The Alberta Roundup with Isaac Lamoureux - More human caused fires in Alberta

00:00:00.000 It's not even summer and already headlines about wildfires are dominating our timelines.

00:00:05.080 We all remember last year. The wildfire smoke was so thick that it rolled across Canada

00:00:09.820 and into the US for much of the summer. Since I moved to Alberta, I've been hearing the same

00:00:14.680 thing from all of you. It wasn't like this when I was a kid. Now we all know that the so-called

00:00:19.160 experts want to blame us for drinking out of plastic straws or something, but I think there's

00:00:23.200 more than meets the eye here. This week, fire officials announced that of 33 fires ongoing

00:00:27.920 in the Calgary Forest area, 26 of them were man-made and were left unattended. And while we all know

00:00:34.060 that the quality of the human race is declining along with the departure from religion and the 0.96

00:00:37.640 family, I think it's time we all start asking ourselves an important question. Is it human

00:00:42.700 idiocy or maliciousness that's at play here? I'm Rachel Emanuel and this is the Alberta Roundup.

00:00:57.920 Okay, everyone, taking a look at our first story here, wildfire officials keeping an eye on fires

00:01:03.700 say there's been an alarming number of fires over the long weekend, with most of them occurring in

00:01:08.460 the Calgary Forest area. In an update on Thursday, officials said that 33 new fires were recorded in

00:01:13.620 Alberta between Friday and Monday. Christy Tucker, an information unit officer with Alberta Wildfire,

00:01:19.060 said 26 of those were human-caused and all but one were in the Calgary Forest area. Officials said

00:01:24.960 all of the fires were quickly extinguished by patrols. Tucker said, quote, obviously Calgary and

00:01:29.740 around Calgary is a popular place for people to go on the long weekend, and there are a number of

00:01:34.780 popular random camping sites. Our staff know those areas well, and that's part of their long weekend

00:01:40.060 routine. There were more than 1,700 interactions with Alberta in the Calgary Forest area. Forest and

00:01:45.720 Parks Ministry Todd Lowen said all of the fires were campfires that were left unattended, but posed a

00:01:51.700 quote, huge risk to become larger wildfires if they were ignored. Here's what else he had to say.

00:01:57.080 Any of these starts are alarming, especially the ones that are human-caused and especially the ones

00:02:01.660 that are just out of, you know, carelessness. I mean, that's alarming. The cost of wildfires is

00:02:08.400 extreme, and I think if people realize how much just leaving a campfire unattended, the cost to

00:02:16.600 taxpayers, cost to people's disruption, people's lives, I think that's important to get across to

00:02:23.080 the people of Alberta. Moving into our next story here, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is moving ahead

00:02:27.780 with her promise to break up Alberta Health Services into four different departments. Of course,

00:02:32.040 that's primary care, acute care, continuing care, and mental health and addictions.

00:02:36.120 This week on the radio show, Your Province, Your Premier, Danielle Smith was asked if there's a

00:02:40.220 concern that the separate agencies will run the risk of becoming too independent. Here's what she had to

00:02:44.840 say about it. Well, I think that we'll be able to manage that issue better than having everything

00:02:49.800 under one umbrella because I'll tell you what's happened is that AHS has pretty well conducted

00:02:55.320 itself in a way that everything leads to an emergency room. So if you don't have a doctor,

00:02:59.520 you go to an emergency room. If you don't have, if you fall and hurt yourself and then need to go

00:03:04.400 into long-term care, oftentimes you're waiting in an acute care bed in a hospital. Mental health goes

00:03:09.340 to an emergency room. Addiction goes to an emergency room. Homelessness goes to an emergency room.

00:03:12.840 People who have low income and don't have a place to go are in an emergency room.

00:03:17.340 And so that's not what hospitals are for. We want hospitals to be hospitals. And the way to do that

00:03:23.120 is to have a different set of eyes and a different set of decision makers who can provide this sort of

00:03:27.880 specialized care that is needed for each of those types of service needs.

00:03:32.700 Moving into our next story here, people are living longer, but with more complex healthcare needs.

00:03:37.600 So more funding is being put towards seniors' care ahead of an expected surge in demand.

00:03:41.980 The federal government and the province of Alberta have signed a $627 million funding agreement.

00:03:47.940 They say, well, it better help seniors age with dignity. Edmonton MP and federal employment

00:03:52.140 minister, Randy Boissoneau said, quote, we owe seniors the society that we have right now.

00:03:57.180 After a lifetime of work, giving back and caring about others in their communities,

00:04:00.880 the least seniors deserve is the ability to age with dignity and not to worry about what's next.

00:04:05.320 The bilateral aging with dignity agreement will see $627 million spent over the next five years

00:04:11.320 on what the province said will support home care and continuing care home initiatives.

00:04:15.980 Right now, one in seven Albertans are age 65 or older. By 2046, the province estimates that number

00:04:21.300 will grow to one in five, with Albertans over 65 making up more than 1.2 million of the total

00:04:26.440 population. Here's what health minister Adriana LaGrange had to say about it at a news conference

00:04:30.420 this week. These are dollars that are going to go towards enhancing workforce, making sure that we

00:04:36.600 have safety and safety measures in place, security measures in place, those type of things.

00:04:42.280 Listen, I generally don't like to see large funding announcements and I think the country should run

00:04:46.520 much differently than it does. But if we are going to be giving money towards something, I think this

00:04:50.580 is one of the better types of announcements that we can make, especially when we have things like

00:04:54.220 assisted suicide. And we know a lot of elderly people, especially those with health concerns,

00:04:58.560 are opting for that because it's so difficult for them to access care in this country.

00:05:02.340 And so they often feel that it's easier to die than continuing to be on a waiting list or to

00:05:06.860 continue to suffer. So this is really the type of announcement that I think we need to see to

00:05:10.540 bolster and support life. So, you know, like I said, I don't generally support large funding

00:05:14.680 announcements from the government, but if we are going to be spending taxpayer dollars, this is the

00:05:18.120 type of thing we should be spending it on. Moving into our next story and the controversy of the week.

00:05:22.740 Group sex parties can continue to be hosted in a Calgary home, but the organizer is not allowed to use

00:05:28.240 club branding for the events, a Calgary judge has ruled. Matthew Mills began hosting ethical

00:05:33.680 non-monogamy parties at his house in the Northwest community of Silver Springs in Calgary in 2010

00:05:39.520 under the name Club Monage. The bi-weekly sores attracted 20 to 50 people on a given night

00:05:45.440 and were advertised online. Club memberships were purchased and tickets to the event were sold

00:05:50.160 for $30 to cover the associated hospitality costs. But in 2015, neighbors complained to police,

00:05:55.700 which ultimately led to Mills being served with a stop order in 2019 by the planning and development

00:06:00.740 department. The city found that Club Monage was a social organization operating on Mills property

00:06:05.780 without development authority approval in breach of municipal land use bylaw. The land use bylaw

00:06:11.760 prohibits social organizations from setting up shop in residential homes. Believing he was the target of

00:06:17.160 moralistic and disproportionate enforcement, Mills challenged the constitutionality of the bylaw.

00:06:21.940 Mills lawyer Brendan Miller argued his client's rights to freedom of conscience, peaceful assembly,

00:06:27.540 and association were violated by the city's order. The court of Kings Bend's justice Nick Delvin

00:06:32.500 issued a 29-page ruling last week saying, quote, essentially Mills asserts that land use planning

00:06:38.140 has no place in the bedrooms of the nation. Delvin went on to say that Calgarians are free to use

00:06:42.940 their homes for, quote, the private hostings of social gatherings, including when these involve

00:06:47.720 gatherings of individuals who share common sexual philosophies, interests, and activities.

00:06:52.760 Personal sexual expression, in all its many splendored forms, is a fundamental aspect of human life,

00:06:58.240 experience, and fulfillment. Well, I suspect a host of homes will be going up for sale in Silver

00:07:02.540 Springs following this ruling, but anyone would dare to live there now. Moving into what we're watching

00:07:06.660 in the weeks to come, Calgarians are leaving the country's most expensive cities for more affordable

00:07:11.520 homes in cheaper regions, according to data released by Statistics Canada this week. Vancouver saw its highest

00:07:16.940 net loss to interprovincial immigration over two decades, losing almost 5,000 people after gaining

00:07:22.440 11,000 the prior year. And of course, this data won't come as a surprise to most of you. We've covered

00:07:27.460 this on the show a lot, but Alberta gained the most from interprovincial immigration between July 1st,

00:07:32.760 2022 and July 1st, 2023. All four of Alberta's census metropolitan areas saw gains compared to 2005 and 2006.

00:07:40.880 Calgary saw an increase of over 26,000 people, Edmonton over 16,000 people, Lethbridge over 1,600 people,

00:07:49.160 and Red Deer over 1,200 people. On the flip side, Ontario lost people in all of its metropolitan

00:07:54.640 areas. In 2022, over 22,900 Ontarians left the province for Alberta, followed by more than 10,400

00:08:01.900 Ontarians moving to Nova Scotia. I would fall in the category of people who left Ontario for Alberta in

00:08:07.300 that year in search of more opportunities and a lower cost of living. That being said, because so

00:08:12.420 many people are moving here, I don't know if we're actually seeing that lower cost of living. I saw

00:08:15.760 that story. And then I also saw this story of a report from the Alberta Federation of Labor saying

00:08:20.100 the Alberta advantage is slipping away due to declining living standards and wages. The 54-page

00:08:25.800 report by economist Jim Stanford suggests that Alberta has the slowest wage growth among all provinces,

00:08:31.400 despite equally high inflation, which caused an unprecedented downward pressure on living standards.

00:08:35.820 According to the report, annual wages increase for hourly employees from 2018 to 2023

00:08:40.260 averaged at just 2% per year. This is slower than the national average of 3.4%. The report added that

00:08:47.300 Alberta no longer has the highest hourly wage and has been surpassed by BC, which is a stark contrast

00:08:52.780 to 2013, when Alberta's hourly wage was 17% higher than the national average. I can't help but wonder how

00:08:58.800 much of this has been caused by so many people moving here from the rest of Canada, and also just so 0.94

00:09:02.880 many people moving here from outside of Canada. But there's so many people looking for work, there's so

00:09:06.820 many more employees, that's naturally going to suppress the value of wages. Okay, guys, finally, moving into

00:09:12.600 our weekly comment roundup, user SunkissedGirl said, quote, all by design, brought to you by the WEF,

00:09:17.780 destroying one city at a time. Of course, that was in response to my monologue last week about how Calgary

00:09:22.900 City Council's decision to allow for citywide rezoning so that you might have 12 people living next to you

00:09:28.540 in what was once a modest bungalow is destroying the middle class, which of course it is, you will 0.96

00:09:32.920 own nothing and be happy. Most of you agreed with that. User Scott Jett said, quote, this is Trudeau's

00:09:37.880 way of getting back at Alberta. And finally, Richard Bakudo said, quote, 100% right, Rachel,

00:09:43.460 pause immigration for three to five years. Yes, I suggested that maybe the solution to some of 1.00

00:09:47.720 these issues would be to pause immigration for three to five years. Honestly, seven to 10 might even be a

00:09:51.940 better number. Basically, pause immigration in all but extreme circumstances while we get caught up on our

00:09:56.720 infrastructure. Let me know what you guys think in the comment below. Do you think we need to pause

00:10:00.760 immigration? And if so, for how many years? Okay, everyone, that's all we have time for today.

00:10:05.360 Thank you so much for tuning in. As always, please subscribe to True North and like this video.

00:10:09.360 I will see you guys next week. Have a great weekend and God bless.

The Alberta Roundup with Isaac Lamoureux - May 25, 2024

More human caused fires in Alberta

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