expected to attract enthusiasts from the fringes of the political spectrum. There will be crackpots and mean-spirited people cheering for both sides. Unfortunately, we need to prepare for the fact the mainstream media will focus on any loosely hinged eccentrics they can find who support separation. Radical environmentalists and climate change alarmists will be treated like selfless planet saving prophets.

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Alberta

Why Some Albertans Say Separation Is the Only Way

Published on

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

Frustrated. Fed up. Ready for change. That’s how many Albertans feel after years of being sidelined by Ottawa.
In this eye-opening episode, David Leis sits down with Dr. Dennis Modry and Lawyer Jeff Rath—two key voices behind the Alberta Prosperity Project—to talk about the growing push for sovereignty.
Is Alberta better off on its own? Why are more people demanding a referendum? And what would independence really look like—for the economy, Indigenous communities, and Alberta’s place in the world?
We get into everything: Trudeau’s policies, the recent election, the TMX pipeline, Western alienation, and why some say the current system is simply ungovernable. If you think the separation talk is just noise… you’ll want to hear this. (83 minutes)

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