Finance Minister Nate Horner says if Alberta abandons the Canada Pension Plan to run its own stand-alone fund, it will not adopt Quebec's model, which mandates optimizing returns while also investing in the province.Horner's comments come three weeks after Premier Danielle Smith said her government wants to hear from Albertans first before it makes decisions such as whether to follow the Quebec model.Horner says legislation will be introduced this fall to effectively cancel out using the Quebec model and spell out that any pension assets would only be used for a pension plan.He says when it co

The fuse is lit for fireworks in Ottawa next week with a Liberal member of Parliament accusing Alberta's premier of making false claims.Calgary MP George Chahal says Danielle Smith is making "false," "baseless" and "ludicrous" statements about the federal Liberal government's plans to bring Canada's electricity grid to net-zero.He says Smith is playing on people's fears for purely partisan reasons and calls on her to release her United Conservative Party government's report on electricity.Chahal says that since the UCP took power in Alberta, electricity rates have increased fivefold.Smith has

A bear expert who's a family friend of one of two people killed by a grizzly bear in Banff National Park says the couple was experienced in the outdoors and could have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.Kim Titchener, who has a company called Bear Safety and More, says both the couple and their dog died in the backcountry on the weekend.Parks Canada has said in a statement that its dispatchers received an alert around 8 p.m. Friday from an inReach GPS device about a bear attack west of Ya Ha Tinda Ranch, which is about 200 kilometres northwest of Calgary.The federal agency immediately s

A young man convicted in the hit-and-run death of a Calgary police officer has been sentenced to 12 years in prison.Sgt. Andrew Harnett died after he was dragged by an SUV and fell into the path of an oncoming car on Dec. 31, 2020.The driver of the SUV was days away from turning 18 and was charged as a youth with first-degree murder.A judge convicted him of manslaughter and ordered that he receive an adult sentence.The driver testified during his trial that he was scared when police approached the SUV during a traffic stop, and he saw Harnett put a hand on his gun.Court heard the SUV took off

The Alberta government released a long-awaited report Thursday on the possibility of establishing an Alberta-only pension plan on Thursday. The government said it will introduce legislation to exit the Canada Pension Plan this fall, but will require public approval through a referendum before moving forward on the province's pension plan. "This is your pension, your choice," smith said. she said it would offer the same retirement benefit as the Canada Pension Plan at a lower contribution. The report, calculates employees and employers in Alberta would save $5-billion in the first year alone

The Alberta government is to release its long-promised report on whether the province should quit the Canada Pension Plan and pursue its own provincial program. Premier Danielle Smith, along with Finance Minister Nate Horner and panel chair Jim Dinning, are to release the report at a news conference in Calgary on Thursday. Smith has said regardless of the report's conclusions, Albertans would have the final say on whether to abandon CPP in a referendum. The Opposition NDP has said Smith is playing politics by seeking another wedge issue with the federal government. The NDP has also said the

Alberta's health minister gave a COVID-19 and respiratory virus update on Monday. According to Health Minister Adriana LaGrange, From Aug. 28 to Sept. 8, the province counted 559 Covid-19 cases, 92 hospitalizations and three ICU admissions, and five deaths. Meanwhile, 5 cases of respiratory virus and 28 cases of influenza reported. The new dashboard, which will include COVID-19, RSV and influenza reporting, will be available "in the coming weeks," LaGrange said. The minister said that as we say goodbye to summer and head into fall, parents need to take extra care of their children. The heal

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says her government will immediately provide families 2-thousand dollars for each child affected by an E. coli outbreak related to several Calgary daycares. Smith cried at a news conference this morning and said the province will also look into new regulations for shared kitchens and food safety. The announcement comes a day after parents with children in the daycares sent an open letter asking Smith to do more to deal with the situation. There have been 337 lab-confirmed cases, with 12 children still in hospital.

Alberta is spending an extra $16 million to fix up aging government-owned affordable housing units to make them inhabitable once again. Social Services Minister Jason Nixon says the money is on top of the $94 million already allocated in this year's budget. The money will be used to replace windows and repair roofs along with other rehabilitation projects. Nixon says the government is working with housing providers to identify which units should get priority. He says over the next eight years, the government aims to invest $9 billion to build 25,000 new affordable homes. But he