Juno News - August 10, 2024


RCMP criticized for slow response to Alberta murder


Episode Stats

Length

11 minutes

Words per Minute

183.89886

Word Count

2,148

Sentence Count

115


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 There's killers on the loose in Alberta. The RCMP are continuing its manhunt after a young
00:00:06.420 father was killed on Tuesday. At the time, residents were told to shelter in place at their
00:00:12.160 homes. But the RCMP are now being lambasted for their response. They did not warn residents that
00:00:19.800 the killers were driving around in a stolen city truck. And now, five days later, they still have
00:00:25.700 not released description of the suspects. Let's dive into the details. I'm Rachel Parker and you're
00:00:31.600 watching the Alberta Roundup. Alberta RCMP have released a photo that is believed to be of
00:00:45.240 potential witnesses in Tuesday's fatal shooting that has led to a province-wide manhunt for two
00:00:52.120 suspects. On Tuesday, just before noon, two people were shot and wounded, one fatally, in an incident
00:00:58.020 that resulted in a manhunt for the two suspects who fled in a stolen vehicle. A Rockyview County
00:01:03.380 employee was murdered on the side of the road. He was a young father named Colin Hoff. A Fortis
00:01:08.800 employee was also shot in the arm at the scene of the crime. Description of the suspects still are not
00:01:15.400 available. On Thursday, RCMP said investigators are looking for help identifying the occupants of a car
00:01:20.640 that may have witnessed Tuesday's fatal interaction. It's a dark gray Volkswagen golf sport wagon,
00:01:27.040 potentially from between 2013 and 2015. You can see it pictured here. While Calgarians were told to
00:01:32.860 shelter in place, another controversy was erupting, that of the RCMP's slow response time. Western
00:01:38.740 Standard columnist Corey Morgan documented the RCMP's brutal response throughout the week. In a Wednesday
00:01:44.720 column, he wrote, yesterday while driving, my phone and radio station blew up simultaneously as an
00:01:50.580 emergency alert had been issued. The voice warned that two extremely dangerous armed individuals were
00:01:56.480 at large east of Calgary and that people in the area should lock their doors and windows while
00:02:01.480 sheltering in place. That was it. No description of the gender, age, size, clothing, or race of the
00:02:07.920 individuals. Just a warning to say how much danger people are in and that they should cower at home.
00:02:14.200 The situation didn't change for hours. People were expected to hide out and await word of new
00:02:20.240 developments. It sounded as if nothing was happening, but indeed it was. Details were emerging on a local
00:02:26.600 meta page of a county of Rockyview work truck being chased through people's property. They even posted
00:02:32.100 pictures of the truck and it was known, at least to the people on that group, that the violent offenders
00:02:37.400 were in that truck. Early in the evening, the RCMP reported that the scene of the crime was secure,
00:02:42.960 but that the dangerous criminals were still at large. They were confident the criminals had fled the area
00:02:48.340 and that people could again emerge from their homes. Nothing more. Corey went on, at the time of this
00:02:55.160 writing, the RCMP still hasn't let us know anything. We don't know anything of the description of the
00:03:00.800 killers, which way they went, what their motive may have been, or if there are leads. Why the hell
00:03:07.260 are they remaining silent? At the time of recording this episode on Friday afternoon, the RCMP still
00:03:12.440 had not released descriptions of the suspects. Moving into our next story here, a surge in
00:03:17.720 immigration has forced the province of Alberta to dip into its coffers to spend hundreds of millions
00:03:22.700 more on educating in the coming year. The Alberta government has approved an influx of $250 million
00:03:28.340 to be distributed through the province's school boards for the 2024 to 2025 school year. The announcement
00:03:34.660 follows Alberta's unprecedented population growth, resulting in a surge of new students. Education
00:03:40.280 Minister Dimitris Nicolaitis said the provincial government seldom announces funding outside of
00:03:45.000 the budget cycle, but the rising cost pressures caused by the population growth had to be addressed
00:03:50.280 immediately. He said, quote, I am confident that this new funding will help ensure that Alberta
00:03:55.720 students continue to receive a world-class education. Alberta Premier Daniel Smith previously told True
00:04:01.620 that Alberta's unprecedented population growth of 200,000 people last year resulted in over 22,000
00:04:08.740 new unfunded students. The $250 million in funding will be split up, with $125 million allocated toward
00:04:16.280 operational funding, and another $90 million meant for modular classrooms. Finally, some good news for
00:04:23.060 Albertans who are hoping for some relief in their pockets. Alberta Premier Daniel Smith said that an
00:04:28.260 accelerated tax cut plan is in the work for the province. Take a listen. This is from my friend
00:04:34.120 Adam Seuss at Rebel News.
00:04:35.380 There is a plan for tax cuts, but I think what you're asking is if people will see an accelerated
00:04:39.640 plan for tax cuts. And I can say yes. From what we are seeing, one of the things that we were concerned
00:04:44.800 about was making sure that any tax cut that we do is not going to put us into a deficit position.
00:04:51.320 With the uncertainty that we saw in oil and gas prices, some of the uncertainty about how other
00:04:56.580 sources of revenue would grow, with the growth in the province and the growth in revenue, we wanted to
00:05:01.600 be absolutely certain that this $1.4 billion tax cut wouldn't put us into deficit. We're getting more of
00:05:07.780 that certainty, and as my finance minister gets more confidence, we'll be able to develop an
00:05:13.840 accelerated timeline.
00:05:14.900 And Adam did a full interview with the Premier. You can head over to his X account or to the Rebel News
00:05:19.760 website to watch that full interview, which I absolutely recommend you do as Adam is an
00:05:24.900 incredible Alberta reporter. Moving into the controversy of the week, I'm going to try to
00:05:29.500 get through this one without laughing because I know that some of you guys are still living in
00:05:33.540 Calgary and that this is just probably quite painful for you at the moment. Turns out that there
00:05:39.380 are 16 more sites that need to be repaired in Calgary's major water feed main that burst earlier
00:05:46.420 this summer, and we are going to be going back into stage for water restrictions. Take a listen
00:05:52.160 to Calgary Mayor Jody Gondek.
00:05:53.660 There are 16 locations where there are stress points or weaknesses in the feeder main, and
00:06:00.660 we need to act in the short term to do those repairs. That's why we're giving people three
00:06:06.100 weeks' notice to understand that on August the 26th, we will need to commence the repair work,
00:06:12.160 and it will probably take until about September 23rd. If we don't address this now, we could have
00:06:18.320 another unexpected failure like we did in June. We do not want to take that chance right now.
00:06:23.360 Obviously, this entire situation was incompetent from start to finish. They should have taken more
00:06:29.880 time to ensure that the feeder main was in working condition before they refilled it. Now it needs to
00:06:36.040 be drained and repaired again. We're basically just moving backwards at this point. I do have the
00:06:41.160 greatest amount of sympathy for the people of Calgary. Let's just hope that next fall you all
00:06:46.560 take your anger to the voting booth and do something about it. Finally, moving into what
00:06:52.080 we're watching in the weeks to come, this is a happier story for those of you living in Calgary
00:06:56.200 and for the rest of Alberta, generally speaking. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says that the fall
00:07:00.860 update to the province's Bill of Rights will protect Albertans' personal medical choices,
00:07:05.680 including the right to refuse a vaccine. Smith's pledge came during a town hall in Bonneville
00:07:10.740 with over 300 UCP members, where she discussed strengthening residents' liberties and freedoms,
00:07:16.960 lowering taxes, protecting the province from federal overreach, and improving health care.
00:07:22.460 She confirmed the plans in a statement to True North, saying, quote,
00:07:25.660 In the fall, we will be introducing legislation to amend Alberta's Bill of Rights. Several amendments
00:07:31.260 are being considered to strengthen Albertans' individual and property rights, including an amendment
00:07:35.920 to guarantee Albertans' the right to accept or refuse a medical treatment. Before becoming Premier in 2022,
00:07:42.520 Smith pledged to amend the Alberta Human Rights Act to prohibit employers from terminating employees
00:07:47.180 based on their vaccination status. But she ultimately scrapped these plans after she was elected.
00:07:53.060 At the time, she called Albertans losing their jobs for declining to take the vaccine,
00:07:57.420 a, quote, human rights violation. However, the Public Health Act takes precedence over all laws,
00:08:02.920 except the Alberta Bill of Rights, meaning an amended Alberta Human Rights Act,
00:08:07.500 would have done little to protect medical choices in the face of public health edicts.
00:08:12.220 Finally, moving into our weekly comment roundup, last week I hosted a panel discussion with Tariq
00:08:16.980 Elnaga and Marty Belanger, better known as Marty Up North, and they said that they are feeling
00:08:23.060 a bit disillusioned with Danielle Smith's premiership and that they hope she makes changes
00:08:28.260 in the coming weeks so that they can continue to support her as Premier. I'm going to take a look
00:08:32.920 at a few of those comments from last week's episode now. User Edgar Edgerton said,
00:08:38.100 the only other option for Alberta is the NDP. That would be devastating. The problem with Alberta
00:08:43.200 is that we are stuck with Eastern Canada's liberal NDP co-conspirators. I wanted to respond to this
00:08:49.680 comment specifically because I saw many similar comments. I don't really agree with the idea that if
00:08:54.860 you are unhappy with a politician that you would otherwise support or who represents a party that
00:09:00.260 you would typically support, it means that you automatically want the opposition to win,
00:09:04.600 in this case the Alberta NDP. I think it simply means that you are holding that political leader
00:09:08.960 to a higher standard and you want them to actually push for the policies that they said they supported
00:09:14.560 when you elected them. So I think holding a politician to account and saying that you don't
00:09:18.800 feel they've done an adequate job, as the panel was saying last week, I don't think it means that
00:09:23.620 you are hoping for, you know, an NDP win. Just as when we look at the federal conservatives and say,
00:09:28.960 oh, you know, we don't like that they've done a good job on this. You know, Pierre Polyev took a
00:09:33.480 long time to come out and say that he was going to lower immigration numbers and he was criticized
00:09:37.800 that for a while. And I don't think that people criticizing him were saying, oh, you know, it's
00:09:41.380 better if we have four more years of Justin Trudeau. I think that what they were actually saying was,
00:09:46.300 Pierre, we need to lower immigration. And that criticism worked because Polyev eventually came out
00:09:51.400 and said that he's going to drastically reduce immigration numbers. And I think that's what
00:09:54.700 the criticism of Danielle Smith here is seeking to do. It's saying, listen, Danielle, we want an
00:09:58.840 Alberta provincial police force. We want lower taxes. And I think maybe they've been effective
00:10:04.220 in that. We just even today and we had a segment on the show about tax cuts coming for Albertans.
00:10:09.360 So I think it's misguided to say that to criticize a politician is to desire that their opponents
00:10:15.580 would be elected. User BB10 said, quote, no one was handed a bigger mess than Javier Millel of
00:10:22.980 Argentina, yet he has made incredible progress in just seven months. He has slashed the size of
00:10:28.040 government, is running a balanced budget, and is effectively tackling runaway inflation.
00:10:34.440 Last month saw the first month in 40 years with zero food price inflation. Some people were also
00:10:40.100 arguing that Danielle Smith hasn't had enough time to make changes. And this user is arguing that
00:10:45.320 some politicians are able to make strides within just seven months. He appears to be arguing that
00:10:49.440 that, you know, that point is not quite correct. And it's true, Javier Millel is doing amazing things
00:10:55.980 in Argentina. It's been quite amazing to watch. Sorry if I keep mispronouncing my words. I am
00:11:01.300 quite congested. I have a little bit of a lingering flu. I'm doing my best to get through today's
00:11:05.800 content. So hopefully you guys can all understand what I'm saying. Okay, and finally, user at
00:11:10.140 Blade 797 said, quote, I like this woman, but I want her to dig her heels in regarding immigration
00:11:16.240 and even harder stance on trans ideology than her current one. So, you know, those were some of the
00:11:22.200 comments that were also raised in last week's episode, which I highly recommend you go in and
00:11:27.380 give it a watch, give it a listen, and post your thoughts about it in the comment section below.
00:11:32.420 Okay, everyone, that's all we have time for today. Thank you so much for tuning in to the Alberta
00:11:36.220 Roundup. I'll be back next week with more content for you guys. Have a great weekend and God bless.