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Alberta

$1,200 Covid payment for 76,500 more Albertans including truck drivers, janitors, taxi drivers, security guards, farm workers, etc

Published

4 years ago

5 minute read

More Albertans to receive $1,200 Critical Worker Benefit

76,500 more workers to receive a one-time payment to recognize the risks they have taken to support Albertans and the economy.

The Critical Worker Benefit is a joint federal-provincial program with $465 million available to recognize the hard work of critical workers during the pandemic.

During the first round of the Critical Worker Benefit Alberta’s government provided $1,200 payments to over 277,800 workers in the healthcare, social services, education and private sectors who deliver critical services to Albertans or support food and medical supply chains.

Workers in new job categories will be eligible for the same $1,200 payment. This includes workers in social services and the private sector who provided critical services to Albertans, were essential to the supply and movement of goods, and faced greater potential risk of exposure to COVID-19 through their work environments.

To be eligible for the benefit, employees must have worked a minimum of 300 hours during the period of Oct. 12, 2020 to Jan. 31, 2021. Support staff working in licensed child care must have worked a minimum of 243 hours during this period.

Eligible social services sector employers do not need to apply. Employers of support staff working in licensed child care programs, disability support workers providing independent living supports, respite, community access, and employment supports, and front-line workers in seniors-serving organizations and non-profit affordable housing providers will be contacted by the Government of Alberta to confirm details.

Eligible private sector workers making $25 per hour or less will also qualify for the benefit. These workers include: truck drivers, farmworkers, security guards, cleaners, funeral workers, employees at quick service and dine in restaurants and taxi drivers who can demonstrate they worked at least 300 hours during the eligibility period. The complete list of eligible workers for this phase of the program are available in the Application Guidelines for the private sector at alberta.ca/criticalworkerbenefit.

Private sector employers can apply on behalf of employees at alberta.ca/criticalworkerbenefit as of June 22. Employers have until July 23 to apply.

Employers will be responsible for distributing the $1,200 Critical Worker Benefit to their eligible employees.

Alberta’s government is responding to the COVID-19 pandemic by protecting lives and livelihoods with precise measures to bend the curve, sustain small businesses, and protect Alberta’s health care system.

Quick facts

  • Alberta’s government contributed $118 million to the $465 million program.
  • A total of about $367 million has been spent on about 289,800 workers.
  • $355 million has been spent on about 277,800 workers in the phase one of the Critical Worker Benefit. This includes social services workers, health care workers, education workers and critical private sector workers, such as grocery cashiers, pharmacy assistants, and gas station attendants.
  • Announced in April 2020, Alberta also used $12 million of the one-time federal funding along with a provincial investment totalling $30 million to date to provide a $2 an hour wage top-up for about 12,000 health care aides working in long-term care and designated supportive living facilities.
  • About $99 million is available for about 76,500 workers in the social services and private sectors.
  • The break down of benefit recipient is:
    • Up to $18.5 million in the social services sector supporting 14,300 workers
    • Up to $80.3 million in the private sector supporting 62,200 workers

 

Workers in the following private sector occupations are eligible to receive the Critical Worker Benefit:

  • truck transportation, primarily engaged in the transportation of goods, in the following occupations:
    • ­transport truck drivers
    • ­light duty cleaners
    • ­janitors, caretakers and building superintendents
    • ­security guards and related security services
    • ­material handlers
    • ­dlivery and courier services drivers
    • ­other trades helpers and labourers
  • crop production, animal production or aquaculture directly involved in the production of food for human consumption
  • funeral homes, cemeteries and crematoria
    • not eligible: municipally-run funeral homes, cemeteries and crematoria
  • security guards
    • not eligible: private investigators, armoured car guard, house detective, personal bodyguards and security
  • light duty cleaners, janitors and specialized cleaners working in commercial, institution and industrial locations
    • not eligible: private residence cleaners
  • taxi drivers
    • not eligible: chauffers and drivers of ride-share companies such as Uber and Lyft
  • workers in full-service restaurants and limited services eating places – workers must be primarily involved in the preparation, cooking or service delivery in an eligible establishment
    • not eligible: drinking places that do not serve food onsite

Read the application guidelines for the private sector for more information.

Related Topics:

This is a news release from the Government of Alberta.

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Alberta

Province orders School Boards to gather data on class sizes and complexity by Nov 24

Published on October 31, 2025

By

Better data, better outcomes for Alberta students

To help schools address classroom complexity, Alberta’s government will begin collecting annual data on class size and composition.

Over the past three years, Alberta has welcomed more than 80,000 new students. With this unprecedented growth, classroom complexity and class sizes are among the biggest issues facing schools and teachers across the province.

To meet this challenge head on, Alberta’s government will work with school boards to gather yearly data on class sizes and composition. This information will be used to better understand staffing, student needs and classroom complexity. School boards will be required to submit data on Alberta classrooms by Nov. 24, and by January, this data will be made publicly available and will then be released annually.

Data collected on classroom complexity will help the province understand and address issues in schools, including class sizes, and support strategic investments in classrooms. Over the next three years, school boards will be provided with funding to hire 3,000 teachers and 1,500 new education assistants to support students with complex needs.

“We are ready to work with school boards and teachers to address classroom complexity and class sizes. We have heard them loud and clear and we are taking bold action to address these issues.”

Demetrios Nicolaides, Minister of Education and Childcare

Alberta’s government is establishing a Class Size and Complexity Task Force to begin work immediately on identifying solutions to the challenges facing Alberta classrooms. Alongside new annual data collection, the task force will ensure every student gets the attention and support they need to succeed. Details about the task force will be shared in the coming weeks.

“This data will provide essential insight into classroom realities, guiding evidence-based decisions and advocating for sustainable funding to address complexity, ensuring every student and educator in Alberta has the support to thrive.”

Mike McMann, College of Alberta School Superintendents

Quick facts

To inform decisions on addressing classroom complexity, data will be collected on total numbers of:

  • all staff, per school, including roles
  • substitute teachers
  • district staff, listed by job title
  • students, per classroom, per school
  • severe, mild/moderate, and gifted/talented students, per classroom, per school
  • English as an additional language (EAL) students, per classroom, per school
  • refugee students, per classroom, per school
  • First Nations, Métis and Inuit students, per classroom, per school
  • Individualized Program Plans, per classroom, per school
  • students waitlisted for assessment, per classroom, per school
  • incidents of aggression and violence
  • $55 million was provided in Budget 2025 to address classroom complexity.
  • 8.6 billion is being invested to build and renovate more than 130 schools across the province.
  • Budget 2025 is investing $1.6 billion in learning support funding to help meet students’ specialized learning needs.
  • Budget 2025 is investing $1.1 billion to hire more than 4,000 teachers and educational staff.
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Alberta

How one major media torqued its coverage – in the take no prisoners words of a former Alberta premier

Published on October 30, 2025

By

Frame grab from CTV News website

The Rewrite

(Editor’s note: I was going to write on the media’s handling of the Alberta government’s decision to order striking teachers back to work and invoke Section 33 of the Charter in doing so. But former Alberta premier Jason Kenney provided such a fulsome dissection of an absence of balance and its consequences in terms of public trust on X that I asked him if The Rewrite could publish it. He said yes and here it is – Peter Menzies.)

By Jason Kenney

This👇”story” is an object lesson for why trust in legacy media has plummeted, and alt right media audiences have grown.

Here CTV “digital news producer” @AngeMAmato (she/her) writes a story about “experts” calling the use of Sec. 33 “a threat to democracy.”

Who are the experts?

A left wing academic, and a left wing activist. The latter, Howard Sapers, is a former Liberal MLA (which the article does not mention) for a party that is so marginal, it has not elected an MLA in over a decade.

For good measure CTV goes on to quote two left wing union bosses, who of course are predictably outraged.

A more accurate headline would be “Four people on the left angry about use of Notwithstanding Clause.” Which is the opposite of news. It’s the ultimate “Dog Bites Man” non-story.

Did the CTV producer make any effort to post a balanced story by asking for comment from academics / lawyers / think tanks who support use of Sec. 33? Did she call the @CDNConstFound or the @MLInstitute’s Judicial Power Project? Did she attempt to reach any of these four scholars, who just published their views in a @nationalpost op-ed last week?

Did she have an editor who asked why her story lacked any attempt at balance?

And did anyone at CTV pause for a moment to ponder how tendentious it is to accuse a democratically elected legislature of acting “undemocratically” by invoking a power whose entire purpose is to ensure democratic accountability?

She provides some historical context about prior use of Sec. 33. Why does that context not include the fact that most democratically elected provincial governments (including Alberta under Premier Lougheed, and Saskatchewan under NDP Premier Blakeney) agreed to adopt the Charter *only if* it included the Notwithstanding Clause to allow democratically elected Legislatures to ensure a democratic check and balance against the abuse of undemocratic, unaccountable judicial power?

Why does she not mention that for the first 33 years of the Charter era, the Canadian Courts ruled that there was no constitutionally protected right to strike?

Why doesn’t she quote an expert pointing out that Allan Blakeney defended the Saskatchewan Legislature’s 1986 use of Sec. 33 to end a strike as “a legitimate use of the Clause?” Or refer to Peter Lougheed’s 1987 commitment to use Sec. 33 if the courts invented a right to strike?

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Many thoughtful criticisms can be levelled against Section 33. Being undemocratic is not one of them.

So why do we see so much agitprop like this masquerading as news from so many legacy media outlets?

IMO, there are two possible answers:

1) They are blind to their own biases; and / or

2) People like @AngeMAmato believe that they have a moral imperative to be “progressive journalists” which trumps the boringly old fashioned professional imperative to be objective and balanced.

Whatever the reason, “journalists” like this have no one to blame but themselves for growing distrust of legacy media, and the consequent emergence of non traditional media platforms.

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Jason Kenney

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