News
Update 3: Northwest Alberta wildfire (May 23 at 4:00 p.m.)
May 23, 2019
Thunderstorms are forecast for Thursday and Friday with no precipitation. States of local emergency remain in effect, with residents under a mandatory evacuation order.
Current situation
- The Chuckegg Creek Wildfire is burning approximately three kilometres south of the Town of High Level in Mackenzie County.
- This out-of-control wildfire is almost 92,000 hectares.
- Alberta Wildfire, Alberta Emergency Management Agency and local authorities are cooperating in the response.
- Albertans should be prepared to be away from home longer than initially planned. Evacuees are asked to report to reception centres in Peace River, High Prairie, Grande Prairie, Slave Lake, Fort Vermilion and Hay River.
- Firefighters are focusing efforts on containing the wildfire outside High Level. Yesterday, a break in conditions allowed a controlled burn between the wildfire and the town to consume materials that could have become fuel for the wildfire.
- Peace River is reporting reduced visibility due to the smoke which is expected to stay until tomorrow.
- Resources on the ground include about 143 wildland firefighters, 154 structural fighters and staff on the ground, supported by 28 helicopters, air tankers, 10 structural protection units and heavy machinery.
- Continuing dry and windy conditions in most of Alberta have increased the danger of forest fires. Fire bans and off-highway vehicle restrictions are now in place for central and northern areas of the province.
- Approximately 5,000 people have been evacuated from High Level and the neighbouring communities.
- Mandatory evacuation orders are in place for the Town of High Level and parts of Mackenzie County south of High Level.
- Dene Tha’ First Nation declared an evacuation order for Bushe River, Meander River and Chateh.
- A voluntary evacuation is in place for Paddle Prairie Metis Settlement and areas north of High Level.
- Alberta Health Services evacuated 15 patients from the Manning Community Health Centre due to smoke from the wildfires.
- The emergency department at Manning Community Health Centre remains open.
- Power, wireless services and gas have been restored to the Town of High Level, Mackenzie County and the Dene Tha’ First Nation.
- Detailed information is available on emergency.alberta.ca, which is updated frequently.
Reception centres
- Reception centres are open at:
- Slave Lake Legacy Centre (400 6 Avenue)
- High Prairie Sports Palace (5409 49 Street)
- Grande Prairie Regional College (10726 106 Avenue)
- Peace River Misery Mountain Ski Hill (10408 89 Street)
- La Crete Heritage Centre (25411 Township Road 1060, south of La Crete)
- Fort Vermilion Community Cultural Complex (5001 44 Avenue)
- Hay River Dene Wellness Centre
- Residents are asked to please check in with a reception centre, even if they are staying with family or friends, or finding alternate accommodations.
Highway closures
- Highway 35 remains closed between five kilometres and 30 kilometres south of High Level. Highway 697 and the La Crete Ferry is identified as a detour. La Crete Ferry is operational with wait times of approximately one hour.
- Highway 58 from High Level to approximately 70 kilometres from the junction with Range Road 45A remains closed.
Insurance information
- Evacuated residents should retain all their receipts for food purchases, accommodation and other related expenses to provide to their insurer for possible reimbursement.
- Most home and tenant’s insurance policies provide reasonable coverage for living expenses during an evacuation. Contact your insurance company for details.
- Albertans who cannot remember or reach their insurance provider, can contact the Insurance Bureau of Canada at 1-844-227-5422 or by email at [email protected]. Information to understand your fire insurance coverage is online at ibc.ca/ab/disaster/alberta-wildfire.
Justice and legal matters
- High Level Court is closed. Call the Peace River Court at 780-624-6256 for inquiries on High Level Court matters scheduled for this week and next. All scheduled Fort Vermilion matters will be heard in Peace River. Call the Peace River Court at 780-624-6256 if you’re unable to register your name and phone number. Matters will be held by phone if necessary.
- In many cases, tickets can be paid online. For any other inquiries requiring direction from the court about Peace River and Fort Vermilion court matters, call the Peace River Court at 780-624-6256.
- If you have an appointment with a probation officer in an evacuated area, report to the community corrections office nearest you. If you do not know where the nearest one is, call 780-427-3109 (to call toll free, first dial 310-0000).
- If you are an intermittent server in an evacuated area, call the Peace River Correctional Centre at 780-624-5480 (to call toll free, first dial 310-0000) for direction.
Air quality
- Alberta Health Services has issued a special air quality statement.
Health
- Mental health support is available by calling Alberta’s 24-hour Mental Health Help Line at 1-877-303-2642.
Post-secondary
- Apprentices or journeypersons from the High Level area who have questions should call the Apprenticeship and Industry Training Information line at 1-800-248-4823, Monday through Friday, 8:15 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., or visit tradesecrets.gov.ab.ca.
- Post-secondary students with questions about Alberta student loans can call 1-855-606-2096, or toll free in North America at 1-855-606-2096 Monday through Friday, 7:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.
Pets and livestock
- Residents who may have left their pets at home can call 780-926-2201. Volunteers can check on your pets.
- Mackenzie County has stock trailers to assist with livestock transport. Visit highlevel.ca for more information
Donations and volunteers
- The towns of High Level and Slave Lake are not accepting material donations and do not require volunteers at this time.
- The Town of Slave Lake has set up an online form for offers http://www.slavelake.ca/FormCenter/Other-27/High-Level-Evacuation-Volunteer-Sign-Up-159.
- Check the Mackenzie County Facebook page for an up-to-date list of donations needed and drop off locations.
Canada Post
- Canada Post has suspended mail delivery services in the communities of High Level, Meander Creek, Chateh, Rainbow Lake, Zama City, Fort Vermilion, Manning and La Crete.
- Mail will be held at the Edmonton depot until mail service resumes.
- Check the Canada Post website for updates.
Income Support, Alberta Supports and AISH
- Residents receiving benefits from the Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped (AISH) or the Income Support program by cheque rather than electronic deposit, and who are affected by the wildfire in High Level, can visit their nearest Alberta Supports Centres to pick up their cheque.
- If you are in La Crete, you can pick up your cheque at the local reception centre. If you receive your benefits via direct deposit, your payment will be deposited as usual.
- For information on child intervention and child care, residents may contact 1-800-638-0715.
- If persons with developmental disabilities, their families or contracted service providers need human, financial, or in-kind assistance to connect with loved ones, find accommodations or provide assistance to individuals receiving PDD supports, please contact the nearest Alberta Supports Centre for assistance. You can find a list of Alberta Supports Centres online or you can call the Alberta Supports contact Centre at 1-800-232-7215 provincewide between 7:30 a.m. – 8 p.m., Monday to Friday.
- For additional information on social benefits, affected individuals can contact Alberta Supports or call 1-877-644-9992, Monday to Friday from 7:30 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Health card
- To get a replacement Health Care Insurance Card at no cost, you can contact 780-427-1432 or toll free at 310-0000 and then 780-427-1432 when prompted. Your Alberta Personal Health Card can be mailed to a temporary address.
Other information
- Residents driving through the area should carry enough fuel as there may be shortages.
Public information
- You can call 310-4455, open daily from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. for wildfire-related information.
Related information
Internet
It’s only a matter of time before the government attaches strings to mainstream media subsidies
Misinformation is not exclusive to alternative online news organizations
In a previous world, whether they succeeded or failed at that was really no one’s business, at least provided the publisher wasn’t knowingly spreading false information intended to do harm. That is against the law, as outlined in Section 372 of the Criminal Code, which states:
“Everyone commits an offence who, with intent to injure or alarm a person, conveys information that they know is false, or causes such information to be conveyed by letter or any means of telecommunication.”
Do that, and you can be imprisoned for up to two years.
But if a publisher was simply offering poorly researched, unbalanced journalism, and wave after wave of unchallenged opinion pieces with the ability to pervert the flow of information and leave the public with false or distorted impressions of the world, he or she was free to do so. Freedom of the press and all that.
The broadcasting world has always been different. Licensed by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), content produced there must, according to the Broadcasting Act, be of “high standard”—something that the CRTC ensures through its proxy content regulator, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC).
Its most recent decision, for instance, condemned Sportsnet Ontario for failing to “provide a warning before showing scenes of extraordinary violence” when it broadcast highlights of UFC mixed martial arts competitions during morning weekend hours when children could watch. If you don’t understand how a warning would have prevented whatever trauma the highlights may have caused or how that might apply to the internet, take comfort in the fact that you aren’t alone.
The CRTC now has authority over all video and audio content posted digitally through the Online Streaming Act, and while it has not yet applied CRTC-approved CBSC standards to it, it’s probably only a matter of time before it does.
The same will—in my view—eventually take place regarding text news content. Since it has become a matter of public interest through subsidies, it’s inevitable that “high standard” expectations will be attached to eligibility. In other words, what once was nobody’s business is now everybody’s business. Freedom of the, er, press and all that.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith
Which raises the point: is the Canadian public well informed by the news industry, and who exactly will be the judge of that now that market forces have been, if not eliminated, at least emasculated?
For instance, as former Opposition leader Preston Manning recently wondered on Substack, how can it be that “62 per cent of Ontarians,” according to a Pollara poll, believe Alberta Premier Danielle Smith to be a separatist?
“The truth is that Premier Smith—whom I’ve known personally for a long time—is not a separatist and has made that clear on numerous occasions to the public, the media, and anyone who asks her,” he wrote.
I, too, have been acquainted for many years with the woman Globe and Mailcolumnist Andrew Coyne likes to call “Premier Loon” and have the same view as Manning, whom I have also known for many years: Smith is not a separatist.
Manning’s theory is that there are three reasons for Ontarians’ disordered view—the first two being ignorance and indifference.
The third and greatest, he wrote, is “misinformation—not so much misinformation transmitted via social media, because it is especially older Ontarians who believe the lie about Smith—but misinformation fed into the minds of Ontarians via the traditional media” which includes CBC, CTV, Global, and “the Toronto-based, legacy print media.”
No doubt, some members of those organizations would protest and claim the former Reform Party leader is the cause of all the trouble.
Such is today’s Canada, where the flying time between Calgary and Toronto is roughly the same as between London and Moscow, and the sense of east-west cultural dislocation is at times similar. As Rudyard Kipling determined, the twain shall never meet “till earth and sky stand presently at God’s great judgment seat.”
This doesn’t mean easterners and westerners can’t get along. Heavens no. But what it does illustrate is that maybe having editorial coverage decisions universally made in Hogtown about Cowtown (the author’s outdated terminology), Halifax, St John’s, Yellowknife, or Prince Rupert isn’t helping national unity. It is ridiculous, when you think about it, that anyone believes a vast nation’s residents could have compatible views when key decisions are limited to those perched six degrees south of the 49th parallel within earshot of Buffalo.
But CTV won’t change. Global can’t. The Globe is a Toronto newspaper, and most Postmedia products have become stripped-down satellites condemned to eternally orbit 365 Bloor Street East.
The CRTC is preoccupied with finding novel ways to subsidize broadcasters to maintain a status quo involving breakfast shows. So we can’t expect any changes there, nor can we from the major publishers.
Which leaves the job to the CBC, whose job it has always been to make sure the twain could meet. That makes it fair to assume Manning will be writing for many years to come about Toronto’s mainstream media and misinformation about the West.
(Peter Menzies is a commentator and consultant on media, Macdonald-Laurier Institute Senior Fellow, a past publisher of the Calgary Herald, a former vice chair of the CRTC and a National Newspaper Award winner.)
Quick Hit:
Google is under fire after a new study revealed it buried Tulsi Gabbard’s bombshell claims that Barack Obama fabricated Trump-Russia intel—flooding search results with leftist attacks and downplaying the story to protect the former president.
Key Details:
- DNI Tulsi Gabbard accused Obama of fabricating intelligence to bolster the Trump-Russia collusion narrative.
- Google News allegedly buried Gabbard’s exposé by promoting stories attacking her instead of covering her claims.
- MRC found that 90% of Google’s promoted coverage came from left-leaning outlets, leaving just 10% for right-leaning perspectives—almost exclusively Fox News.
Diving Deeper:
During a July 23 press briefing, Tulsi Gabbard revealed explosive allegations against the Obama administration, accusing the former president of overriding intelligence assessments that found no Russian interference favoring Donald Trump in 2016. According to Gabbard, Obama “manipulated” the intelligence community to promote a “contrived narrative,” aimed at undermining Trump and, by extension, the will of American voters.
But rather than spotlighting the story’s significance, Google appeared to move swiftly to suppress it. As the MRC study shows, Google’s News tab was flooded with coverage designed to discredit Gabbard—many articles outright calling her a liar or suggesting she was distracting from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. One article from The Atlantic branded Trump’s public support for her findings as “desperate,” while others derided her evidence as “thin gruel” or claimed she was trying to “rewrite history.”
A closer look at Google’s search results between July 24 and July 29 paints a troubling picture. The MRC analyzed the first page of results for the term “Tulsi Gabbard” and found that out of 42 articles, 33 were from outlets classified by AllSides as “Lean Left” or “Left.” Only four were from right-leaning sources—and all four came from a single outlet: Fox News. Three of those Fox articles focused not on Gabbard’s claims, but on attacks against her, often echoing Democratic Party criticism.
MRC highlighted how even these rare conservative pieces offered little defense of Gabbard’s findings. One article simply quoted Rep. Adam Schiff dismissing the accusations as “dishonest.” Others featured video clips of NBC’s Kristen Welker pressing GOP figures like Sen. Lindsey Graham about the credibility of Gabbard’s claims. Only one article directly addressed the substance of her evidence.
Meanwhile, prominent left-leaning outlets featured in Google’s curated feed pushed narratives designed to ridicule or minimize the allegations. MSNBC dismissed her claims as “absurd,” while Politico suggested Gabbard had become a “weapon” for President Trump. CNN accused her of attempting to “rewrite history,” and FactCheck.org labeled her statements “misleading.”
The implications go beyond this single controversy. A 2021 Pew Research Center study found that two-thirds of Americans rely on search engines like Google for their news. This means most Americans are receiving information that has been filtered through what critics argue is an increasingly leftist editorial algorithm.
By not allowing a diversity of viewpoints on such a critical national security issue—especially one involving a former president—Google’s conduct raises serious concerns about media bias and the integrity of information distribution. While it is unsurprising to see The New York Times or CNN toe the DNC line, the monopoly Google holds over digital search amplifies this bias into something far more powerful and dangerous.
The episode underscores a growing divide in how news is curated and presented online. For conservative Americans, it also reinforces a longstanding suspicion: Big Tech is not just biased—it’s actively working to sanitize narratives unfavorable to the Democratic Party.
In this case, shielding Obama and undermining a sitting Trump administration official.
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