On April 8, 2024 Syncrude was fined $390,000 and pleaded guilty to failing to ensure the health and safety of a worker under the Occupational Health and Safety Act. Bradley Tynski, 35, who was constructing a berm for Syncrude at the Aurora mine near Fort McKay, drowned on June 26, 2021 when an excavator he was working on slid into water at the mine.  

The UCP is carving out around 10,000 mental healthcare and addiction workers and $1.13 billion from Alberta Health Services (AHS) as part of their health care restructuring plans. That’s on top of creating a new war room-like organization to promote the “Alberta model” of abstinence-only drug treatment that’s killing more people than ever. 

*CONTENT WARNING: SEXUAL ASSAULT*

A young nurse whose story of sexual assault was politicized by the Edmonton Police and the Premier of Alberta in order to justify escalating Edmonton’s brutal encampment sweeps says he doesn't believe they were assaulted by unhoused people—and that they want the Premier to stop using his story for political reasons.

In the first of our interviews with the candidates for Alberta NDP leadership, Duncan chats with Sarah Hoffman. Then, some analysis with Jim.

The UCP can’t help themselves. Earlier this week we reported on the appointment of a UCP donor and a pipeline company executive to the board of AIMCo, despite neither of them having any pension governance experience. Then on March 13 the UCP were caught continuing their long-standing practice of handing out sole-source contracts to UCP loyalists and donors. 

On March 14, finance minister Nate Horner appointed Jason Montemurro and Joel Hunter to the board of AIMCo until 2027. One is a regular UCP donor, and the other is the CFO of TC Energy—the pipeline company that received a $1.3 billion payout from the government of Alberta for a pipeline that never got built. 

The Progress Report salutes the nearly 6000 city of Edmonton and Edmonton Public Libraries workers who are going on strike tomorrow at 11 am. Walking the line is never an easy decision, but correspondence from our readers—and now a bit of polling data—suggests the people of Edmonton are broadly with you. 

The city of Edmonton argued in court Thursday that it wants $25,000 in costs from the Coalition for Justice and Human Rights (CJHR), a non-profit group that sought to challenge the constitutionality of Edmonton’s encampment sweeps policy on behalf of Edmonton’s unhoused people because a large penalty would act as a deterrent against future lawsuits. 

In an email leaked to the Progress Report, an AHS unit manager mocks Royal Alexandra Hospital nurses for daring to think they deserve overtime pay. “If utilizing only [overtime] is how you want to make ends meet, this may be the wrong profession for the long game. May I suggest some side jobs: Investment Banking? Fund Manager? Tik Tok Influencer?” 

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.