Alberta
Alberta passes bill banning sex ‘reassignment’ surgeries on minors
From LifeSiteNews
Tuesday, MLAs in the Alberta legislature voted 47 to 33 to pass the Health Statutes Amendment Act (HSAA), with all New Democratic Party MLAs voting against the measure.
The United Conservative Party (UCP) government of Alberta under its Premier Danielle Smith has officially passed a law banning so-called “top and bottom” surgeries for minors.
On Tuesday, MLAs in the Alberta legislature voted 47 to 33 to pass the Health Statutes Amendment Act (HSAA) into law. All far-left New Democratic Party MLAs voted against the bill, which now awaits Royal Assent which is expected in the next few days.
The new law, called Bill 26, reflects “the government’s commitment to build a health care system that responds to the changing needs of Albertans,” it said.
The bill will amend the Health Act to “prohibit regulated health professionals from performing sex reassignment surgeries on minors.”
It will also ban the “use of puberty blockers and hormone therapies for the treatment of gender dysphoria or gender incongruence” to kids 15 and under “except for those who have already commenced treatment and would allow for minors aged 16 and 17 to choose to commence puberty blockers and hormone therapies for gender reassignment and affirmation purposes with parental, physician and psychologist approval.”
Speaking of the passage of the new law, Smith said she is not concerned she may have to use additional powers, such as the province’s notwithstanding clause, to make sure the bill stays in place, given the fact that left-wing LGBT activists have promised to challenge the bill in court.
“I think that both the Charter as well as our Bill of Rights has the ability to make decisions and make policy that is convenient, that is reasonable, that is evidence-based,” said Smith in speaking to the passage of the bill.
“And I think the decisions we made are all of those things.”
Smith had earlier said about the bill that it is “important that all youth can enter adulthood equipped to make adult decisions. In order to do that, we need to preserve their ability to make those decisions, and that’s what we’re doing.”
She also, as reported by LifeSiteNews, said she would not be “bullied out of preserving our children’s choices before they make life-altering — and often irreversible — adult decisions. Nor will I allow Justin Trudeau to limit parental involvement in their child’s education.”
The passage of Bill 26 came after Alberta’s pro-life Health Minister Adriana LaGrange moved the third reading of it. She praised its passage, saying further details about how it will be enforced will be coming soon.
“Finally, amendments to the Health Professions Act would prohibit regulated health professionals from performing sex reassignment surgeries on minors and would also prohibit regulated health professionals from prescribing hormone replacement therapies, including puberty blockers, to minors for the treatment of gender dysphoria or gender incongruence,” said LaGrange.
“Through a ministerial order, we will outline exceptions for when a minor can be prescribed these medications for the treatment of gender dysphoria or gender incongruence.”
Earlier this year, the UCP government under Smith announced she would introduce strong pro-family legislation that strengthens parental rights, protects kids from life-altering surgeries as well as other extreme forms of transgender ideology.
While Smith has done well on some points, she has still been relatively soft on social issues of importance to conservatives such as abortion, and has publicly expressed pro-LGBT views, telling Jordan Peterson earlier this year that conservatives must embrace homosexual “couples” as “nuclear families.”
Alberta law banning sex reassignment surgeries has support of ‘detransitioners’
Smith’s bill banning the sexual mutilation of minors, as reported by LifeSiteNews, has found the support of an alliance for detransitioners.
There has been overwhelming evidence showing that people who undergo so-called “gender transitioning” are more likely to commit suicide than those who are not given irreversible surgery.
In addition to catering to a false reality that one’s sex can be changed, transgender surgeries and drugs have been linked to permanent physical and psychological damage, including cardiovascular diseases, loss of bone density, cancer, strokes and blood clots, and infertility.
Meanwhile, a recent study on the side effects of transgender “sex change” surgeries discovered that 81 percent of those who had undergone “sex change” surgeries in the past five years reported experiencing pain simply from normal movement in the weeks and months that followed — and that many other side effects manifest as well.
Smith’s government also passed a law banning schools from hiding a child’s pronoun changes at school that will help protect kids from the extreme aspects of the LGBT agenda.
While social conservatives have cause to celebrate in Alberta, other provinces, such as New Brunswick, are heading in the opposite direction when it comes to parental rights and gender ideology more broadly.
Alberta
Albertans still waiting for plan to grow the Heritage Fund
From the Fraser Institute
By Tegan Hill
In February 2024, the Smith government promised to share a plan to grow the Heritage Fund—Alberta’s long-term resource revenue savings fund—with the public before the end of 2024. But 2025 is upon us, and Albertans are still waiting.
The Lougheed government originally created the Heritage Fund in 1976/77 to save a share of the province’s resource wealth, including oil and gas revenues, for the future. But since its creation, Alberta governments have deposited less than 4 per cent of total resource revenue in the fund.
In other words, for decades successive Alberta governments have missed a golden opportunity. When governments make deposits in the Heritage Fund, they transform onetime (and extremely volatile) resource revenue into a financial asset that can generate more stable earnings over time. Eventually, the government could use annual income from the fund to replace volatile resource revenue in the budget.
Historically, however, rules that would have helped ensure the fund’s growth (for example, a requirement to deposit 30 per cent of resource revenue annually) were “statutory” rather than “constitutional,” which meant Alberta governments could easily disregard, change or eliminate these rules once they were no longer convenient.
And they did. The government changed that 30 per cent requirement to 15 per cent by 1982/83, and after an oil price collapse, eliminated it entirely in 1987/88. Due to a lack of consistent deposits, paired with the real value of the fund eroding over time due to inflation, and nearly all fund earnings being spent, the Heritage Fund is expected to be worth less than $25 billion in 2024/25.
Again, while Premier Smith has promised to grow the fund to between $250 billion to $400 billion by 2050, we’ve yet to see how she plans to do that. Whatever plan the government produces, it should heed lessons from other successful resource revenue savings fund such as Alaska’s Permanent Fund.
The Alaska government created its fund the same year Alberta created the Heritage Fund, but Alaska’s fund is worth roughly US$80 billion (or C$113 billion) today. What has the Alaska government done differently?
First, according to Alaska’s constitution, the state government must deposit 25 per cent of all mineral revenues into the fund each year. This type of “constitutional” rule is much stronger than a “statutory” rule that existed in Alberta. (While Canada does not have separate provincial constitutions, it’s possible to change Canada’s Constitution for province-specific measures.) Second, the Alaska government must set aside a share of the fund’s earnings each year to offset the effects of inflation—in other words, “inflation-proof” the principal of the fund to preserve its real value. And finally, the government must pay a portion of fund earnings to Alaskan citizens in annual dividends.
The logic of the first two rules is simple—the Alaskan government promotes growth in the fund by depositing mineral revenue annually, and inflation-proofing maintains the fund’s purchasing power. But consider the third rule regarding dividends.
The Alaska government created the annual dividend, paid out annually to Alaskans, to create political pressure for future governments to responsibly maintain the fund. Because citizens have an ownership share in the fund, they’re more interested in the state maximizing returns from its resource wealth. This has helped maintain and reinforce robust fiscal rules that make the Permanent Fund successful.
Based on this success, if the Smith government began contributing 25 per cent of resource revenue to the Heritage Fund and inflation-proofed the principal, it could pay each Albertan a total dividend between roughly $600 to $1,100 from 2024/25 to 2026/27, or roughly $2,300 to $4,400 per family of four. And as the fund grows, so would the dividends.
Almost one year ago, the Smith government promised a new plan for the Heritage Fund. When the plan is finally released, it should include a constitutional requirement for consistent contributions and inflation-proofing, and annual dividends for Albertans.
Alberta
Wonder Valley – Alberta’s $70 Billion AI Data Center
From the YouTube page of Kevin O’Leary
Interview with Kyle Reiling, Executive Director of the Greenview Industrial Gateway.
“This is the only place on earth that can do something this scale”
When Kevin O’Leary heard Alberta Premier Danielle Smith reveal just how much energy Alberta has, he knew Alberta has the solution for the coming explosion in energy consumption.
Kevin O’Leary: The demand for AI is skyrocketing—and America is out of power. Enter Alberta, with abundant natural gas and a bold premier. I’m raising $70 billion to create the world’s lowest-cost, highest-efficiency data center. Hyperscalers like Tesla, Microsoft, and Google need it, and we’re making it happen. This is how you lead the AI revolution.
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