Premier Danielle Smith's Alberta Next panel is in Grande Prairie tonight to brainstorm potential referendum questions aimed at wrenching more political control from Ottawa. The panel has been greeted by supportive crowds throughout its summer town hall tour around the province. It has often been cheered on in its proposals, including withdrawing from the Canada Pension Plan and withholding social services from some immigrants. But some have called the tour cynical wedge politics, saying it employs questionable survey methods to craft a predetermined anti-Ottawa outcome. And the pa

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says her government is adding proof of citizenship markers to driver's licences and other forms of identification to streamline services and prevent election fraud. She says this will make it easier for students and the disabled to get funding given they have to prove their citizenship to do so. She says the goal is also to protect democracy to make sure that only citizens vote. Smith says non-citizens like permanent residents who can get a driver's licences will not have any notation on their IDs. Alberta Health Care numbers will also be added to driver'

Former Alberta premier Jason Kenney is painting a bleak picture of what will happen if Albertans are forced to vote on a referendum on separation, calling it a deeply divisive, non-violent version of a civil war. Kenney, Alberta's premier from 2019 to 2022, says a small minority of angry people should not be able to push a separatist agenda that impacts everyone in the province. He says it's deeply divisive and would divide families, friends and communities if it goes forward. Premier Danielle Smith's United Conservative government is officially lowering the required threshold for

Premier Danielle Smith's Alberta Next panel is in Airdrie tonight, as she marches through a final stretch of town halls surveying the public on the province's relationship with the federal government. It's the eighth of 10 in-person town halls scheduled for the panel, which has been travelling across Alberta since mid-July to address grievances Smith says are fostering separatist sentiment. The event in the Calgary bedroom community comes hot on the heels of a town hall in Lethbridge, where Smith met a mostly friendly crowd that cheered mentions of separation and widely supported th

A 14-year-old boy is facing weapons charges after police were called to a high school near Edmonton for a report of a student with a gun. RCMP say a teacher called 911 on Thursday afternoon, after a student was seen with a gun in a classroom at a high school in Sherwood Park, a suburb community east of Edmonton. They say a suspect was taken into custody and Mounties recovered what they think is an imitation gun. No injuries were reported. Police say the boy, who can't be identified under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, has been charged with assault with a weapon, possession of a

Alberta RCMP have recovered the bodies of two boaters who disappeared last month after a canoe capsized on a lake in the Rocky Mountains. Mounties have identified them as a 33-year-old woman from Banff, Alta., and a 34-year-old man from Canmore, Alta. Four people were in the canoe when it overturned on Upper Kananaskis Lake, an area tucked behind several mountain tops near the Alberta-B.C. boundary. RCMP have said bystanders in boats and on paddleboards pulled a 30-year-old man and a 34-year-old woman from the water but the two others were unaccounted for. It was the second ti

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