This week from AB: January 26, 2024

Alberta, Canada, and the threat from down south.

Alberta news

Coal development is back on the eastern slopes

• When the UCP repealed legislation in 2020 to let an Australian mining company, and others, pollute with impunity, but then reinstated it after conservative voters got upset, the Australians, and other pollutant hopefuls sued the Alberta government for billions. Apparently, the UCP thought they might lose that case, and on Monday, they gave the mining corps the go-ahead. If I was in Clearwater County, Drayton Valley, or the City of Edmonton, SK and MB, I’d be asking them to start testing for known pollutants from mining in the drinking water sooner rather than later.

UCP’s $2 million anti-science task force recommends future pandemic responses exclude science

• I mean, Danielle Smith and the rest of the “science isn’t moving fast enough on this novel virus” crowd got this stuff for free but why not use tax dollars to pay $2 million for them to argue a defence of it. Some highlights:

  • ban Covid-19 vaccines unless more information is discovered about the risks… other than 3,000,000,000 people around the world who didn’t experience adverse effects, obviously. Oh, side story about a guy who got 217 Covid-19 vaccinations.

  • allow medical professionals to prescribe whatever they want without having to follow medical best practices or science, and let them do it without oversight… uhhhh, opioid epidemic, anyone?

  • more personal testing and self-declaration of illness over public health data collection… as it has worked so well for the whole self-declaration of adverse effects thing, omg.

  • ensure media outlets disclose financial incentives from pharmaceutical or other industries when reporting on pandemics… No problem; please also include people who pretend to have a medical background online, and require the aforementioned medical professionals hawking popular social media remedies to disclose that they’re the 0.01 out of 10 physicians recommending it.

• Note: my snark appears after “…” and I am neither a medical professional, nor offering medical advice.