Alberta
Alberta looking to ban electronic vote tabulators ahead of next provincial election
From LifeSiteNews
electronic voting tabulators, which were supposed to speed up vote counting, instead saw election results delayed due with workers having to manually enter the results that each tabulator printed out.
The conservative Premier of Alberta, Danielle Smith, has confirmed she is looking to ban the use of electronic vote tabulators in future provincial elections after issues with them in the 2023 election saw massive delays in the tallying of votes.
Smith, according to a report from True North, while speaking to a United Conservative Party (UCP) fundraiser on January 26 in the community of Bonnyville was asked if she would “end the use of voting tabulators across the province?”
Smith replied with a firm “yes.”
The 2023 Alberta provincial elections held in May saw Smith and her UCP win a majority, although a slim one, over the left-wing Alberta New Democratic Party (NDP).
Elections Alberta used what is called a Vote Anywhere Service, which allowed anyone to vote at any voting place regardless of which riding (jurisdiction) they were actually voting in. While paper ballots were used for the election, electronic tabulators were used to count the votes from all hand ballots. A form was then printed out with the result of each riding from the tabulators count of the hand ballots.
However, the electronic voting tabulators, which were supposed to speed up vote counting, instead saw election results delayed due with workers having to manually enter the results that each tabulator printed out.
Elections Alberta noted in June 2023, per True North, that “[w]e did not use any electronic data transfer from the tabulators, as the tabulators used for advance voting were never connected to a network at any time.”
“As a result, it was a manual process to verify and enter these results.”
Many in the UCP have long called for the return of hand counting, as is done in Canada’s federal elections.
As for Smith, before the 2023 election, she noted that she was confident in Elections Alberta’s plan to use electronic tabulators, as “we have the ability to do a hand count as a follow up in the event there are close results, I believe that’s going to be sufficient.”
“That’s, I think, something that people expect in democracy – that you should be able to verify a vote if results end up very close,” she added.
Elections Alberta, however, has pushed back on returning to hand counting ballots, saying it would increase the manual workload of employees.
There were many close results on election night, with the NDP losing a few seats by only a handful of votes in some Calgary ridings.
Smith gave no timeline as to how or when she would make the change.
Many large municipalities in Alberta, including the province’s two biggest cities, Calgary and Edmonton, use electronic tabulators for ballot counting.
Issues surrounding electronic voting machines as well as tabulators came to a head in the aftermath of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, which saw Joe Biden declared the winner over Donald Trump.
A report published by LifeSiteNews last year documented how a computer programmer, Clinton Eugene Curtis, who had previously testified to Congress on the integrity of voting machines, warned lawmakers in Arizona to never trust them.
“Don’t use machines, because you can never, ever trust them to give you a fair election,” said Curtis.
“There are too many ways to hack them. You can hack them at the level that I did when you first build them, you can hack them from the outside, you can hack them with programs that load themselves on the side. It’s impossible to secure them. You will never beat the programmer. The programmer always owns the universe.”
Of note is that Curtis is a Democrat who had worked as a programmer for NASA, as well as the Department of Defense and other government agencies.
Alberta
Alberta court upholds conviction of Pastor Artur Pawlowski for preaching at Freedom Convoy protest
From LifeSiteNews
Lawyers argued that Pastor Artur Pawlowski’s sermon was intended to encourage protesters to find a peaceful solution to the blockade, but the statement was characterized as a call for mischief.
An Alberta Court of Appeal ruled that Calgary Pastor Artur Pawlowski is guilty of mischief for his sermon at the Freedom Convoy-related border protest blockade in February 2022 in Coutts, Alberta.
On October 29, Alberta Court of Appeal Justice Gordon Krinke sentenced the pro-freedom pastor to 60 days in jail for “counselling mischief” by encouraging protesters to continue blocking Highway 4 to protest COVID mandates.
“A reasonable person would understand the appellant’s speech to be an active inducement of the illegal activity that was ongoing and that the appellant intended for his speech to be so understood,” the decision reads.
Pawlowski addressed a group of truckers and protesters blocking entrance into the U.S. state of Montana on February 3, the fifth day of the Freedom Convoy-styled protest. He encouraged the protesters to “hold the line” after they had reportedly made a deal with Royal Canadian Mounted Police to leave the border crossing and travel to Edmonton.
“The eyes of the world are fixed right here on you guys. You are the heroes,” Pawlowski said. “Don’t you dare go breaking the line.”
After Pawlowski’s sermon, the protesters remained at the border crossing for two additional weeks. While his lawyers argued that his speech was made to encourage protesters to find a peaceful solution to the blockade, the statement is being characterized as a call for mischief.
Days later, on February 8, Pawlowski was arrested – for the fifth time – by an undercover SWAT team just before he was slated to speak again to the Coutts protesters.
He was subsequently jailed for nearly three months for what he said was for speaking out against COVID mandates, the subject of all the Freedom Convoy-related protests.
In Krinke’s decision, he argued that Pawlowski’s sermon incited the continuation of the protest, saying, “The Charter does not provide justification to anybody who incites a third party to commit such crimes.”
However, defence lawyer Sarah Miller pointed out that that Pawlowski’s sermon was protected under freedom of speech, an argument that Krinke quickly dismissed.
“While the appellant is correct that peaceful, lawful and nonviolent communication is entitled to protection, blockading a highway is an inherently aggressive and potentially violent form of conduct, designed to intimidate and impede the movement of third parties,” he wrote.
Pawlowski was released after the verdict. He has already spent 78 days in jail before the trial.
Pawlowski is the first Albertan to be charged for violating the province’s Critical Infrastructure Defence Act (CIDA), which was put in place in 2020 under then-Premier Jason Kenney.
The CIDA, however, was not put in place due to COVID mandates but rather after anti-pipeline protesters blockaded key infrastructure points such as railway lines in Alberta a few years ago.
Alberta
Heavy-duty truckers welcome new ‘natural gas highway’ in Alberta
Clean Energy Fuels CEO Andrew Littlefair, Tourmaline CEO Mike Rose, and Mullen Group chairman Murray Mullen attend the opening of a new Clean Energy/Tourmaline compressed natural gas (CNG) fuelling station in Calgary on Oct. 22, 2024. Photo courtesy Tourmaline
From the Canadian Energy Centre
New compressed natural gas fueling stations in Grande Prairie and Calgary join new stop in Edmonton
Heavy-duty truckers hauling everything from restaurant supplies to specialized oilfield services along one of Western Canada’s busiest corridors now have more access to a fuel that can help reduce emissions and save costs.
Two new fuelling stations serving compressed natural gas (CNG) rather than diesel in Grande Prairie and Calgary, along with a stop that opened in Edmonton last year, create the first phase of what proponents call a “natural gas highway”.
“Compressed natural gas is viable, it’s competitive and it’s good for the environment,” said Murray Mullen, chair of Mullen Group, which operates more than 4,300 trucks and thousands of pieces of equipment supporting Western Canada’s energy industry.
Right now, the company is running 19 CNG units and plans to deploy another 15 as they become available.
“They’re running the highways right now and they’re performing exceptionally well,” Mullen said on Oct. 22 during the ribbon-cutting ceremony opening the new station on the northern edge of Calgary along Highway 2.
“Our people love them, our customers love them and I think it’s going to be the way for the future to be honest,” he said.
Heavy-duty trucks at Tourmaline and Clean Energy’s new Calgary compressed natural gas fuelling station. Photo courtesy Tourmaline
According to Natural Resources Canada, natural gas burns more cleanly than gasoline or diesel fuel, producing fewer toxic pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change.
The two new CNG stops are part of a $70 million partnership announced last year between major Canadian natural gas producer Tourmaline and California-based Clean Energy Fuels.
Their deal would see up to 20 new CNG stations built in Western Canada over the next five years, daily filling up to 3,000 natural gas-fueled trucks.
One of North America’s biggest trucking suppliers to businesses including McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Subway and Popeye’s says the new stations will help as it expands its fleet of CNG-powered vehicles across Canada.
Amy Senter, global vice-president of sustainability with Illinois-based Martin Brower, said in a statement that using more CNG is critical to the company achieving its emissions reduction targets.
For Tourmaline, delivering CNG to heavy-duty truckers builds on its multi-year program to displace diesel in its operations, primarily by switching drilling equipment to run on natural gas.
Between 2018 and 2022, the company displaced the equivalent of 36 Olympic-sized swimming pools worth of diesel that didn’t get used, or the equivalent emissions of about 58,000 passenger vehicles.
Tourmaline CEO Mike Rose speaks to reporters during the opening of a new Tourmaline/Clean Energy compressed natural gas fuelling station in Calgary on Oct. 22, 2024. Photo courtesy Tourmaline
Tourmaline CEO Mike Rose noted that the trucking sector switching fuel from diesel to natural gas is gaining momentum, notably in Asia.
A “small but growing” share of China’s trucking fleet moving to natural gas helped drive an 11 percent reduction in overall diesel consumption this June compared to the previous year, according to the latest data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
“China’s talking about 30 percent of the trucks sold going forward are to be CNG trucks, and it’s all about reducing emissions,” Rose said.
“It’s one global atmosphere. We’re going to reduce them here; they’re going to reduce them there and everybody’s a net winner.”
Switching from diesel to CNG is “extremely cost competitive” for trucking fleets, said Clean Energy CEO Andrew Littlefair.
“It will really move the big rigs that we need in Western Canada for the long distance and heavy loads,” he said.
Tourmaline and Clean Energy aim to have seven CNG fuelling stations operating by the end of 2025. Construction is set to begin in Kamloops, B.C., followed by Fort McMurray and Fort St. John.
“You’ll have that Western Canadian corridor, and then we’ll grow it from there,” Littlefair said.
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