Alberta
What are the new COVID19 measures and who do they effect?

Can we have dinner with our close friend? What exactly is a Cohort anyway? Is it true that we can go swimming even though we can’t play hockey?
We pulled this information From Alberta.ca to help make sense of the new health measures in the areas of Alberta most affected by COVID19.
From the Province of Alberta
Who is affected?
All purple zone areas | Calgary Area1 | Edmonton Area1 | Fort McMurray | Grande Prairie | Lethbridge | Red Deer | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
No social gatherings inside your home or outside of your community | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
15-person limit on family & social gatherings | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Limit of 3 cohorts, plus child care | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Mask use encouraged in all indoor workplaces | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Employers in office settings to reduce employees in the workplace at one time | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Restaurants/pubs stop liquor sales by 10pm, close by 11pm (Nov 13-27) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Ban on indoor group fitness classes & team sports (Nov 13-27) | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Ban on group singing, dancing & performing activities (Nov 13-27) | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
50-person limit on wedding and funeral services (indoor & outdoor) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Faith-based gatherings limited to 1/3 capacity | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
How are we affected?
The main enhanced measure is gathering restrictions
A gathering is any situation that brings people together in the same space at the same time for the same purpose. Check with your municipality for additional restrictions in your area.
New gathering limits for all communities on the enhanced measures list
- Stop holding social gatherings in private homes or outside your community
- 15 person limit on indoor and outdoor social and family gatherings
- 50 person limit on wedding ceremonies and funeral services
- Faith-based gatherings limited to 1/3 capacity
- Do not move social gatherings to communities with no restrictions.
- Instead, socialize outdoors or in structured settings, like restaurants or other business that are subject to legal limits and take steps to prevent transmission.
Unless otherwise identified in public health orders, these gathering restrictions are in place:
- 200 people max for outdoor audience-type community events
- 100 people max for outdoor social gatherings and indoor seated audience events
- 50 people max for indoor social gatherings
- No cap for worship gatherings, restaurant, cafes, lounges and bars, casinos and bingo halls, trade shows and exhibits (with public health measures in place)
- keep 2 metres apart from people outside your cohort
- avoid high-risk or prohibited activities
- stay home and get tested if you are sick
Alberta
Temporary Alberta grid limit unlikely to dampen data centre investment, analyst says

From the Canadian Energy Centre
By Cody Ciona
‘Alberta has never seen this level and volume of load connection requests’
Billions of investment in new data centres is still expected in Alberta despite the province’s electric system operator placing a temporary limit on new large-load grid connections, said Carson Kearl, lead data centre analyst for Enverus Intelligence Research.
Kearl cited NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang’s estimate from earlier this year that building a one-gigawatt data centre costs between US$60 billion and US$80 billion.
That implies the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO)’s 1.2 gigawatt temporary limit would still allow for up to C$130 billion of investment.
“It’s got the potential to be extremely impactful to the Alberta power sector and economy,” Kearl said.
Importantly, data centre operators can potentially get around the temporary limit by ‘bringing their own power’ rather than drawing electricity from the existing grid.
In Alberta’s deregulated electricity market – the only one in Canada – large energy consumers like data centres can build the power supply they need by entering project agreements directly with electricity producers.
According to the AESO, there are 30 proposed data centre projects across the province.
The total requested power load for these projects is more than 16 gigawatts, roughly four gigawatts more than Alberta’s demand record in January 2024 during a severe cold snap.
For comparison, Edmonton’s load is around 1.4 gigawatts, the AESO said.
“Alberta has never seen this level and volume of load connection requests,” CEO Aaron Engen said in a statement.
“Because connecting all large loads seeking access would impair grid reliability, we established a limit that preserves system integrity while enabling timely data centre development in Alberta.”
As data centre projects come to the province, so do jobs and other economic benefits.
“You have all of the construction staff associated; electricians, engineers, plumbers, and HVAC people for all the cooling tech that are continuously working on a multi-year time horizon. In the construction phase there’s a lot of spend, and that is just generally good for the ecosystem,” said Kearl.
Investment in local power infrastructure also has long-term job implications for maintenance and upgrades, he said.
“Alberta is a really exciting place when it comes to building data centers,” said Beacon AI CEO Josh Schertzer on a recent ARC Energy Ideas podcast.
“It has really great access to natural gas, it does have some excess grid capacity that can be used in the short term, it’s got a great workforce, and it’s very business-friendly.”
The unaltered reproduction of this content is free of charge with attribution to the Canadian Energy Centre.
Alberta
Alberta Next: Taxation

A new video from the Alberta Next panel looks at whether Alberta should stop relying on Ottawa to collect our provincial income taxes. Quebec already does it, and Alberta already collects corporate taxes directly. Doing the same for personal income taxes could mean better tax policy, thousands of new jobs, and less federal interference. But it would take time, cost money, and require building new systems from the ground up.
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