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Alberta

17 COVID-19 cases in Central Alberta, 301 in Alberta

Published

5 years ago

11 minute read

From the Province of Alberta

Update 10: COVID-19 pandemic in Alberta (March 23 at 5:00 p.m.)

Forty-two additional cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed, bringing the total number of cases in the province to 301. Aggressive public health measures continue to help limit the spread of COVID-19.

Latest updates

  • Cases have been identified in all zones across the province:
    • 188 cases in the Calgary zone
    • 68 cases in the Edmonton zone
    • 19 cases in the North zone
    • 17 cases in the Central zone
    • Eight cases in the South zone
  • Of these cases, 18 are currently hospitalized, seven have been admitted to intensive care units (ICU), and one patient has died. One case is unknown as the zone is being determined.
  • The number of confirmed recovered cases remains at three. A longer-term process for determining timely reporting of recovered cases is underway.
  • Aggregate data, showing cases by age range and zone, as well as by local geographical areas, is available online at alberta.ca/covid19statistics.
  • Travellers who returned to Alberta after March 12 and have mild symptoms will no longer be tested for COVID-19. Instead, the same advice applied to all Albertans will apply to them – to self-isolate at home and away from others. This change is effective going forward, so anyone who has already been told by Health Link that they will be tested will still get tested.
  • Testing will be prioritized for the following individuals, if they are symptomatic:
    • People who are hospitalized with respiratory illness.
    • Residents of continuing care and other similar facilities.
    • People who returned from travelling abroad between March 8 and 12, before the self-isolation protocols were in place.
  • Anyone with symptoms who does not fit any of these categories should stay home and self-isolate for a minimum of 10 days from the start of their symptoms, or until symptoms resolve, whichever is longer.
  • Several people have contacted AHS to offer their help as health-care volunteers. Though the outpouring of support is appreciated, at this time volunteer resources will be reaching out to contact registered volunteers where needed. For more information, Alberta Health Services has guidelines in place online.
  • A bonspiel event was held in Edmonton March 11 to 14, during which some physicians were exposed to COVID-19. We have determined that 11 of the 47 Alberta health-care workers who attended the event have now tested positive for COVID-19. Many of these are physicians. Some of these individuals worked early last week before notification came through of the case associated with the event, and all contacts are being notified as per usual local public health followup. More information will be communicated as details are confirmed.
  • People not experiencing symptoms are being reminded that they can and should get outside, keeping in mind the importance of social distancing and restrictions on mass gatherings.
  • Albertans should consider remaining close to their home communities and avoid driving long distances to participate in outdoor activities, particularly in mountain parks. Many of the services Albertans are used to having, like washrooms, rest stops and restaurants, are closed on Alberta highways, in parks and at tourist attractions.
  • AHS has launched a new text-based service to give Albertans encouragement and ease feelings of stress or anxiety as they respond to recent challenges. Albertans can text COVID19Hope to 393939. In response, they will receive daily text messages on how to focus on healthy thinking or actions to help them manage their mood.
  • All Albertans need to work together to overcome COVID-19. Albertans are asked to share acts of kindness they have experienced in their community during this difficult time by using the hashtag #AlbertaCares.
  • To reinforce this message, government has released a video to encourage people to help prevent the spread.

WCB premium payment deferral

Small, medium and large private sector employers can defer WCB premiums until early 2021.

Employers who have already paid their WCB premium payment for 2020-21 are eligible for a rebate or credit.

For small and medium businesses, the government will cover 50 per cent of the premium when it is due.

Large employers will also receive a break by having their 2020 WCB premium payments deferred until early 2021, at which time their premiums will be due.

Service changes

Community and Social Services has suspended in-person service delivery in its program offices and Alberta Supports Centres. Albertans should contact 1-877-644-9992 for more information.

Support for homeless

To date, there have been no cases of COVID-19 reported at homeless shelters. Government is providing $25 million to support homeless-serving agencies respond to COVID-19. A number of supports are being offered throughout the province.

City of Edmonton

  • The Edmonton EXPO Centre is being activated as an isolation and care centre.
  • Hope Mission and The Mustard Seed will activate additional capacity to meet social distancing guidelines.

City of Calgary

  • Isolation and care will operate out of hotel rooms.
  • Alpha House, the Calgary Drop-In Centre, The Mustard Seed and Inn from the Cold will activate additional spaces to meet social distancing guidelines.

City of Red Deer

  • Safe Harbour Society has relocated to accommodate an additional 100 spaces.

Additional capacity and isolation centres for Lethbridge, Red Deer and Grande Prairie are being confirmed.

Fort McMurray and Medicine Hat have shelter capacity to implement social distancing recommendations. The Government of Alberta will continue to monitor the situation in those communities.

Access to Justice

The Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench has suspended booking any new non-emergency or non-urgent matters until May 1.

Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench information: https://www.albertacourts.ca/qb/resources/announcements/covid-19-extension-of-suspension-of-sittings

Seniors facilities limiting visitation

Seniors facilities are receiving social isolation and distancing information, and stronger restrictions are being put in place for visitors to long-term and seniors care facilities. Essential visitors will be restricted to a single individual who can be family, a friend, or a paid companion who provides care and companionship necessary for the well-being of the resident (physical and mental health) and/or a single designated visitor for a person who is dying, as long as only one visitor enters the facility at a time. Every visitor will undergo a health screening.

Offers of help

The Alberta Emergency Management Agency Unsolicited Offers Program has been set up in response to growing offers of generosity from individuals and organizations to help with the challenges many Albertans are facing due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Those wanting to help can go to alberta.ca/COVID19offersprogram for more information.

General information for citizens

The Alberta Connects Contact Centre is available seven days a week, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Albertans can call toll-free from anywhere in the province by dialling 310-4455 for general information about the Government of Alberta and its response to COVID-19, or for help contacting individual program areas.

This line cannot provide medical advice. Anyone who has health concerns or is experiencing symptoms of COVID-19 should complete an online COVID-19 self-assessment.

Information for travellers

An official global travel advisory is in effect. Albertans should follow all travel recommendations.

  • Avoid all non-essential travel outside Canada and all cruise ship travel.
  • Canadians abroad should return home immediately.
  • Returning travellers should:
    • follow self-isolation guidelines and monitor for symptoms for 14 days
    • check recent domestic and international flights for confirmed cases (information is updated as cases are confirmed)

More information can be found under travel advice at alberta.ca/COVID19.

The Alberta government and Travel Alberta have launched a campaign to inform Canadians travelling in the United States and Mexico about the importance of returning home.

COVID-19 related information has been provided for departing and returning passengers at the international airports in both Edmonton and Calgary. This information has also been shared with all airports in Alberta and several airlines.

Quick facts

  • The most important measures that Albertans can take to prevent respiratory illnesses, including COVID-19, is to practise good hygiene.
    • This includes cleaning your hands regularly for at least 20 seconds, avoiding touching your face, coughing or sneezing into your elbow or sleeve, disposing of tissues appropriately, and staying home and away from others if you are sick.
  • Anyone who has health concerns or is experiencing symptoms of COVID-19 should complete an online COVID-19 self-assessment.
  • For recommendations on protecting yourself and your community, visit alberta.ca/COVID19.

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After 15 years as a TV reporter with Global and CBC and as news director of RDTV in Red Deer, Duane set out on his own 2008 as a visual storyteller. During this period, he became fascinated with a burgeoning online world and how it could better serve local communities. This fascination led to Todayville, launched in 2016.

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Is Canada’s Federation Fair?

Published on April 6, 2025

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The Audit 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:
Equalization 2025-26 – Government of Canada

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.

1

Which has admittedly been challenging since the former primer minister infamously described us as a post-national state without an identity.

2

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.

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Alberta

Big win for Alberta and Canada: Statement from Premier Smith

Published on April 2, 2025

By

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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