AIMCo is at it again, and the story is wild. But first, a quick update on last week’s Alberta 2024 budget news.

Our entire team was in the (virtual) lockup last week combing through the budget documents to try and make sense of what the UCP’s plans are for both this year and the rest of their term–well, no surprises there, it turns out. It’s austerity all round. 

On one lonely paragraph of Alberta’s 2024 budget, page 78, the UCP admit the cost of a recent privatization bungle. “The financial impact of transitioning all community laboratory services to Alberta Precision Laboratories is reflected in 2023-24. This includes a total cash consideration paid of $31.5 million.”

Alberta’s UCP continue to push towards private schools, K-12 charters, and turning post-secondary education into glorified job training in 2024 with an education budget that falls well behind inflation and population growth.

Here’s a quick snapshot of what you need to know about Alberta’s budget in 2024. 

Adjusted for inflation, per-capita health care funding in Alberta will significantly erode in 2024, according to budget documents released on Thursday February 29.

The person who wins the race for Alberta NDP leader has one job—defeat the UCP in the next election. Picking the person to do that job will be one the most politically significant moments of the year, and the Progress Report plans to cover it like no other news outlet. 

On Feb. 15, Alberta premier Danielle Smith boasted of her government’s mass displacement of unhoused encampment residents in Edmonton to a formal black-tie dinner at Calgary’s Ranchmen’s Club, making extreme and unsubstantiated allegations about how the camps operated. 

The business owners and conservative politicians arguing for Edmonton’s draconian public spaces bylaw last week had two silent partners—the UCP and the Edmonton Police Service. And that’s why what happened with this bylaw matters outside of Edmonton city limits. 

The initial results on the scorched earth campaign that the Edmonton Police Service and the United Conservative Party have initiated on encampments in Edmonton are in—179 encampments swept in 23 days. That’s nearly 8 encampments swept a day.

God willing, mass public outcry like the rallies and school walkouts we’ve seen over the past several days are going to kill Danielle Smith’s anti-trans policy push before it can become law in November.

But whatever happens, it’s time to call an end to something else: Danielle Smith’s ‘maverick libertarian’ brand.