If you’re not a monthly patron to the Progress Report yet, we get it. Finances are tight, one red pepper is worth approximately $17 dollars and yet Galen Weston is still just walking through the streets mostly unmolested. 

But the value of investing in quality, independent, investigative journalism is in the stories we tell that other outlets won’t. So we present to you our finest 10 scoops of 2024.

But first, we would really appreciate your help so we can continue doing independent investigative journalism in 2025. 

You can help us by becoming a monthly patron. Click here, put in your credit card and anywhere from $15 to $50 a month and you will help keep our operation running. 

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Happy holidays from Jim, Jeremy and myself. We hope you have a much better 2025 than your 2024. 

Progress Report’s 10 Biggest Scoops of 2024

1. AHS pressured health-care workers to transfer mentally ill patients’ prescriptions to Shoppers Drug Mart - The UCP are always finding terrible new ways to privatize our health-care system.
2. Edmonton has spent $225k fencing off former encampment sites in the first nine months of 2024 - The province and the city would rather spend money fencing off public space from houseless people than giving them a warm place to stay.
3. Edmonton police chief says each new immigrant creates “more risk,” calls for immigration restrictions in podcast interview - This story is even more relevant as Dale McFee is set to take charge of Alberta’s public service. 
4. AIMCo has a “shadowy” holding company it’s using to mitigate losses in oil and gas investments - Another scoop in our long line of reporting on AIMCo malfeasance. AIMCo’s investment in a now-bankrupt oil and gas junior had the fund manager scrambling to mitigate its losses. 
5. Ex-EPS cop who kicked defenseless man in head on video, kicked another defenseless man in the head a year prior - Police accountability journalism that no one else does. 
6. Premier Smith said gangs were terrorizing the city from encampments but the EPS Guns and Gangs Unit couldn’t find any - While the EPS have done their very best to stop me from reporting on them, that doesn’t mean they were effective.
7. Losing the will to enforce: Death of Syncrude worker reveals an OHS regime that’s getting worse under the UCP - This deep dive into OHS convictions when employers killed their workers revealed something deeply wrong with our province’s OHS system. 
8. Calgary business elite applaud Danielle Smith as she brags about encampment sweeps and tells lurid, unsubstantiated stories of sexual assault and arson and A case study in misinformation: How the sexual assault of a “young nurse” was used by the police and premier to justify encampment sweeps - These two stories are connected and show the rot at the heart of Danielle Smith’s UCP and her alliance with the EPS. A little birdie gave us a recording of Danielle Smith at a swanky private club in Calgary bragging about encampment sweeps and telling lurid stories. Then the subject of one of Smith’s lurid stories reached out to us to set the record straight. 
9. AHS manager tells healthcare workers to become Tik Tok influencers to supplement income due to policy limiting overtime - A classic.It’s worth emphasizing that TikTok’s Creator Rewards Program, which pays influencers, isn’t available in Canada.
10. Forced-birth activists make fools of CTV Calgary in polling debacle - Here’s a little media criticism story that might have flew under the radar a bit. But CTV Calgary made a fool of themselves reporting on a dodgy poll by far-right anti-choice activists. We were the only outlet to actually report on CTV’s journalistic misconduct. 

And we’ve got other scoops that didn’t make it to the list. We were the first to report on Naheed Nenshi’s interest in running for leadership of the ANDP and our ongoing series on private, for-profit agency nursing in Alberta is work we’re really proud of. 

Again, if you like what we do, support us! Become a monthly donor or send a one-time email money transfer to [email protected] today!