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Everything you need to know to enjoy the long weekend in an Alberta park

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From the Province of Alberta

Get ready to long weekend

It’s time to kick off the summer camping season and for Albertans to get out and explore provincial attractions or simply travel to visit family and friends.

Camping in Alberta Parks campgrounds is one of many options for Albertans this May long weekend.

“Whatever it is Albertans choose to do this long weekend, our province has a wealth of unique experiences that support our economy, including camping in our provincial parks. Wherever the destination, government hopes people will have a safe, relaxing and enjoyable May long weekend.”

Jason Nixon, Minister of Environment and Parks

Below are a few tips and information to support a safe and enjoyable long weekend.

Camping

  • We all share a responsibility to be courteous campers, which ensures campgrounds are enjoyable and safe for everybody.
  • General etiquette rules are:
    • Avoid excessive noise so that everyone can enjoy the peace and tranquility of parks.
    • Quiet hours are between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m.
  • Still looking for a campsite or a picnic area? Check out AlbertaParks.ca.

Liquor in provincial parks

  • The previous liquor ban in select provincial parks is lifted; however, rules and regulations around campground quiet hours, excessive noise and appropriate behaviour continue to be in place and will be enforced.
  • Liquor consumption is restricted to registered campsites only.

Fire bans

  • At this time, a fire ban is in effect throughout most of northern Alberta, prohibiting campfires, unauthorized burning and restricting the use of off-highway vehicles on public lands.
  • Fire bans outside of Alberta provincial parks are posted on AlbertaFireBans.ca Download the Fire Bans app before you head out.
  • Provincial parks-related fire bans, restrictions and associated advisories are posted on AlbertaParks.ca Fire Bans.

Safety on the road

  • More collisions and fatalities take place on Alberta’s roads on long weekends than other weekends. To help travellers get home safely, traffic enforcement measures will be ramped up this May long weekend.
  • Alberta sheriffs will be working in integrated traffic units with RCMP to patrol provincial highways to target impaired drivers, aggressive and careless drivers, distracted drivers and speeders.
  • Drive for the conditions of the road (check 511 Alberta for latest highway conditions).

Fish and wildlife

  • Increased enforcement on our highways, waterways, public lands and in our parks will help responsible Albertans enjoy the long weekend safely.
  • In addition to protecting fish and wildlife and managing human/wildlife conflicts, fish and wildlife officers will be protecting the landscape and waterbodies, including monitoring random camping, boating and off-highway vehicle use.
  • Ensure you know the fishing regulations and the hunting regulations.

Bear safety

  • Albertans can do their part to avoid human-bear conflict. Be bear and cougar smart. Carry bear spray and know how to use it.
  • When travelling in bear country, keep dogs on a leash, travel in groups and make noise whenever possible.

Impaired driving

  • Arrive alive! Any form of impaired driving is unacceptable and dangerous, and puts everyone on Alberta roads at risk.
  • Impaired driving from alcohol, drugs, fatigue or distraction injures or kills thousands of Albertans every year.

Museum and historic sites

  • Alberta’s historic sites, museums and archives are open for the summer with new programs and experiences.
  • People can purchase an Experience Alberta’s History Annual Pass and get unlimited access to all provincial historic sites and museums for one year from date of purchase.

Recreation on public land

  • Conditions on the May long weekend are typically very wet due to spring rains, melting snow and frost, making the land more susceptible to significant damage from recreational activities.
  • Be aware of regulations around motorized recreation and non-motorized recreation on trails and in waterways. Wheeled and tracked vehicles are not permitted to be operated or parked on the bed, shore and/or in the water of Alberta’s streams, rivers, lakes and wetlands.
  • Damage or loss to public land (i.e., dumping of garbage, abandoned vehicles, sign removal, gate removal) needs to be reported to the Report A Poacher line at 1-800-642-3800.
  • Camping is limited to a 14-day stay on public land.
  • Respect the land and know the rules and regulations around random camping on public lands.

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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Alberta

Is Canada’s Federation Fair?

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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

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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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