Alberta
RCMP search for suspect leads to multiple shoot outs over 24 hours. Suspect dies from wounds.

News Release from the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team and Alberta RCMP
Investigation into fatal RCMP officer-involved shooting near High Prairie continues
On June 17, the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT) was directed to investigate the circumstances surrounding an encounter between members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and a 29-year-old man that took place that same day near High Prairie.
The incident was ongoing when the matter was assigned to ASIRT, and while the man was not believed to have sustained any injuries, ASIRT was directed to investigate on the basis that police officers had discharged their service firearms.
Following the assignment of the matter to ASIRT, RCMP officers continued to search for the man. On June 18, the man appeared at a containment point and a confrontation occurred during which officers discharged their firearms, fatally injuring the man. ASIRT’s investigation will examine not only the first encounter that resulted in the discharge of service weapons but also the circumstances surrounding the death of the man during the final encounter.
On June 17 at about 10:57 a.m., a fully-marked RCMP unit initiated a traffic stop on a red Cadillac which was associated with a 29-year-old man who had outstanding criminal warrants. The Cadillac fled from police, who did not pursue the vehicle. The RCMP officers who had attempted the traffic stop broadcast for other officers to be on the lookout for that vehicle, and at about 11:30 a.m., a different RCMP unit located the Cadillac just east of Range Road 175 about three kilometres north of Highway 679. The vehicle was stuck in the mud and partially covered with a blanket.
Two RCMP officers cleared the vehicle, which was unoccupied, and found a bag containing three different types of ammunition, as well as identification belonging to the man. Two additional police officers, one of them a Police Service Dog (PSD) handler, attended to the location. The PSD established a track and all four officers and the police dog began tracking east into thick bush for approximately three to six kilometres over about two hours. When the officers eventually encountered the man, whose identity was visually confirmed as the wanted 29 year old, the man and police exchanged gunfire. During this incident, the PSD was struck by gunfire and killed. No police officers were injured during this incident, nor was the man believed to have been struck. The officers received direction to disengage, and were removed from the area by a civilian Search and Rescue helicopter.
Additional police resources were deployed to the area, including members of the RCMP’s Emergency Response Team (ERT). ERT members attended to the area of the initial incident, and again encountered the man. During this encounter, several police officers discharged their firearms. At the time, the officers believed the man had been struck. After attempts to communicate with the man or force him out of the thick bush were unsuccessful, a physical search of the area was conducted, but failed to locate the man.
After a lengthy search through dense brush spanning several hours, police made contact with the man on two additional occasions, and issued verbal commands to him. No shots were fired during these encounters, and officers were able to establish that the man did not, in fact, appear to be injured.
Police established containment around the roads in the area and continued searching for the man. On June 18, at about 11:45 a.m., two RCMP officers who were assigned to maintain containment spotted the man in a ditch on the west side of Range Road 170, about two kilometres north of Township Road 770. The officers exited their marked police vehicle and a confrontation occurred between the man and the police officers, during which both officers discharged their service firearms. The man fell to the ground in the tall grass, and additional police officers and ERT medical officers responded to the area. Medical officers attempted to treat the man, but ultimately he died at the scene. A loaded semi-automatic .22-calibre rifle, as well as a range finder, were recovered from the incident scene and have been seized as exhibits.
ASIRT’s investigation will examine the actions of police during this incident, while the RCMP will maintain responsibility for the investigation of the man and his actions. As ASIRT’s investigation is underway, no further information will be released at this time.
ASIRT’s mandate is to effectively, independently and objectively investigate incidents involving Alberta’s police that have resulted in serious injury or death to any person, as well as serious or sensitive allegations of police misconduct.
Alberta
Is Canada’s Federation Fair?

David Clinton
Contrasting the principle of equalization with the execution
Quebec – as an example – happens to be sitting on its own significant untapped oil and gas reserves. Those potential opportunities include the Utica Shale formation, the Anticosti Island basin, and the Gaspé Peninsula (along with some offshore potential in the Gulf of St. Lawrence).
So Quebec is effectively being paid billions of dollars a year to not exploit their natural resources. That places their ostensibly principled stand against energy resource exploitation in a very different light.
You’ll need to search long and hard to find a Canadian unwilling to help those less fortunate. And, so long as we identify as members of one nation¹, that feeling stretches from coast to coast.
So the basic principle of Canada’s equalization payments – where poorer provinces receive billions of dollars in special federal payments – is easy to understand. But as you can imagine, it’s not easy to apply the principle in a way that’s fair, and the current methodology has arguably lead to a very strange set of incentives.
According to Department of Finance Canada, eligibility for payments is determined based on your province’s fiscal capacity. Fiscal capacity is a measure of the taxes (income, business, property, and consumption) that a province could raise (based on national average rates) along with revenues from natural resources. The idea, I suppose, is that you’re creating a realistic proxy for a province’s higher personal earnings and consumption and, with greater natural resources revenues, a reduced need to increase income tax rates.
But the devil is in the details, and I think there are some questions worth asking:
- Whichever way you measure fiscal capacity there’ll be both winners and losers, so who gets to decide?
- Should a province that effectively funds more than its “share” get proportionately greater representation for national policy² – or at least not see its policy preferences consistently overruled by its beneficiary provinces?
The problem, of course, is that the decisions that defined equalization were – because of long-standing political conditions – dominated by the region that ended up receiving the most. Had the formula been the best one possible, there would have been little room to complain. But was it?
For example, attaching so much weight to natural resource revenues is just one of many possible approaches – and far from the most obvious. Consider how the profits from natural resources already mostly show up in higher income and corporate tax revenues (including income tax paid by provincial government workers employed by energy-related ministries)?
And who said that such calculations had to be population-based, which clearly benefits Quebec (nine million residents vs around $5 billion in resource income) over Newfoundland (545,000 people vs $1.6 billion) or Alberta (4.2 million people vs $19 billion). While Alberta’s average market income is 20 percent or so higher than Quebec’s, Quebec’s is quite a bit higher than Newfoundland’s. So why should Newfoundland receive only minimal equalization payments?
To illustrate all that, here’s the most recent payment breakdown when measured per-capita:
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For clarification, the latest per-capita payments to poorer provinces ranged from $3,936 to PEI, $1,553 to Quebec, and $36 to Ontario. Only Saskatchewan, Alberta, and BC received nothing.
And here’s how the total equalization payments (in millions of dollars) have played out over the past decade:
Is energy wealth the right differentiating factor because it’s there through simple dumb luck, morally compelling the fortunate provinces to share their fortune? That would be a really difficult argument to make. For one thing because Quebec – as an example – happens to be sitting on its own significant untapped oil and gas reserves. Those potential opportunities include the Utica Shale formation, the Anticosti Island basin, and the Gaspé Peninsula (along with some offshore potential in the Gulf of St. Lawrence).
So Quebec is effectively being paid billions of dollars a year to not exploit their natural resources. That places their ostensibly principled stand against energy resource exploitation in a very different light. Perhaps that stand is correct or perhaps it isn’t. But it’s a stand they probably couldn’t have afforded to take had the equalization calculation been different.
Of course, no formula could possibly please everyone, but punishing the losers with ongoing attacks on the very source of their contributions is guaranteed to inspire resentment. And that could lead to very dark places.
Note: I know this post sounds like it came from a grumpy Albertan. But I assure you that I’ve never even visited the province, instead spending most of my life in Ontario.
Which has admittedly been challenging since the former primer minister infamously described us as a post-national state without an identity.
This isn’t nearly as crazy as it sounds. After all, there are already formal mechanisms through which Indigenous communities get more than a one-person-one-vote voice.
Alberta
Big win for Alberta and Canada: Statement from Premier Smith

Premier Danielle Smith issued the following statement on the April 2, 2025 U.S. tariff announcement:
“Today was an important win for Canada and Alberta, as it appears the United States has decided to uphold the majority of the free trade agreement (CUSMA) between our two nations. It also appears this will continue to be the case until after the Canadian federal election has concluded and the newly elected Canadian government is able to renegotiate CUSMA with the U.S. administration.
“This is precisely what I have been advocating for from the U.S. administration for months.
“It means that the majority of goods sold into the United States from Canada will have no tariffs applied to them, including zero per cent tariffs on energy, minerals, agricultural products, uranium, seafood, potash and host of other Canadian goods.
“There is still work to be done, of course. Unfortunately, tariffs previously announced by the United States on Canadian automobiles, steel and aluminum have not been removed. The efforts of premiers and the federal government should therefore shift towards removing or significantly reducing these remaining tariffs as we go forward and ensuring affected workers across Canada are generously supported until the situation is resolved.
“I again call on all involved in our national advocacy efforts to focus on diplomacy and persuasion while avoiding unnecessary escalation. Clearly, this strategy has been the most effective to this point.
“As it appears the worst of this tariff dispute is behind us (though there is still work to be done), it is my sincere hope that we, as Canadians, can abandon the disastrous policies that have made Canada vulnerable to and overly dependent on the United States, fast-track national resource corridors, get out of the way of provincial resource development and turn our country into an independent economic juggernaut and energy superpower.”
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