Alberta is increasingly seen as a desirable destination for Canadians struggling under a cost of living crisis, new data suggests.
A new report from the Alberta Treasury Branch found that almost 10,000 more people moved to Alberta from other parts of Canada in the second quarter of 2022.
The numbers reveal that “the rest of Canada sees that Alberta is the land of opportunity and the best place to build a career or raise a family with our low taxes, cheap housing and booming economy,” Justin Brattinga, press secretary to Premier Jason Kenny, told True North.
The report said interprovincial immigration to Alberta has not been this high since 2014 — the last time oil prices were over $100 per barrel.
Importantly, net outflows from Ontario are especially large among young people. pic.twitter.com/l2ABCsxYyZ
Ontario, meanwhile, lost the largest number of people to interprovincial immigration and contributed the most number of new Alberta residents.
A total of 21,008 Ontarians left for other provinces, including 6,281 who moved to Alberta. Those leaving the province were largely made up of young people around 25.
Canadians are increasingly concerned about the cost of living. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre was elected earlier this month with a decisive victory of 68% of party members’ support after campaigning on promises to tackle inflation and the cost of living crisis.
Unlike elsewhere in Canada, Albertans don’t pay a provincial sales tax. The Alberta government also suspended the provincial fuel tax during record high gas prices earlier this year. Now that oil prices have relaxed, the government will re-implement a portion of the tax — 4.5 cents per litre, beginning Saturday.
Alberta housing is also still affordable for first-time home buyers when compared to jurisdictions like Toronto and Vancouver where millions of Canadians are being priced out of the housing market.
The average house price in Edmonton in August 2022 was $377,000. The average house price in Vancouver was $1,207,300 in the same time period.
Gas in Alberta is also considerably cheaper than elsewhere in Canada. The average cost of gas in Edmonton on Thursday was 153.4¢ and 156.1¢ in Calgary. That average rose to 232.8¢ in Vancouver.
Alberta also saw its highest population growth due to international migration in the second quarter, with over 40,000 new residents.
The Conservative Party of Canada has come out in support of regime change in Iran as the country enters another week of protests following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini while in police custody.
During a CBC Power & Politics interview on Wednesday, Conservative deputy leader Melissa Lantsman reiterated her party’s position on the matter.
“Yes, and if you can’t be unequivocal about a brutal religious dictatorship who kills their own people, then I’m not sure what we’re all discussing here,” said Lantsman when asked about regime change.
Amini is believed to have been killed by Iran’s morality police after being arrested for not complying with mandatory veiling laws.
Lantsman has been a prominent figure at protests in Canada.
“A brutal regime killed a 22-year-old girl,” said Lantsman at a Toronto demonstration.
“You have friends in the Conservative party. You have friends who are going to stand up to this government and demand that the (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps) is a listed terrorist organization.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently unveiled a series of new sanctions targetting members of the Iranian Islamist theocracy.
“We’ve seen Iran disregarding human rights time and time again, and now we see with the death of Mahsa Amini and the crackdown on protests,” said Trudeau.
“To the women in Iran who are protesting and to those who are supporting you, we stand with you. We join our voices, the voices of all Canadians, to the millions of people around the world demanding that the Iranian government listen to their people, end their repression of freedoms and rights, and let women and all Iranians live their lives and express themselves peacefully.”
The Liberal government has, however, stopped short of listing the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization – a demand the Conservatives have been making for some time now.
When pressed on the matter, Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly refused to commit to making the designation.
Remember one of this government’s first actions was to lift sanctions on Iran’s brutal dictatorship. https://t.co/mrTpNCZrea
In 2018, MPs passed a motion to list the IRGC as a terrorist organization.
The Liberal, NDP and Bloc parties voted together to triple the carbon tax in a vote 206-116 on Wednesday.
As reported by the National Post, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s opposition motion to scrap the tax hike in response to increased cost of living was met with opposition from all other parties.
“Costly coalition of Trudeau-Singh voted to triple the carbon tax on gas, heat and groceries.” wrote Poilievre on Twitter, criticizing the results.
BREAKING: Costly coalition of Trudeau-Singh vote to TRIPLE the carbon tax on gas, heat & groceries.
Currently at $50 a tonne, the carbon tax was already set to rise $15 every year reaching $170 by 2030.
An analysis by the Canadian Press says the carbon tax is expected to increase gas prices by 13 cents per liter by 2030. Rising costs in fuel also leads to already-soaring grocery prices.
Conservative MP Randy Hoback criticized the timing of the increase after Hurricane Fiona ravaged through the Atlantic provinces last weekend.
“It’s not a climate debate,” Hoback told reporters Wednesday. “It’s a debate on affordability.” “There are natural disasters happening all the time,” he added. “Those are important too, and climate change is important. But if you can’t feed your kids, what are you looking at?”
Nova Scotia Conservative MP Rick Perkins said that “the last thing” his constituents need in a time of crisis are more taxes as they recover from the storm.
“It’s actually the worst time to try and impose a tax,” he added.
Liberal MP Chris Bittle rejected those claims.
“We are clearly in an era of more severe weather, we’re clearly at a time where we’re facing the effects of the climate crisis and the first act of the Conservative Party is to limit our response to pollution and make it free to pollute,” said Bittle Wednesday before heading into caucus.
Minister of Natural Resources Jonathan Wilkinson insisted that extreme weather events are on the rise in Canada and said that “if we do not deal with the costs associated with mitigating climate change now, the costs in the future will be astronomical.”
Despite claims from the government that the carbon tax combats climate change, various reports have indicated that the tax does nothing to lower carbon emissions.
A report from the Fraser Institute suggests that carbon taxes around the world fail to benefit the environment or taxpayers.
According to the report Carbon Pricing in High-Income Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Countries, the biggest reason why carbon taxes are not efficient globally is because many countries simply use carbon taxes to raise revenue.
“On average, 74% of carbon tax revenues in high-income OECD countries go directly into general revenues for governments with no specific use, 12% are earmarked for environmental spending and only 14% are returned to taxpayers,” the report states.
In addition, in British Columbia, a 2020 report by the Department of Environment revealed that the province’s carbon tax did not succeed in cutting emissions within the province.
The National Inventory Report which was submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change revealed that greenhouse gas emissions in BC increased by 10% or 65.6 million tonnes from 2015 to 2018.
According to a new report by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF), 25 different countries cut taxes on gas, 18 axed consumption taxes, 15 have lowered energy taxes, 11 cut business taxes and eight nations have cut income taxes to provide relief.
Canada is the only one out of 51 nations to increase taxes despite rising inflation and costs of living.
The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) wants the Trudeau government to drop all fines related to the controversial ArriveCan app amid its mandatory use coming to an end.
The Trudeau government announced Monday that the app would no longer be required to enter Canada as of Oct. 1. The border vaccine mandate and mandatory masking policy for planes and trains will also be dropped.
JCCF lawyer Henna Parmar told True North that given the feds’ announcement, “it is not in the interest of justice to proceed with prosecuting Canadians for laws that are no longer in effect.”
The JCCF announced this week that it would continue legal action on behalf of 11 people against ArriveCan – with the hope of having a court rule that the requirement to use the app was unconstitutional.
“We argue that the requirements unjustifiably breach a number of Charter rights,” said Parmar. “We will also argue that the government acted beyond the scope of its delegated authority under the Quarantine Act.”
Parmar stated that Section 8 of the Charter offers protection against unreasonable search and seizure, and that the JCCF “will argue that forcing Canadians to disclose their private medical information to CBSA agents on ArriveCan is an unreasonable search.”
Parmar also cited section 9 of the Charter, which protects against arbitrary detention, and said “there is nothing routine about detaining law-abiding citizens at the border and threatening them with arrest and fines in order to get them to use ArriveCan.”
Canadian courts have previously upheld government pandemic restrictions, including the federal government’s quarantine hotel program.
Parmar says Canadian courts “have held that there is a high expectation of privacy in our private medical information” and that the JCCF would very likely appeal a ruling declaring the ArriveCan requirement as constitutional.
“ArriveCan cannot prevent the spread of Covid-19, or any virus for that matter,” said Parmar. “The measures are arbitrary in their nature and in the way that they are implemented.”
She noted that one of the applicants was forced to quarantine over ArriveCAN despite having not left the country, while another was subjected to “egregious” fines after he showed paper proof of full vaccination instead of using the app.
The JCCF is not the only one calling for penalties related to the mandatory ArriveCan requirement to be dropped.
Brantford—Brant Conservative MP Larry Brock wrote a letter to Justice Minister David Lametti this week with several demands, including that the government drop ArriveCan and Quarantine Act fines and issue refunds for the fines it had collected.
Canadians’ rights and freedoms were undermined by this Liberal govt for too long, and it is the responsibility of Justin Trudeau & Minister Lametti to do everything to restore justice & Canadians’ trust. Sent this letter co-signed by @MelissaLantsman, @RobMoore_CPC & @AlexRuff17pic.twitter.com/zVajv2Lv0O
Brock’s letter was also signed by Conservative party deputy leader Melissa Lantsman as well as MPs Alex Ruff and Rob Moore.
Documents showed 1.65 million Canadians entered Canada without using ArriveCAN between Jan. 1 and Aug. 31. However, only 190 received fines for non-compliance, according to an August testimony by Public Health Agency of Canada vice-president Jennifer Lutfallah.
In response to the demand that ArriveCan fines be dropped, Public Prosecution Service of Canada (PPSC) spokesperson Nathalie Houle told True North that “the current Orders under the Quarantine Act are valid and still in force.”
“The PPSC will continue to prosecute those charged if the Crown determines that there is a reasonable prospect of conviction, and it’s in the public interest to do so.”
Federal Public Safety Minister Marco Medicino says the Kenney government is acting in a “reckless” way by telling the Alberta RCMP to ignore orders to participate in the Liberals’ gun grab scheme.
Alberta announced Monday it would not aid the Trudeau Liberals in confiscating the roughly 30,000 firearms registered in Alberta and affected by the ban. The province likewise told the Alberta RCMP that the so-called buyback program is not a provincial priority and is therefore an inappropriate use of police resources.
Mendicino said Alberta’s response is “an abdication of that vital responsibility.”
“The courts have repeatedly confirmed that regulating firearms falls squarely within federal jurisdiction,” he said in a statement.
“Albertans expect their federal and provincial governments to work together to protect their communities, not pull dangerous stunts.”
In May 2020, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced he was banning more than 1,500 models of firearms, including AR-15s. The Liberals said they plan on spending up to $250 million buying the guns.
Alberta Justice Minister Tyler Shandro said Monday any attempt from Ottawa to have the RCMP
serve as confiscation agents would result in the province invoking the dispute resolution clause in Article 23 of the Provincial Police Service Agreement.
“Alberta taxpayers pay over $750 million per year for the RCMP and we will not tolerate taking officers off the streets, in order to confiscate the property of law-abiding firearms owners,” he said.
In response to Medicino’s criticism, Shandro said the minister “appears to have not watched the press conference or read the two news releases that were issued.”
“Alberta has been informally advised that the commanding officer of Alberta’s RCMP does not support the use of provincial resources to administer the federal government’s confiscation program,” he said in a statement.
“Despite these objections, we expect the federal Liberals will again use the RCMP for their own political purposes — just as they did when they politicized the mass shooting in Nova Scotia in order to bolster their case for the same pending firearms ban.”
The Saskatchewan government on Wednesday said it will follow Alberta’s lead in telling the RCMP to ignore orders from the Trudeau Liberals to confiscate citizen’s legally-purchased firearms.
The provincial Firearms Officer Robert Freberg told the John Gormley Show that the Saskwatchewan government will not authorize the use of provincially-funded resources of any type for the federal government’s confiscation program.
Alberta will also seek to intervene in six ongoing judicial review applications challenging the constitutionality of the federal firearm prohibition legislation.
Hymie Rubenstein is editor of The REAL Indian Residential Schools newsletter and a retired professor of anthropology, The University of Manitoba
Nothing characterizes Canada’s federal Liberal government more than its endless knee-jerk reactions to crises, real or imaginary, employing virtue signaling accompanied by useless or destructive actions.
A good example is Bill C-5, whose legislation establishing a National Day for Truth and Reconciliation (NDTR) was enacted on June 3, 2021. The second NDTR, a federal statutory holiday, will be celebrated on Friday, September 30.
Grounded inCall to Action #80 of the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Report which asked, “the federal government … to establish … a statutory holiday … to honour [Indian Residential School] Survivors, their families, and communities,” six long years passed before the government did so following a proverbial shot heard round the world.
That shot was an announcement only six days earlier by Rosanne Casimir, Chief of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc (Kamloops) Indian Band, of “the confirmation of the remains of 215 children who were students of the Kamloops Indian Residential School.”
This rush to memorialize the Indian Residential Schools (IRS) was rejigged by the Government of Canada to commemorate students who attended Indian Residential Schools or died away from their homes: “The day honours the children who never returned home and Survivors of residential schools, as well as their families and communities.”
No one should be surprised by such politically driven transformations though they might need to be reminded that there is still no evidence of any missing IRS students buried anywhere on the Kamloops reserve combined with plenty of convincing evidence found here and here pointing to the contrary. The best evidence of all is the absence of relatives in the past or present searching for missing Kamloops IRS students.
The origin of these makeovers, all government-funded with no strings attached, began in 2015 whenthe agreed upon mandate of the TRC to “Acknowledge Residential School experiences, impacts and consequences” was arbitrarily reinvented by the indigenous-led Commission into a search for “the complex truth about the history and the ongoing legacy of the church-run residential schools, in a manner that fully documents the individual and collective harms perpetrated against Aboriginal peoples.”
This switch from a holistic IRS study to one focusing on negative features nicely corresponded to the unsubstantiated testimonies of some 6,500 self-selected IRS “Survivors” whose school recollections were accepted without question. So were the testimonies of the over 38,000 former students who related stories of abuse, including criminal assault, in hearings between 2007 and 2017, resulting in a total of$3.2 billion in reparations sanctioned by the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement.
Another sleight of hand featuring oscillation from a search for truth to a preoccupation with recrimination, also lies at the heart of the Kamloops revelations.
When media, both Canadian and international, termed the soil disturbances found next to the former boarding school evidence of “a mass grave,” a possible sign of genocide, Chief Casimir soon called this false: “This is not a mass grave. These are preliminary findings,” she said on June 3, 2021.
This did not prevent her from reversing course at the December 2021 annual general meeting of the Assembly of First Nations, Canada’s most influential indigenous lobbying group, by tablingthe following motion:
“THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Chiefs-in-Assembly:
1. Stand in solidarity with the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc and all survivors of the Residential School System and their families and assert that the mass grave discovered at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School reveals Crown conduct reflecting a pattern of genocide against Indigenous Peoples that must be thoroughly examined and considered in terms of Canada’s potential breaches of international humanitarian and human rights law.”
When virtue signaling — traditionally defined as using nice words as opposed to doing good works reigns supreme — behaviour like this can easily be ignored by those guilty of the same conduct. But in the case of the IRS, the nice words have been operationalized by supposedly virtuous actions: the allocation by the federal government of $320 million and millions more from provincial governments to search for missing children no one has reported missing. Indigenous and government perfidy seem to be two sides of the same coin.
But what makes the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation more ill-conceived, even retrogressive, is its failure to acknowledge and address the real adversities facing many indigenous people, hardships and pathologies rooted in the long history of contact between Canada’s aboriginal settlers and the Europeans who followed them.
This history reveals that the Royal Proclamation of 1763, the signing of apartheid-like treaties, the enactment of the separatist Indian Act, and other legislation and practices that retarded the absorption of Western European beliefs, values, and practices have made indigenous people worse off than they would otherwise be.
This can best be seen in the social, economic, and health differentials between indigenous people and other Canadians. Placed in a comparative national context,these show that indigenous people on- and off-reserve exhibit the highest rates of criminality and incarceration; the lowest incomes; the highest levels of unemployment, poverty, welfare dependency, and homelessness; the worst housing; the highest rates of infant mortality and the lowest life expectancy; the highest disease, illness, and suicide levels; the highest school dropout rates; the highest proportion of child apprehension, fostering, and adoption; the highest rates of sexual abuse; the highest proportion of single motherhood; and the highest rates of murdered and missing women.
Truly, these are horrific and shameful socio-economic outcomes in one of the richest and most advanced countries in the world.
All these long-standing deprivations and pathologies were well known when Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau failed in his attempt to enact the provisions of his 1969 White Paper calling for the extinguishment of the racist Indian Act, gradual privatization of reserve lands, abolition of the paternalist Department of Indian Affairs, and “removing the specific references to Indians from the [1867] constitution … to end the legal distinction between Indians and other Canadians.”
After his efforts were aborted in 1970, following a huge outcry from the indigenous establishment, Trudeauangrily retorted: “We’ll keep them in the ghetto as long as they want.”
And this is exactly where too many aboriginals have languished ever since. With the dependency-enhancing and ghettoizing ethnic-based privileges growing by leaps and bounds ever since, with the gratuitous but lucrative scapegoating of the IRS in overdrive since the announcement of the Kamloops burials, and with no rational discussion of why destructive indigenous policies are reinvented time and again, there is little hope that a proud and confident indigenous people will ever be recognized, and recognize themselves, as full and equal citizens of Canada instead of seeing themselves, and being seen by others, as a race apart and as Canada’s eternal victims.
An international operation titled Project Cobra led to one of the largest drug busts in Alberta’s history.
With law enforcement agencies from across Canada and the US collaborating, authorities were able to seize $55 million worth of cocaine and methamphetamines.
According to the Alberta Law Enforcement Response Team (ALERT), busts targeting two mansions in Ontario and Nova Scotia as well as 11 vehicles turned up 19 firearms. A total of 15 individuals are facing 80 charges.
Police officers from the RCMP, the Calgary Police Service, the Edmonton Police Service and the US Drug Enforcement Administration were involved in the operation.
Weapons seized included handguns, submachine guns, suppressors and rifles.
“We’ve heard the saying cutting the head off the snake in order to cripple a criminal network. Well, Project Cobra didn’t just cut off the head of the snake, these dedicated men and women took the whole damn snake,” said ALERT CEO March Cochlin.
“The numbers are staggering. 55 million in drugs intercepted. Nearly one metric tonne of methamphetamine that was destined for Alberta communities. The amount of harm that mountain of meth brings to our communities is very disturbing.”
According to primary investigator Tara McGill. the drugs were likely sourced from Mexican cartels.
“The criminal organization . . . operated at an extremely complex, sophisticated level,” said McGill. “A Calgary-based business was also charged with laundering the proceeds of crime.”
Other agencies involved included 300 police officers and public servants from the US Homeland Security Investigations, Canada Border Services Agency, Canada Revenue Agency, the FInancial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre and more.
“It began from intelligence-led policing. Information that there were drug traffickers involved in the importation of meth into Canada. Eventually, the investigation itself revealed that it was transnational, it was larger than anything that we had actually anticipated,” explained McGill.
Calgary residents Elias Abde, Abdul AKbar, Tianna Bull and Lina El-Chammoury are all facing charges. Others include Russel Ens, Talal and Belal Fouani, Kari-Lynn Grant, Scott Hunt, Jarrett Mckenzie, Jesse Marshall, Daniel Menzul, Sean Nesbitt, Rico King and William Whiteford.
The organization Fouani Equity Funds Ltd. is also facing charges for participating in a criminal organization.
The Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights (CCFR) is clapping back at a CBC reporter for trying to “instill fear” about law-abiding gun owners with a tweet criticizing the Alberta government’s opposition to Justin Trudeau’s gun bans.
CBC Calgary reporter and editor Tom Ross tweeted photos of four guns “included in the federal buyback program which Alberta will challenge, calling it a waste of money.”
“Unless you are actively fighting on the front line of a battlefield, I do not understand why anyone needs to have these in their home,” Ross tweeted.
Like most of the 1,500 firearm variants the Liberals banned by order-in-council in 2020, all four guns are semi-automatic, meaning one trigger pull fires one bullet. Fully-automatic firearms have been illegal since 1977.
In Canada, these guns also require that magazines be pinned to limit them to five rounds, far less than what a soldier on a “battlefield” would have in a military-grade firearm.
They also require a Restricted Possession and Acquisition License which is harder to obtain the typical non-restricted Possession and Acquisition License. RPAL-holders are subjected to daily police background checks, and the application process involves screening for mental health, family and financial issues.
“At worst, @Tommy_Slick’s deliberately attempting to instill fear in uninformed Canadian’s by creating a false narrative that he knows is statistically incorrect,” the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights wrote on Twitter.
“Tom’s JOB is to ‘report’ VERIFIABLE news to the Canadian public, not his personal bias to ‘CREATE’ news of his choosing.”
Ross’ tweets referenced an announcement from the Alberta government on Monday that it told the Alberta RCMP to ignore orders from the federal government to participate in Ottawa’s gun grab scheme.
In May 2020, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced he was banning more than 1,500 models of firearms, including AR-15s. Owners of these guns would have a two-year amnesty period to come into compliance with the prohibition, he said at the time.
The Liberals said they planned on spending up to $250 million buying back the guns.
The government failed to launch its buyback plan before the amnesty period expired, so they extended it earlier this year until October 2023.
Alberta Justice Minister Tyler Shandro said federal Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino asked the province to help confiscate 30,000 newly-restricted firearms beginning this fall. The province refused to help and further sent orders to the RCMP that the confiscation efforts were not a provincial priority and therefore an inappropriate use of police resources.
Tracey Wilson of the CCFR said the Liberal government is again trying to politicize the RCMP, as it did after the Nova Scotia mass shooting.
“Provinces continue to bear the work and cost of federal political decisions, including increased burden of CFO offices to now this, with no additional funding. It’s a war on legal gun owners and Premier’s aren’t playing. The CCFR stands ready and willing to work with the provinces to refocus this government on credible public safety measures.”
Politicians, leftist activists and legacy media journalists continually defend one of Canada’s biggest money pits — we’re talking, of course, about the CBC. Canada’s state broadcaster continuously tries to define Canadian values and identity and portray themselves as the arbiters of truth. It’s time for a reality check.
While defenders claim that the CBC is essential for Canadians, Jasmine looks into the state broadcaster’s absurd content and yearly declines in revenue and viewership.
Jasmine debunks the top arguments for keeping the CBC running on the taxpayer’s dime and explains why it’s time to defund the CBC.
Tune in to Reality Check with Jasmine Moulton on True North!
The Quebec general election is only one week away, and while the CAQ holds a firm lead in the polls, the second-place spot is still up for grabs. Conservative Party of Quebec candidate and physician Roy Eappen joined True North’s Andrew Lawton to discuss his expectations for the upcoming election, the controversial Bill 96, and why the PCQ is not only Quebec’s conservative party — but also the party of the English minority.
