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Alberta

Province offers alberta.ca/bizconnect – information hub for businesses about to open during pandemic

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From the Province of Alberta

Supporting Alberta’s businesses through relaunch

To support businesses reopening during stage one of Alberta’s phased relaunch, government is launching a new resource to help them keep their staff and customers safer.

The new alberta.ca/bizconnect webpage will provide business owners with information on health and safety guidelines for general workplaces and sector-specific guidelines for those able to open in stage one of relaunch to ensure businesses can reopen safely during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“As businesses reopen, we’re committed to making sure they have the information they need to operate during the pandemic and get people back to work. We expect businesses to follow these safety measures so that we can continue to reopen our economy while protecting the health and safety of all Albertans.”

Tanya Fir, Minister of Economic Development, Trade and Tourism

As part of government’s commitment to support businesses as they reopen and to eliminate red tape, alberta.ca/bizconnect will include a red tape reduction submission form so business owners can share their ideas on modernizing regulations and reducing red tape, especially as they respond to COVID-19.

“We know that Alberta businesses are dealing with a whole new reality because of the COVID-19 pandemic. We want business owners to continue to let us know how we can help make their lives easier so we can reduce unneeded regulatory barriers to their success and get Albertans back to work.”

Grant Hunter, Associate Minister of Red Tape Reduction

“Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, restaurants have provided their communities with safe and reliable meal options and this will continue to be their priority as they reopen their doors to diners. Restaurants Canada looks forward to continuing to work closely with the Alberta government on efforts to help foodservice businesses get ready to reopen their dining rooms and ramp up operations. We appreciate the guidance that the government has provided to help restaurants prepare to resume on-premise dining services as early as May 14.”

Mark von Schellwitz, vice-president Restaurants Canada, Western Canada

“Businesses who are planning to reopen want to ensure they do so safely while following all proper guidelines. A single website with resources will provide small businesses the information they need to reopen and continue their operations while protecting the health and safety of their staff and customers.”

Annie Dormuth, provincial affairs director, CFIB Alberta 

The launch of alberta.ca/bizconnect is part of Alberta’s comprehensive response to COVID-19, which includes measures to enhance physical distancing, screening and testing. Financial supports are helping Alberta families and businesses.

Quick facts

  • The website includes guidance documents for sectors currently allowed to operate under public health orders:
    • Disability service providers
    • Farmers markets
    • Golf course operators
    • Health non-essential services
    • Health sector PPE guidelines
    • Homeless shelters
    • Industrial work camps
    • Private/municipal campgrounds
  • Planning documents to prepare businesses for stage one relaunch are posted for:
    • Day camps
    • Daycare and out-of-school care
    • Hair salons and barbershops
    • Museums and art galleries
    • Outdoor recreation
    • Places of worship
    • Restaurants
    • Retail

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

Calls for a new pipeline to the coast are only getting louder

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From Resource Works

Alberta wants a new oil pipeline to Prince Rupert in British Columbia.

Calls on the federal government to fast-track new pipelines in Canada have grown. But there’s some confusion that needs to be cleared up about what Ottawa’s intentions are for any new oil and gas pipelines.

Prime Minister Carney appeared to open the door for them when he said, on June 2, that he sees opportunity for Canada to build a new pipeline to ship more oil to foreign markets, if it’s tied to billions of dollars in green investments to reduce the industry’s environmental footprint.

But then he confused that picture by declaring, on June 6, that new pipelines will be built only with “a consensus of all the provinces and the Indigenous people.” And he added: “If a province doesn’t want it, it’s impossible.”

And BC Premier David Eby made it clear on June 2 that BC doesn’t want a new oil pipeline, nor does it want Ottawa to cancel the related ban on oil tankers steaming through northwest BC waters. These also face opposition from some, but not all, First Nations in BC.

Eby’s energy minister, Adrian Dix, also gave thumbs-down to a new oil pipeline, but did say BC supports expanding the capacity of the existing Trans Mountain TMX oil pipeline, and the dredging of Burrard Inlet to allow bigger oil tankers to load Alberta oil from TMX at the port of Vancouver.

While the feds sort out what their position is on fast-tracking new pipelines, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith leaped on Carney’s talk of a new oil pipeline if it’s tied to lowering the carbon impact of the Alberta oilsands and their oil.

She saw “a grand bargain,” with, in her eyes, a new oil pipeline from Alberta to Prince Rupert, BC, producing $20 billion a year in revenue, some of which could then be used to develop and install carbon-capture mechanisms for the oil.

She noted that the Pathways Alliance, six of Canada’s largest oilsands producers, proposed in 2021 a carbon-capture network and pipeline that would transport captured CO₂ from some 20 oilsands facilities, by a new 400-km pipeline, to a hub in the Cold Lake area of Alberta for permanent underground storage.

Preliminary estimates of the cost of that project run up to $20 billion.

The calls for a new oil pipeline from Bruderheim, AB, to Prince Rupert recall the old Northern Gateway pipeline project that was proposed to run from Alberta to Kitimat, BC.

That was first proposed by Enbridge in 2008, and there were estimates that it would mean billions in government revenues and thousands of jobs.

In 2014, Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper approved Northern Gateway. But in 2015, the Federal Court of Appeal overruled the Harper government, ruling that it had “breached the honour of the Crown by failing to consult” with eight affected First Nations.

Then the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who succeeded Harper in 2015, effectively killed the project by instituting a ban on oil tanker traffic on BC’s north coast shortly after taking office.

Now Danielle Smith is working to present Carney with a proponent and route for a potential new crude pipeline from Alberta to Prince Rupert.

She said her government is in talks with Canada’s major pipeline companies in the hope that a private-sector proponent will take the lead on a pipeline to move a million barrels a day of crude to the BC coast.

She said she hopes Carney, who won a minority government in April, will make good on his pledge to speed permitting times for major infrastructure projects. Companies will not commit to building a pipeline, Smith said, without confidence in the federal government’s intent to bring about regulatory reform.

Smith also underlined her support for suggested new pipelines north to Grays Bay in Nunavut, east to Churchill, Manitoba, and potentially a new version of Energy East, a proposed, but shelved, oil pipeline to move oil from Alberta and Saskatchewan to refineries and a marine terminal in the Maritimes.

The Energy East oil pipeline was proposed in 2013 by TC Energy, to move Western Canadian crude to an export terminal at St. John, NB, and to refineries in eastern Canada. It was mothballed in 2017 over regulatory hurdles and political opposition in Quebec.

A separate proposal known as GNL Quebec to build a liquefied natural gas pipeline and export terminal in the Saguenay region was rejected by both federal and provincial authorities on environmental grounds. It would have diverted 19.4 per cent of Canadian gas exports to Europe, instead of going to the US.

Now Quebec’s environment minister Benoit Charette says his government would be prepared to take another look at both projects.

The Grays Bay idea is to include an oil pipeline in a corridor that would run from northern BC to Grays Bay in Nunavut. Prime Minister Carney has suggested there could be opportunities for such a pipeline that would carry “decarbonized” oil to new markets.

There have also been several proposals that Canada should build an oil pipeline, and/or a natural gas pipeline, to the port of Churchill. One is from a group of seven senior oil and gas executives who in 2017 suggested the Western Energy Corridor to Churchill.

Now a group of First Nations has proposed a terminal at Port Nelson, on Hudson Bay near Churchill, to ship LNG to Europe and potash to Brazil. And the Manitoba government is looking at the idea.

“There is absolutely a business case for sending our LNG directly to European markets rather than sending our natural gas down to the Gulf Coast and having them liquefy it and ship it over,” says Robyn Lore of project backer NeeStaNan. “It’s in Canada’s interest to do this.”

And, he adds: “The port and corridor will be 100 per cent Indigenous owned.”

Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew has suggested that the potential trade corridor to Hudson Bay could handle oil, LNG, hydrogen, and potash slurry. (One obvious drawback, though, winter ice limits the Hudson Bay shipping season to four months of the year, July to October.)

All this talk of new pipelines comes as Canada begins to look for new markets to reduce reliance on the US, following tariff measures from President Donald Trump.

Alberta Premier Smith says: “I think the world has changed dramatically since Donald Trump got elected in November. I think that’s changed the national conversation.”

And she says 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 oil 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.”

Now we need to know what Mark Carney’s stance on pipelines really is: Is it fast-tracking them to reduce our reliance on the US? Or is it insisting that, for a pipeline, “If a province doesn’t want it, it’s impossible.”

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Alberta

Alberta pro-life group says health officials admit many babies are left to die after failed abortions

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From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Alberta’s abortion policy allows babies to be killed with an ‘induced cardiac arrest’ before a late-term abortion and left to die without medical care if they survive.

A Canadian provincial pro-life advocacy group says health officials have admitted that many babies in the province of Alberta are indeed born alive after abortions and then left to die, and because of this are they are calling upon the province’s health minister to put an end to the practice.

Official data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), which is the federal agency in charge of reporting the nation’s health data, shows that in Alberta in 2023-2024, there were 133 late-term abortions. Of these, 28 babies were born alive after the abortion and left to die.

As noted by Prolife Alberta’s President Murray Ruhl in a recent email, this means the reality in the province is that “some of these babies are born alive… and left to die.”

“Babies born alive after failed late-term abortions are quietly abandoned—left without medical help, comfort, or even a chance to survive,” noted Ruhl.

This fact was brought to light in a recent opinion piece published in the Western Standard by Richard Dur, who serves as the executive director of Prolife Alberta.

Ruhl observed that Dur’s opinion piece has “got the attention of both Alberta Health Services (AHS) and Acute Care Alberta (ACA),” whom he said “confirmed many of the practices we exposed.”

Alberta’s policy when it comes to an abortion committed on a baby older than 21 weeks allows that all babies are killed before being born, however this does not always happen.

“In some circumstances… the patient and health practitioner may consider the option of induced fetal cardiac arrest prior to initiating the termination procedures,” notes Alberta Health Services’ Termination of Pregnancy, PS-92 (PS-92, Section 6.4).

Ruhl noted that, in Alberta, before an “abortion begins, they stop the baby’s heart. On purpose. Why? Because they don’t want a live birth. But sometimes—the child survives. And what then?”

Ruhl observed that the reality is, “They plan in advance not to save her—even if she’s born alive.”

If the baby is born alive, the policy states, “Comfort measures and palliative care should be provided.” (PS-92, Section 6.4).

This means, however, that there is no oxygen given, no NICU, “no medical care,” noted Ruhl.

“Their policies call this ‘palliative care.’ We call it what it is: abandonment. Newborns deserve care—not a death sentence,” he noted.

As reported by LifeSiteNews recently, a total of 150 babies were born after botched abortions in 2023-2024 in Canada. However, it’s not known how many survived.

Only two federal parties in Canada, the People’s Party of Canada, and the Christian Heritage Party, have openly called for a ban on late abortions in the nation.

Policy now under ‘revision’ says Alberta Health Services

Ruhl said that the province’s policies are now “under revision,” according to AHS.

Because of this, Ruhl noted that now is the time to act and let the province’s Health Minister, Adriana LaGrange, who happens to be pro-life, act and “demand” from her real “action to protect babies born alive after failed abortions.”

The group is asking the province to do as follows below:

  1. Amend the AHS Termination of Pregnancy policy to require resuscitative care for any baby born with signs of life, regardless of how the birth occurred.
  2. Require that these newborns receive the same level of care as any other premature baby. Newborns deserve care—not a death sentence.
  3. Recognize that these babies have a future—there is a literal waiting list of hundreds of families ready to adopt them. There is a home for every one of them.

While many in the cabinet and caucus of Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s United Conservative government are pro-life, she has still been relatively soft on social issues of importance to conservatives, such as abortion.

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