Alberta
Province says pond hockey or shinny is illegal
From the Province of Alberta
Any sporting activity bringing participants within 2 meters is not allowed.
Update 163: COVID-19 pandemic in Alberta (Dec. 21)
Early indicators suggest that Alberta is beginning to bend the curve. Continue to follow public health guidelines to reduce spread and protect our health-care system.
Latest updates
- Over the last 24 hours, 1,240 new cases were identified.
- There are 795 people in hospital due to COVID-19, including 151 in intensive care.
- There are 19,165 active cases in the province.
- To date, 71,434 Albertans have recovered from COVID-19.
- There was an increase of 18,306 tests (2,656,852 total) for a total of 1,616,542 people tested.
- The testing positivity rate is 6.8 per cent.
- In the last 24 hours, there were nine additional COVID-related deaths reported: one on Nov. 26, two on Dec. 17, one on Dec. 18, two on Dec. 19, and three on Dec. 20.
- The total number of COVID-19 related deaths is now 860.
- All zones across the province have cases:
- Calgary Zone: 6,748 active cases and 28,626 recovered
- South Zone: 461 active cases and 4,275 recovered
- Edmonton Zone: 9,147 active cases and 29,666 recovered
- North Zone: 1,137 active cases and 4,838 recovered
- Central Zone: 1,551 active cases and 3,885 recovered
- 121 active cases and 144 recovered cases in zones to be confirmed
- Additional information, including case totals, is online.
- R values from Dec. 14-20 (confidence interval)
- Alberta provincewide: 0.92 (0.90-0.93)
- Edmonton Zone: 0.89 (0.86-0.91)
- Calgary Zone: 0.97 (0.97-1.00)
- Rest of Alberta: 0.90 (0.85-0.95)
- Currently, 448 schools, about 19 per cent, are on alert or have outbreaks, with 1,992 cases in total.
- Of those, 137 schools are on alert, with 233 total cases.
- Outbreaks are declared in 311 schools, including 129 on watch, with a total of 1,759 cases.
- So far, in-school transmission has likely occurred in 377 schools. Of these, 192 have had only one new case result.
- Based on data available to date, 346 schools have been removed from the alert list.
- An online map lists schools with two or more confirmed cases, updated every school day.
- There are 1,225 active and 4,165 recovered cases at long-term care facilities and supportive/home living sites.
- To date, 560 of the 860 reported deaths (65 per cent) have been in long-term care facilities or supportive/home living sites.
- Alberta is reporting case numbers and information daily, including on weekends and holidays.
Testing for travellers from the U.K.
- All travellers who have arrived from the United Kingdom within the past 14 days should immediately get a COVID-19 test, whether they have symptoms or not.
- Travellers will be contacted directly by Alberta Health Services to book a test.
- Also, travellers from the United Kingdom who are participating in the border pilot must immediately quarantine, whether they’ve had a negative test or not. All returning travellers currently in quarantine must remain in quarantine for the full 14 days.
Rapid testing
- Rapid point-of-care testing has begun at long-term care and designated supportive living facilities in the Edmonton Zone using dedicated mobile testing centres. Mobile testing centres are expected to be ready to deploy in the Calgary Zone starting the week of Dec. 21.
- Remote and rural hospitals in Alberta will receive rapid tests in late December and early January.
- Rapid testing has already been expanded to homeless shelters and centres in Calgary and Edmonton.
Vaccine distribution
- Priority health-care workers in Edmonton and Calgary are now receiving the COVID-19 vaccine.
- Alberta will receive 25,350 doses of Pfizer vaccine during the week of Dec. 21.
- The Pfizer vaccine must be administered at its delivery site and is being offered to respiratory therapists, intensive care unit physicians and staff, and eligible long-term care and designated supportive living facility workers.
- As more shipments arrive in the new year, immunization will focus on Phase 1 priority populations and will include residents of long-term care and designated supportive living facilities, followed by seniors aged 75 and over, and First Nations on reserve, Inuit and on-settlement Métis individuals aged 65 and over.
Expanding outreach supports
- Alberta has launched a comprehensive outreach program to reach communities with high levels of COVID-19 spread in Edmonton and Calgary to provide information about how to access supports people need to keep themselves and their families safe.
Provincewide restrictions to slow the spread of COVID-19
- In response to increasing case numbers, enhanced public measures prohibiting social gatherings, requiring masking and restricting businesses and services are in effect.
- These mandatory restrictions apply provincewide and will be in place for at least four weeks.
- All existing guidance and legal orders remain in place.
Enforcement of public health measures
- The government has granted certain Alberta peace officers and community peace officers temporary authority to enforce public health orders.
- Not following mandatory restrictions will result in fines of $1,000 per ticketed offence and up to $100,000 through the courts.
Albertans downloading tracer app
- All Albertans are encouraged to download the secure ABTraceTogether app, which is integrated with provincial contact tracing. The federal app is not a contact tracing app.
- Secure contact tracing is an effective tool to stop the spread by notifying people who were exposed to a confirmed case so they can isolate and be tested.
- As of Dec. 21, 287,251 Albertans were using the ABTraceTogether app, 66 per cent on iOS and 34 per cent on Android. On average, 22 new users were registering every hour.
- Secure contact tracing is a cornerstone of Alberta’s Relaunch Strategy.
Influenza immunization
- Everyone, especially seniors and those at risk, is encouraged to get immunized against influenza.
- As of Dec. 12, 1,450,368 Albertans have received their flu shot. That means almost 33 per cent of Albertans are immunized against influenza so far this year.
MyHealth Records quick access
- Parents and guardians can access the COVID-19 test results for children under the age of 18 through MyHealth Records (MHR) as soon as they are ready.
- More than 473,873 Albertans have MHR accounts.
Access to justice
- For the latest updates on court operations, please visit:
Alberta’s Recovery Plan
- Alberta’s Recovery Plan will create jobs, economic diversification and a strong economic future.
Addiction and mental health supports
- Confidential supports are available. The Mental Health Help Line at 1-877-303-2642 and the Addiction Help Line at 1-866-332-2322 operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Resources are also available online.
- The Kids Help Phone is available 24-7 and offers professional counselling, information and referrals and volunteer-led, text-based support to young people by texting CONNECT to 686868.
- Online resources provide advice on handling stressful situations and ways to talk with children.
Family violence prevention
- A 24-hour Family Violence Information Line at 310-1818 provides anonymous help in more than 170 languages.
- Alberta’s One Line for Sexual Violence is available at 1-866-403-8000, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.
- People fleeing family violence can call local police or the nearest RCMP detachment to apply for an Emergency Protection Order, or follow the steps in the Emergency Protection Orders Telephone Applications (COVID-19).
- Information sheets and other resources on family violence prevention are at alberta.ca/COVID19.
Alberta’s government is responding to the COVID-19 pandemic by protecting lives and livelihoods with precise measures to bend the curve, sustain small businesses and protect Alberta’s health-care system.
Quick facts
- Legally, all Albertans must physically distance and isolate when sick or with symptoms.
- Good hygiene is your best protection: wash your hands regularly for at least 20 seconds, avoid touching your face, cough or sneeze into an elbow or sleeve, and dispose of tissues appropriately.
- Please share acts of kindness during this difficult time at #AlbertaCares.
- Alberta Connects Contact Centre (310-4455) is open Monday to Friday, 8:15 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
From LifeSiteNews
After Alberta’s Danielle Smith put forth legislation to protect kids from being gender ‘transitioned,’ the Canadian media went on a predictable melt down, citing ‘experts’ who blatantly lie to advance the LGBT agenda.
A year after announcing her intention to combat transgender ideology and protect children, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has tabled three pieces of UCP (United Conservative Party) government legislation:
- The Education Amendment Act 2024 will require parental consent for “socially transitioning” children under the age of 16 (changing a child’s name or “preferred pronouns”). The bill also gives parents an “opt-in” option for any sexual or content at school. Smith has emphasized that the Alberta Teaching Profession Commission has the power to discipline teachers if they decide to break the law.
- The Health Statues Amendment Act 2024 will ban the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors, as well as prohibit sex change surgeries on minors.
- The Fairness and Safety in Sport Act will ban trans-identifying men from female sports teams.
Together, these three bills represent the most definitive pushback against gender ideology in Canada by any premier. Smith’s decision to announce her intent to pursue such legislation and then wait has turned out to be politically savvy—it has given the UCP government a good look at the LGBT response, and during that time the U.K.’s Labour government has successfully fought to maintain a similar ban in the courts and publicly rebutted many of the scare tactics used by LGBT activists.
Smith and the UCP are thus walking into this debate with eyes wide open, and are clearly certain that the public is on their side (it is) and that the legislation can survive the court challenges surely coming from LGBT activists. The policies are clearly popular with the UCP party’s base, who handed Smith a staggering 91.5% approval rating in her leadership review at UCP gathering in Red Deer last Saturday.
The party also passed 35 policy resolutions, including several that indicate the UCP’s willingness to go further in fighting transgender ideology, with resolutions that would restrict “exclusively female spaces” like bathrooms and changerooms to females and designating transgender surgeries as “elective cosmetic procedures” not funded by the taxpayer. The motions received near-unanimous support.
The Canadian press, unsurprisingly, is working hard to present policies that the vast majority of Canadians support as an attack on fundamental norms (albeit norms that only surfaced in the last few years and were never presented to voters). Global News ran the headline: “Alberta unveils 3 sweeping bills affecting trans and gender-diverse youth.” It is important to note that the press accepts the premises of transgender ideology as the starting point for their reporting, with heavy usage of nonsensical phrases like “gender-diverse youth,” which implies that there are many genders.
In fact, Global News and other Canadian outlets trotted out talking points that have been definitively rebutted by the U.K.’s Cass Review and multiple medical studies—in fact, even the New York Times has been reporting on the permanent harms of puberty blockers over the past several years. An example from Global News:
Alberta parents of gender-diverse youth like Haley Wray believe the new laws will give kids less choice — especially when it comes to health-care that is not permanent but instead, gives kids time to work through their identity struggles.
‘Hormone blockers are a very valuable tool,’ Wray said, explaining they have a very small window of effectiveness to pause, but not prevent, puberty. ‘It is reversible because nothing changes. And what that does is it allows youth and families to have that that pause, that break to explore further, validate, understand what this means and know that permanent changes aren’t happening.’
Wray believes the proposed legislation will make the province a less safe place for tens of thousands of Alberta kids who aren’t straight. It’s why, Wray says, a growing number of families with transgender children are now grappling with whether Alberta is a place they can stay. ‘I know people who have, and I know people who genuinely feel like there is likely nowhere to go,’ she said.
This is incorrect. Puberty blockers cause permanent damage, and children may be rendered permanently sterile after taking them for a relatively short period of time. Puberty is not something that can be “paused,” and it frequently causes irreversible rather than reversible damage. Smith and her government understand this, which is why they have decided to pass this legislation—not, as nearly every press outlet claimed, to “target trans youth,” but to protect them.
The CBC chimed in with sentences like this one:
Terms like ‘biological female’ and ‘biological male’ can be used to imply that transgender people are still their assigned sex at birth, despite their identity.
To translate: a scientifically accurate and precise statement is now an ideological one, but inherently ideological language invented by the transgender movement over the past decade is, in fact, technically accurate. People can identify as anything they want; it is irrelevant to their biology. The CBC presents pointing this out as some sort of propagandistic attack on vulnerable people.
Fortunately, Smith appears to know what she’s doing here. She’s taken her time to ensure that the legislation she has put forward will pass, and that it is defensible in court. Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe, who has just led the Saskatchewan Party to its fifth straight majority government, is of a similar mind—he’s promised to put forward legislation protecting female spaces as a matter of first priority. It took long enough, but Canada’s conservatives are finally starting to move.
Alberta
Alberta calling for federal election! Premier Smith demands feds scrap dangerous oil and gas production caps
Premier Danielle Smith, Minister of Environment and Protected Areas Rebecca Schulz and Minister of Energy and Minerals Brian Jean issued the following statement on the proposed federal oil and gas production cap:
“This production cap will hurt families, hurt businesses and hurt Canada’s economy. We will defend our province, our country and our Constitutional rights.
“Make no mistake, this cap violates Canada’s constitution. Section 92A clearly gives provinces exclusive jurisdiction over non-renewable natural resource development yet this cap will require a one million barrel a day production cut by 2030.
“The evidence is overwhelming. Three reports from reputable firms have shown that these regulations will sucker-punch Canada’s economy, a million barrels cut every day according to S&P Global, $28 billion a year in lost GDP according to Deloitte, and up to 150,000 lost jobs according to the Conference Board of Canada.
“The losses to GDP mean billions a year will disappear from the economy. Billions that won’t be going towards new schools, hospitals and roads, all for a reckless ideological scheme that will not reduce global emissions.
“Ultimately, this cap will lead Alberta and our country into economic and societal decline. The average Canadian family would be left with up to $419 less for groceries, mortgage payments and utilities every month. Canadian parents and workers will suffer while Justin Trudeau outsources the duty to provide safe, affordable, reliable and responsibly produced oil and gas to dictators and less clean producers around the world. We could be the solution. Instead, Ottawa would rather sacrifice our ability to lead.
“Tweaks won’t work. This cap must be scrapped. Alberta’s government is actively exploring the use of every legal option, including a constitutional challenge and the use of the Alberta Sovereignty within a United Canada Act. We will not stand idly by while the federal government sacrifices our prosperity, our constitution and our quality of life for its extreme agenda.”
IRS whistleblowers confirm agencies knew the truth about Hunter Biden’s laptop
They Are Scrubbing the Internet Right Now
10 reasons Donald Trump is headed for a landslide victory over Kamala Harris
Indigenous Catholic Priest questions “The murder of 215 Indigenous Children” at Kamloops Indian Residential School
-
Brownstone Institute2 days ago
They Are Scrubbing the Internet Right Now
-
National2 days agoCommittee Hearing Exposes Trudeau’s Political Spin on Foreign Interference
-
National2 days agoTrudeau government introduces bill that could strip pro-life pregnancy centers of charity status
-
Alberta2 days agoLesson for Ottawa—don’t bite the hand that feeds you
-
John Campbell2 days agoProminent COVID jab critic examines the amazing evidence for the Shroud of Turin
-
COVID-192 days agoDr John Campbell urges a complete moratorium on mRNA vaccines
-
Crime2 days agoDespite recent bail reform flip-flops, Canada is still more dangerous than we’d prefer
-
illegal immigration2 days agoTerror Attack in Chicago? Illegal Immigrant Charged for Shooting Jewish Man