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Alberta

What’s on Tap? – Community, Creativity & Craft at Inner City Brewing

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4 minute read

Located in the heart of Calgary’s colorful Beltline district, Inner City Brewing recently celebrated two years of bringing great brews and good times to Calgary’s downtown!  

Originally founded by 5 friends in 2018 with just 8 beers on tap, it has been a busy two years of innovation and expansion for Inner City. The brewery now features a combination of 20 core and rotating taps available year round, and has brewed over 60 beers in total – an unprecedented number in such a short amount of time. The taproom also includes a full service kitchen with a high-quality comfort food menu (check out the nacho in a bag!). 

Inner City Brewing celebrates the life of the city through the creation of brews that are as unique and exciting as the city itself. “We love the vibrancy and the connections,” says Doug Hamilton, co-founder and CEO of Inner City Brewing, “it’s all the weird and wonderful interactions that make the inner city.” 

Each Inner City can is dedicated to a specific destination around the world, using artistic map renderings to highlight the area of inspiration for each beer and style. “No map or intersection is exactly alike,” says Doug, “and neither are our beers.” The colorful artistry of Inner City products makes them easy to spot on the liquor store shelf lineup, with unique designs such as “Bridgelandia”, a core beer featuring a map of Calgary, and “Brickworks”, an English Dark Mild Ale that features the map of Manchester, UK. 

Located in a restored 1940’s building on 11 Ave’s 800 block, Inner City’s clean industrial taproom is built of concrete and steel, with massive bay windows that flood the space with Alberta sunshine all year round. 

Visitors can watch the hustle of 11th from the patio or peer into the massive on-site brewery adjacent to the taproom, where Inner City Head Brewer Eli Horne is constantly working on the next best thing. With 20 taps featuring everything from crisp lagers to oatmeal stouts, Inner City shares their love of craft beer with the community by brewing something for everyone. “Beer is much more versatile in flavor and variety than people realize,” says Doug, “especially with our main brewery and pilot brewery systems, the sky’s the limit.”  

The Inner City taproom is home to two custom-built infusion towers that produce unique small-batch brews for fun, one-night-only features. As the only build of their kind in Canada, the infusion taps let the Inner City imagination run wild – exploring coffee, cocoa, fruit and tea infusions, and brewing everything from bacon to bubblegum beers as one-off specialties. “It’s awesome,” laughs Doug, “we just like to push our creativity and have fun with it.” 

The taproom keeps the fun going by pairing their unique beers with live music events like the Big Winter Classic, brewery tours, trivia nights, brewery yoga, and so much more. As an active member of the Beltline community, Inner City is always keeping up with community events, most recently participating in the YYC BUMP fest in celebration and support of local and Canadian artists. With these weekly events, their rotating taps and their infusers producing one-night-only brews, “No experience in the tap room is quite the same as the last,” says Doug, “we encourage people to come down regularly to see and experience what our team has been up to.” 

For more information about Inner City Brewing, visit https://www.innercitybrewing.ca.

 

For more stories, visit Todayville Calgary.

Alberta

Red Deer Justice Centre Grand Opening: Building access to justice for Albertans

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The new Red Deer Justice Centre will help Albertans resolve their legal matters faster.

Albertans deserve to have access to a fair, accessible and transparent justice system. Modernizing Alberta’s courthouse infrastructure will help make sure Alberta’s justice system runs efficiently and meets the needs of the province’s growing population.

Alberta’s government has invested $191 million to build the new Red Deer Justice Centre, increasing the number of courtrooms from eight to 12, allowing more cases to be heard at one time.

“Modern, accessible courthouses and streamlined services not only strengthen our justice
system – they build safer, stronger communities across the province. Investing in the new Red Deer Justice Centre is vital to helping our justice system operate more efficiently, and will give people in Red Deer and across central Alberta better access to justice.”

Mickey Amery, Minister of Justice and Attorney General

Government of Alberta and Judiciary representatives with special guests at the Red Deer Justice Centre plaque unveiling event April 22, 2025.

On March 3, all court services in Red Deer began operating out of the new justice centre. The new justice centre has 12 courtrooms fully built and equipped with video-conference equipment to allow witnesses to attend remotely if they cannot travel, and vulnerable witnesses to testify from outside the courtroom.

The new justice centre also has spaces for people taking alternative approaches to the traditional courtroom trial process, with the three new suites for judicial dispute resolution services, a specific suite for other dispute resolution services, such as family mediation and civil mediation, and a new Indigenous courtroom with dedicated venting for smudging purposes.

“We are very excited about this new courthouse for central Alberta. Investing in the places where people seek justice shows respect for the rights of all Albertans. The Red Deer Justice Centre fills a significant infrastructure need for this rapidly growing part of the province. It is also an important symbol of the rule of law, meaning that none of us are above the law, and there is an independent judiciary to decide disputes. This is essential for a healthy functioning democracy.”

Ritu Khullar, chief justice of Alberta

“Public safety and access to justice go hand in hand. With this investment in the new Red Deer Justice Centre, Alberta’s government is ensuring that communities are safer, legal matters are resolved more efficiently and all Albertans get the support they need.”

Mike Ellis, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Services

“This state-of-the-art facility will serve the people of Red Deer and surrounding communities for generations. Our team at Infrastructure is incredibly proud of the work done to plan, design and build this project. I want to thank everyone, at all levels, who helped make this project a reality.”

Martin Long, Minister of Infrastructure

Budget 2025 is meeting the challenge faced by Alberta with continued investments in education and health, lower taxes for families and a focus on the economy.

Quick facts

  • The new Red Deer Justice Centre is 312,000 sq ft (29,000 m2). (The old courthouse is 98,780 sq ft (9,177 m2)).
  • The approved project funding for the Red Deer Justice Centre is about $191 million.
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Alberta

CPP another example of Albertans’ outsized contribution to Canada

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From the Fraser Institute

By Tegan Hill

Amid the economic uncertainty fuelled by Trump’s trade war, its perhaps more important than ever to understand Alberta’s crucial role in the federation and its outsized contribution to programs such as the Canada Pension Plan (CPP).

From 1981 to 2022, Albertan’s net contribution to the CPP—meaning the amount Albertans paid into the program over and above what retirees in Alberta received in CPP payments—was $53.6 billion. In 2022 (the latest year of available data), Albertans’ net contribution to the CPP was $3.0 billion.

During that same period (1981 to 2022), British Columbia was the only other province where residents paid more into the CPP than retirees received in benefits—and Alberta’s contribution was six times greater than B.C.’s contribution. Put differently, residents in seven out of the nine provinces that participate in the CPP (Quebec has its own plan) receive more back in benefits than they contribute to the program.

Albertans pay an outsized contribution to federal and national programs, including the CPP because of the province’s relatively high rates of employment, higher average incomes and younger population (i.e. more workers pay into the CPP and less retirees take from it).

Put simply, Albertan workers have been helping fund the retirement of Canadians from coast to coast for decades, and without Alberta, the CPP would look much different.

How different?

If Alberta withdrew from the CPP and established its own standalone provincial pension plan, Alberta workers would receive the same retirement benefits but at a lower cost (i.e. lower CPP contribution rate deducted from our paycheques) than other Canadians, while the contribution rate—essentially the CPP tax rate—to fund the program would likely need to increase for the rest of the country to maintain the same benefits.

And given current demographic projections, immigration patterns and Alberta’s long history of leading the provinces in economic growth, Albertan workers will likely continue to pay more into the CPP than Albertan retirees get back from it.

Therefore, considering Alberta’s crucial role in national programs, the next federal government—whoever that may be—should undo and prevent policies that negatively impact the province and Albertans ability to contribute to Canada. Think of Bill C-69 (which imposes complex, uncertain and onerous review requirements on major energy projects), Bill C-48 (which bans large oil tankers off B.C.’s northern coast and limits access to Asian markets), an arbitrary cap on oil and gas emissions, numerous other “net-zero” targets, and so on.

Canada faces serious economic challenges, including a trade war with the United States. In times like this, it’s important to remember Alberta’s crucial role in the federation and the outsized contributions of Alberta workers to the wellbeing of Canadians across the country.

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