Premier Danielle Smith's Alberta Next panel received a relatively warm welcome from a crowd in Lethbridge during the seventh stop of its provincewide tour taking the public's temperature on Alberta's relationship with Ottawa. The friendly audience was interspersed with pushback from people in attendance who voiced their displeasure with the government and many of the proposals being put forward. The town halls are aimed at addressing grievances Smith says are allowing separatist sentiments to fester and the results are to inform which questions may be put to a referendum next year.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says her latest meeting with Prime Minister Mark Carney has inspired optimism and he is demonstrating a ``real shift'' from the previous Justin Trudeau-led Liberals. Speaking in Edmonton, Smith says she found more common ground with the prime minister when she met with him this week than she has in any meeting with a prime minister. She also took to social media following her face-to-face to say that although there are details to be worked out, the concerns of Albertans are ``finally being heard.'' It comes as Carney announces five major projects set

With a provincewide teachers strike looming, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says their union has a stark choice between heftier pay hikes and more teachers. Smith suggests they can have one or the other, but they can't have both. Smith made the comments today to reporters when asked about stalled contract talks between her government and the Alberta Teachers' Association, the day after the union set a strike date of Oct. 6. Alberta has offered wage hikes starting at 12 per cent over four years, with a promise to hire 3,000 teachers over three years. The union says that's not e

Premier Danielle Smith's Alberta Next panel is in Lethbridge tonight as she continues to take the public's temperature on the province's relationship with Ottawa. The panel's town halls are aimed at addressing grievances Smith says are allowing separatist sentiments to fester and the results are to inform which questions would be put to a referendum next year. The panel was recently in Medicine Hat, in Smith's home riding, where the crowd gave overwhelming approval to the panel's six proposals. Those include taking greater control of immigration by withholding social services fr

The Alberta government is set to release this afternoon its revised school library book ban. The new version would come three days after the government directed school boards to pause their work in complying with the original ministerial order. School boards initially had until the end of the month to remove books containing what the province deemed sexually explicit content, including images, illustrations and written descriptions. That led Edmonton Public Schools to compile a list of over 200 books it needed to remove, including literary classics such as Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tal

Federal investigators are looking into a train derailment in British Columbia's Kootenay region near the Alberta boundary. The Transportation Safety Board says in a statement that a team is being deployed to the site near Elko, B.C., where investigators will gather information and begin to assess what caused the derailment. A spokesman with rail operator Canadian Pacific Kansas City has confirmed the derailment at about 8 p.m. Tuesday, where multiple cars left the tracks. CPKC says the 12 cars involved were empty and no one was injured as a result of the derailment. It says its crews responded

Alberta's education minister is directing school boards to pause a government order to remove books with explicit sexual content from libraries. Demetrios Nicolaides says in an email to school divisions and officials that they should pause any development or distribution of lists of books that are to be removed. He says the pause is in effect until further notice. A draft list from Edmonton Public Schools of books to be removed from libraries was leaked online last week. It contains more than 200 titles, including Margaret Atwood's ``The Handmaid's Tale,'' which prompted the au

Edmonton police say they have charged a man with first-degree murder after a woman he knew was found with fatal gunshot wounds inside a car in the city's downtown over the weekend. Police say they responded to a call for a shooting in the 119 Street and Jasper Avenue area just before 4:30 a.m. on Saturday. A 39-year-old woman was located dead inside an SUV. Police say a Monday autopsy found the woman died from gunshot wounds. The man, 42, has also been charged with aggravated assault and breach of probation. Police say the man and woman knew one another.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith will be right at home in her political backyard tonight when she visits Medicine Hat, kicking off the back half of her provincewide consultations on the province's relationship with Ottawa. Smith, who represents the riding of Brooks-Medicine Hat in the Alberta legislature, will be joined by the 15 people she tapped to join her on the panel. The first five town halls have aimed to address grievances with the federal government that Smith says are fostering separatist sentiment. The six recommendations put forth by the Smith government for debate at