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Minister LaGrange Protected Charter And Home Schools Yet Is Being Targeted For Her Nomination

Published

3 years ago

8 minute read

Article submitted by Wyatt Claypool of the National Telegraph

Wyatt Claypool

The performance of a lot of Alberta UCP Cabinet Ministers has left a lot to be desired over the past couple of years, but the one Minister that absolutely does not describe would be Red Deer-North MLA Adriana LaGrange.

LaGrange has been genuinely doing amazing work as Education Minister, helping to reform the public education system, and promoting the growth of the charter and homeschooling systems with more support typically monopolized by the public system.

She has also helped focus classrooms back onto straightforward teaching of mathematics and English in grades K-6, as well as started cutting politics out of the social studies curriculum, which she frequently took note of after being appointed Education Minister in April of 2019.

 

After The National Telegraph contacted both Parents For Choice In Education and the Alberta Parents Union both pro-school choice and education reform groups had almost nothing but good things to say about Minster LaGrange.

Frankly, an even bigger endorsement of Minister LaGrange’s work is just how much the NDP and left-wing Alberta Teachers Association (ATA) hate her.

Regarding the latter, despite how hostile the ATA has been towards the UCP government and the reforms made to the education system, Minister LaGrange was able to wrangle the ATA into signing a new collective agreement with the province while she simultaneously took away the ATA’s arbitrary power to discipline teachers and gave the responsibility back to the province.

This all raises the question of why someone would want to challenge LaGrange for her nomination.

Well, it seems that certain political organizations new to the scene simply want their people in the legislature.

That organization is Take Back Alberta, which originally campaigned to remove Premier Jason Kenney in the leadership review vote has now moved on to trying to take out anyone associated with Kenney’s government, or at least anyone who hasn’t endorsed their preferred UCP leadership candidate.

Ironically many of the people backing Take Back Alberta are the same political insiders that either helped to install Kenney as UCP leader back in 2017, as well as Erin O’Toole in 2020, and who have contributed to the feeling of alienation within grassroots in conservative politics in Canada.

Take Back Alberta is backing a man named Andrew Clews whose claim to fame is founding an Alberta anti-mandate group called Hold The Line (with only 1,000 followers), and predictably his pitch to UCP members in Red Deer North is that LaGrange is not pro-freedom enough.

In an interview with True North, Clews said:

Even to date, I have not heard (LaGrange) voice any type of support for the rights and freedoms that we once had as Albertans, I’m not impressed with how our government has handled the pandemic, how they have so casually given rights and taken rights away from Albertans…we need to elect leaders to go to the Alberta legislature and stand for freedom.

While most people would agree the UCP government did a poor job standing up for Albertan’s civil liberties over the past two years, it would also be wrongheaded to think Minister LaGrange had much to do with it.

Yes, LaGrange did not stand against Kenney in the strong and principled manner that MLA Drew Barnes did, and while what Barnes did was highly commendable and important, LaGrange was not exactly a big supporter of lockdowns and mandates. She mostly just stuck to her ministerial work while Kenney and other members of his cabinet hard-charged on mandates.

Clews himself even tactically admits that LaGrange never publicly supported the lockdowns and mandates by focusing his criticism on the fact she was not publicly against them, not that she was publicly in favour of them.

On the issue of education, Clews basically endorses the job Adriana LaGrange has been doing as Education Minister.

Clews stated that:

We need to reform the funding for our school system so that the funding goes to the child and follows the child as opposed to going automatically into the public school or Catholic school system…

Frankly, unless Andrew Clews believes that LaGrange should be magically reforming the education system overnight, she is doing exactly what he said he wants to be done, but seeing as she is not the premier, she has had to move slower than she would want to.

Part of LaGrange’s support for charter schools has been making more funds available to them in order to reflect the increase in the proportion of students attending charter schools.

We need to actually evaluate our elected officials on their overall performance and not nitpick on one specific aspect of their record in order to justify throwing them out of office.

I, (the writer of this article), was strongly against lockdowns and mandates, and the reporting I did here at The National Telegraph contributed significantly to protecting unvaccinated workers, as well as getting Dr. Verna Yiu removed from her position as the CEO of AHS for incompetence in the management of ICU beds.

Former AHS CEO Dr. Verna Yiu.

With that in mind, I don’t take much issue with anything LaGrange did or did not say over the last two years. She would be close to the bottom of the list of people I’d hold responsible for the lockdown regime, and on issues regarding education, I’d say her record, for the most part, is unblemished.

Very few politicians could ever be reelected if Adriana LaGrange was someone deemed unworthy of continuing her work in government, but the people behind organizations like Take Back Alberta do not seem to care about any limiting principles. Their goals seem to be more based on political ambition than anything truly connected to the conservative grassroots.

If I was a UCP member in Red Deer North I would be voting to renominate Education Minister Adriana LaGrange.

———

Details on the Red Deer North UCP nomination vote are listed below:

– August 18, 2022
– 11:00am-8:00pm
– The Pines Community Hall
– 141 Pamely Avenue

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Focal Points

Common Vaccines Linked to 38-50% Increased Risk of Dementia and Alzheimer’s

Published on December 7, 2025

By

By Nicolas Hulscher, MPH

The single largest vaccine–dementia study ever conducted (n=13.3 million) finds risk intensifies with more doses, remains elevated for a full decade, and is strongest after flu and pneumococcal shots.

The single largest and most rigorous study ever conducted on vaccines and dementia — spanning 13.3 million UK adults — has uncovered a deeply troubling pattern: those who received common adult vaccines faced a significantly higher risk of both dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

The risk intensifies with more doses, remains elevated for a full decade, and is strongest after influenza and pneumococcal vaccination. With each layer of statistical adjustment, the signal doesn’t fade — it becomes sharper, more consistent, and increasingly difficult to explain away.

And critically, these associations persisted even after adjusting for an unusually wide range of potential confounders, including age, sex, socioeconomic status, BMI, smoking, alcohol-related disorders, hypertension, atrial fibrillation, heart failure, coronary artery disease, stroke/TIA, peripheral vascular disease, diabetes, chronic kidney and liver disease, depression, epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, cancer, traumatic brain injury, hypothyroidism, osteoporosis, and dozens of medications ranging from NSAIDs and opioids to statins, antiplatelets, immunosuppressants, and antidepressants.

Even after controlling for this extensive list, the elevated risks remained strong and remarkably stable.

Vaccinated Adults Had a 38% Higher Risk of Dementia

The primary adjusted model showed that adults receiving common adult vaccines (influenza, pneumococcal, shingles, tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis) had a:

38% increased risk of developing dementia (OR 1.38)

This alone dismantles the narrative of “vaccines protect the brain,” but the deeper findings are far worse.

Alzheimer’s Disease Risk Is Even Higher — 50% Increased Risk

Buried in the supplemental tables is a more shocking result: when the authors restricted analyses to Alzheimer’s disease specifically, the association grew even stronger.

50% increased risk of Alzheimer’s (Adjusted OR 1.50)

This indicates the effect is not random. The association intensifies for the most devastating subtype of dementia.

Clear Dose–Response Pattern: More Vaccines = Higher Risk

The authors ran multiple dose–response models, and every one of them shows the same pattern:

Dementia (all types)

From eTable 2:

  • 1 vaccine dose → Adjusted OR 1.26 (26% higher risk)
  • 2–3 doses → Adjusted OR 1.32 (32% higher risk)
  • 4–7 doses → Adjusted OR 1.42 (42% higher risk)
  • 8–12 doses → Adjusted OR 1.50 (50% higher risk)
  • ≥13 doses → Adjusted OR 1.55 (55% higher risk)

Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) Shows the Same—and Even Stronger—Trend

From eTable 7:

  • 1 dose → Adjusted OR 1.32 (32% higher risk)
  • 2–3 doses → Adjusted OR 1.41 (41% higher risk)
  • ≥4 doses → Adjusted OR 1.61 (61% higher risk)

This is one of the most powerful and unmistakable signals in epidemiology.

Time–Response Curve: Risk Peaks Soon After Vaccination and Remains Elevated for Years

Another signal strongly inconsistent with mere bias: a time-response relationship.

The highest dementia risk occurs 2–4.9 years after vaccination (Adjusted OR 1.56). The risk then slowly attenuates but never returns to baseline, remaining elevated across all time windows.

After 12.5 years, the risk is still meaningfully elevated (Adjusted OR 1.28) — a persistence incompatible with short-term “detection bias” and suggestive of a long-lasting biological impact.

This pattern is what you expect from a biological trigger with long-latency neuroinflammatory or neurodegenerative consequences.

Even After a 10-Year Lag, the Increased Risk Does Not Disappear

When the authors apply a long 10-year lag — meant to eliminate early detection bias — the elevated risk persists:

  • Dementia: OR 1.20
  • Alzheimer’s: OR 1.26

If this were simply “people who see doctors more often get diagnosed earlier,” the association should disappear under long lag correction.

Influenza and Pneumococcal Vaccines Drive the Signal

Two vaccines show particularly strong associations:

Influenza vaccine

  • Dementia: OR 1.39 → 39% higher risk
  • Alzheimer’s: OR 1.49 → 49% higher risk

Pneumococcal vaccine

  • Dementia: OR 1.12 → 12% higher risk
  • Alzheimer’s: OR 1.15 → 15% higher risk

And again, both exhibit dose–response escalation — the hallmark pattern of a genuine exposure–outcome relationship.

Taken together, the findings across primary, supplemental, dose–response, time–response, stratified, and sensitivity analyses paint the same picture:

• A consistent association between cumulative vaccination and increased dementia risk

• A stronger association for Alzheimer’s than for general dementia

• A dose–response effect — more vaccines, higher risk

• A time–response effect — risk peaks after exposure and persists long-term

• Influenza and pneumococcal vaccines strongly drive the signal

• The association remains after 10-year lag correction and active comparator controls

This is what a robust epidemiologic signal looks like.

In the largest single study ever conducted on vaccines and dementia, common adult vaccinations were associated with a 38% higher risk of dementia and a 50% higher risk of Alzheimer’s disease. The risk increases with more doses, persists for a decade, and is strongest for influenza and pneumococcal vaccines.

Nicolas Hulscher, MPH

Epidemiologist and Foundation Administrator, McCullough Foundation

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Opinion

The day the ‘King of rock ‘n’ roll saved the Arizona memorial

Published on December 7, 2025

By

Elvis visits the Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor. Handout

THE MAKICHUK REPORT

THE MAKICHUK REPORT Dave Makichuk

“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words but to live by them.”
— President John F. Kennedy, visiting the Arizona Memorial on June 9, 1963

I was on an Aston Hotels media junket to Hawaii, and I had a morning off.

My wife took our daughter Rica, to spend a day at Waikiki beach, while I headed to Pearl Harbor on a bus.

It was my only chance to see the Arizona Memorial, and I was determined to do so.

A small ferry boat takes you there, and I have to say, it is a silent trip.

Everyone on board, seemed to feel the same weight of the moment.

The memorial is simple, but very impactful, to the say the least.

A list of the names, of the 1,177 sailors who died on Dec. 7, 1941, is posted along a wall.

That’s a lot of sailors, to go down with the ship, folks.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor began at 7:55 that morning. The entire attack took only one hour and 15 minutes.

But the devastation, was immense.

Of the eight U.S. battleships present, all were damaged and four were sunk. All but Arizona were later raised, and six were returned to service during the war.

The Japanese also sank or damaged three cruisers, three destroyers, an anti-aircraft training ship, and a minelayer. More than 180 U.S. aircraft were destroyed.

Only six sailors were rescued from the burning USS Arizona, by a sailor from the nearby repair ship USS Vestal.

There is no evidence of men being trapped alive within the submerged hull of the Arizona after the ship settled on the harbor bottom, unlike on other ships like the USS Oklahoma and USS West Virginia, where trapped sailors were heard tapping on the hull for days.

SCUBA technology did not exist at that time, but at least one rescue was successful.

Civilian yard worker Julio DeCastro led a team that used pneumatic hammers to cut through the hull of the capsized USS Oklahoma and rescued 32 men who had been trapped for hours.

No U.S. aircraft carriers were present at Pearl Harbor during the attack, as USS Enterprise, USS Lexington, and USS Saratoga were all at sea on missions, while the six Japanese carriers that attacked;  Akagi, Kaga, Sōryū, Hiryū, Shōkaku, Zuikaku — all returned to Japan safely after the raid, though most were sunk later in the war.

I only remember one moment of that day. A young Japanese woman dropped a garland of flowers, into the water above the wreck.

Like magic, it floated directly over the length of the ship, which is still leaking oil.

A moment of time, I can never forget.

Most people don’t know, that the Airzona Memorial almost didn’t happen.

If not for Elvis Presley.

In the early 1960s, fundraising for the memorial had stalled.

Less than half of the roughly $500,000 needed had been raised, and the project was slipping from view.

After his manager, Colonel Tom Parker, read about the struggle, Elvis organized a benefit concert in Hawaii.

Newly discharged from the U.S. Army and on his way to film Blue Hawaii — the King stepped in to help without hesitation.

With one carefully staged benefit at Pearl Harbor’s Bloch Arena on March 25, 1961, he reignited public interest, raising over US $60,000 (equivalent to millions today) for the stalled fundraising effort, which helped push President John F. Kennedy and Congress to finish the job.

The memorial opened the following year.

Bloch Arena on the Navy base became the venue, and Parker handled the details with a fundraiser’s ruthlessness: tickets would range from $3 to $100, and no complimentary tickets would be issued — not even to admirals or VIPs.

Reports from the time underscore Parker’s insistence that everyone pay, a point that generated headlines and maximized proceeds.

A crowd of about 4,000 packed the hall to see Elvis in his gold lamé jacket deliver a rare live set — one of only a handful of concerts he performed between his Army service and the 1968 “Comeback Special.”

He later admitted forgetting lyrics due to being out of practice but was grateful for the crowd’s noise, which covered his mistakes.

He would visit the memorial in 1965 and place a wreath there, showing his deep respect.

The Arizona, launched in June 1915, measured 608 ft, with a beam of 97 ft. She was fully modernized in 1929, after which she was crewed by 92 officers and 1,639 enlisted men.

A Pennsylvania class battleship, she was the flagship of Battleship Division One at the time.

The final living survivor of the Arizona, Lou Conter, died last year, on April 1, 2024.

At Pearl Harbor, the Arizona was hit by four bombs just after 8 a.m., the final one of these is believed to have gone through the armoured deck and blown up the ship’s forward magazines with devastating effects.

Both the captain of the Arizona, Franklin Van Valkenburgh, and rear admiral Isaac Campbell Kidd, the head of the Battleship Division One were killed on the bridge of the Arizona.

More than two million people visit the memorial each year. It is only accessible by boat and straddles the sunken hull of the Arizona, without touching it.

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