Alberta
Report commissioned by Alberta’s Smith calls for end to COVID shots for healthy minors

From LifeSiteNews
A 269-page report commissioned by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has recommended halting the use of the COVID vaccines in healthy children and teenagers.
A report commissioned by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith to investigate the previous administration’s handling of COVID-19 was released to the public late last week and included a recommendation to immediately halt the experimental jabs for healthy children and teenagers.
The Alberta COVID-19 Pandemic Data Review Task Force’s “COVID Pandemic Response” 269-page final report was released last Friday, recommending the halting of “the use of COVID-19 vaccines without full disclosure of their potential risks” as well as outright ending their use “for healthy children and teenagers as other jurisdictions have done,” mentioning countries like “Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and the U.K.”
The report also called for “[f]urther research to establish the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines is necessary before widespread use in adults and children,” the establishment of “a website and/or call-in center for the vaccine injured in Alberta” as well as establishing a “mechanism for opting out of federal health policy until provincial due process has been satisfied.”
The task force also found that the COVID jabs were not “designed to halt transmission” and that there is a “lack of reliable data showing that the vaccines protect children from COVID-19.”
“The Task Force found that the risk of severe COVID-19 infection or death is primarily associated with age, with the elderly being most at risk,” reads the report.
“Children and teenagers have a very low risk of serious illness from COVID-19. COVID-19 vaccines were not designed to halt transmission and there is a lack of reliable data showing that the vaccines protect children from severe COVID-19.”
The report was released with no fanfare nor mention from any Alberta government official, perhaps suggesting that officials do not want to draw attention to the report.
The report was compiled by a panel of physicians and others in the health services sector. It was headed by Dr. Gary Davidson, who served as the former chief of emergency medicine at the Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre.
When it comes to the COVID shots, the task force found “deaths” and “injuries” related to the jabs.
“In terms of safety, the task force identified reports of deaths and injuries attributed to the vaccines, as well as a known risk of myocarditis, particularly in young males,” reads the report.
“The long-term safety of the vaccines is undetermined due to their rapid deployment and limited follow-up.”
The review of the COVID jabs in Alberta found that careful assessment of “risks and benefits, transparency, and individual choice in decision-making are vital for any future pandemic response vaccination initiative.”
It is worth noting that Alberta Health Services (AHS) is still promoting the COVID shots for babies as young as six months old.
The report stated that its main goal was to examine the “quality, use, interpretation, and flow of information and data that informed Alberta’s pandemic response to COVID-19.”
Smith, who spoke out against COVID jab mandates early in her term as premier, gave the task force a sweeping mandate last year to look at whether the “right data” was obtained during COVID and to assess the “integrity, validity, reliability and quality of the data/information used to inform pandemic decisions” by members of AHS.
Smith took over from Jason Kenney as leader of the UCP and premier on October 11, 2022, after winning the leadership of the party. The UCP then won a general election in May 2023. Kenney was ousted due to low approval ratings and for reneging on promises not to lock Alberta down during COVID.
After assuming her role as premier, Smith promptly fired the province’s top doctor, Deena Hinshaw, and the entire AHS board of directors, all of whom oversaw the implementation of COVID mandates.
Under Kenney, thousands of nurses, doctors, and other healthcare and government workers lost their jobs for choosing to not get the jabs, leading Smith to say – only minutes after being sworn in – that over the past year the “unvaccinated” were the “most discriminated against” group of people in her lifetime.
Thus far, Smith has not commented on the findings of the report.
Report critical of provincial response to COVID, notes masks were not ‘effective’
The task force concluded that it found a “critical failure of Alberta’s health system,” sharing concerns about how information was shared and developed during the COVID pandemic.
The report also noted that face masks, including both N95 and surgical masks, were not effective in stopping respiratory illness, and that there is a “weak evidence base for the effectiveness of continuous masking in preventing respiratory illnesses, including COVID-19.”
“Alberta should acknowledge the absence of evidence showing continuous masking provides protection against respiratory illnesses, including COVID-19, and highlight the potential harms associated with masking,” reads the report.
The report emphasized that the “choice to wear a mask should be a personal medical decision, guided by informed consent.”
The report also criticized lockdown policies and Alberta’s medical regulatory colleges for not doing their “due diligence” when it came to looking at producing their own internal studies related to COVID.
LifeSiteNews has published an extensive amount of research on the dangers of the experimental COVID mRNA jabs, which include heart damage and blood clots.
The mRNA shots have also been linked to a multitude of negative and often severe side effects in children and all have connections to cell lines derived from aborted babies.
Alberta
Alberta extracting more value from oil and gas resources: ATB

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

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.
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