Fort McMurray

• "The Métis Nation within Alberta is very pleased that the North Saskatchewan River has formally been recognized as a Canadian Heritage River.
• "The beloved North Saskatchewan River is well deserving of a Canadian Heritage River designation, and the River Valley Alliance (RVA) was pleased to support this important initiative.
• The North Saskatchewan River flows within the North Saskatchewan watershed across central Alberta and into Saskatchewan.
• The North Saskatchewan River's designation document highlights the many cherished stories shared by cultural, heritage and recreational sites throughout the North Saskatchewan River Watershed to be explored and developed in the future.

• This opening will mark High Tide's 163rd Canna Cabana-branded retail cannabis location in Canada, the 79th in the province of Alberta, and the first in the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo.
• This brand-new Canna Cabana is the first location in Fort McMurray.
• Situated off two of the main local roadways, this Canna Cabana is surrounded by a mix of high-density, multi-family and single-family residences.
• We look forward to welcoming new ELITE and Cabana Club members in this exciting new market," added Mr. Grover.

• Decisions made by those in charge of wildfire response can have a major impact on how quickly the fire is contained.
• As experts in management and governance (including disaster response, planning, policy and collaboration) we examined two major wildfires — the Fort McMurray, Alta.
• wildfire of 2016 and Sweden’s Västmanland wildfire of 2014 — and found that the key to minimizing the impacts of wildfires is effective collaboration.

What does wildfire management look like?

• When a fire escalates in size or severity, governments at the provincial or territorial levels take over management roles.
• During the critical response phase of an ongoing wildfire emergency — where the fire is not considered contained — a wide range of resources and co-ordination is required.
• The wildfire management required a quick ‘scaling up’ from regional to full provincial control.
• Despite management efforts at levels from regional to federal, the fire ultimately burned more than 500,000 hectares and destroyed 2,400 structures including many homes.

Minimizing wildfire impacts

• We studied not only how people communicated with each other, but also the tasks they tackled and the connections between those tasks.
• 1) Establishing the right connections Working together with various emergency response teams is critical to the success of its management.
• However, it is not a matter of “the more collaboration, the better.” That strategy can decrease the effectiveness.
• Strategic collaborations enable organizations and decision-makers to co-ordinate their work across tasks that rely on each other in some way.
• They operate on the principle of “responsibility” that supports those in management roles retaining those same roles in times of emergency.

Co-ordination is not enough

• These agreements are especially critical in efficiently scaling up crisis management from a local level to a broader and more collaborative one.
• This can be challenging as local emergency managers are connected to the place in which they work and are often the first to take control.
• Örjan Bodin receives funding from the Swedish Research Council (FORMAS) and the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency

• With a fresh and workable majority, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is facing the choice of conforming to her moderate election stance or pushing the strategies of various quasi-separatist groups like Take Back Alberta and Project Confederation.
• If she opts to move from the centre to the far right again, controversies involving the federal government, government workers and environmentalists will ensue.
• As a political scientist, former Alberta public servant, financial institution executive and university administrator and researcher, I have been watching politics in Alberta for more than 40 years.

Alberta’s economy

• Without Alberta’s energy exports, Canada’s terms of trade would turn dramatically negative and force a drastic downward change in Canada’s standard of living.
• Statistics Canada reports that from 1997 to 2021, Canada ran a $1.05 trillion trade surplus with the rest of the world.
• During that same period, Alberta alone ran a trade surplus of $1.02 trillion with the rest of the world.
• To reiterate, Alberta’s withdrawal from the Canadian federation would cause a huge drop in Canadians’ standard of living.

American control

• Unlike Québec, where provincially built institutions like Caisse de Depot nurtured a francophone business class, Alberta’s key industries are controlled by American institutional investors.
• Uncertainty about how Ottawa will meet its emission reduction commitments in the face of sovereigntist opposition from Alberta is a big concern for those investors.
• This concern has reduced capital investment in the conventional oil and gas and oilsands sectors.

Confrontation with Ottawa

• Three themes will likely be front and centre — confrontation with Ottawa, building economic and institutional fences around the province and the shrinking of the Alberta government through selective privatizations.
• Smith is closely aligned with Rob Anderson, one of the principle authors of the Free Alberta Strategy.

Starving the Alberta government

• Another central election promise was to amend the Alberta Taxation Protection Act that requires a referendum to institute a sales tax.
• This amounts to creating an institutional framework that will starve the Alberta government.
• Efforts to shrink the size of government may include the privatization of Alberta’s land titles office , which has been experiencing horrendous backlogs for years.

Compromise?

• At the same time, the Liberals and the Ontario Progressive Conservatives have offered billions to promote electric vehicles.
• How fiscally responsible governments can undertake these extraordinary measures of fiscal assistance to entities controlled in the U.S. or Europe is extraordinary.
• With Alberta separatists inside the tent of Alberta’s UCP, 2023 will be a pivotal year for Canada’s Confederation.