Monday, July 6: Elections Alberta announces it will begin verifying the signatures collected for “A Referendum Relating to Alberta Independence.” The separatists’ petition was initially quashed by the Court of King’s Bench, but a subsequent Court of Appeal partial stay decision means counting can begin.
Read more: Is a Referendum a Good Way to Make a Decision?
July 6: The province announces that, through the use of AI tools from companies such as Anthropic and Google, it has reviewed 466 million lines of government code. It will use AI “to replace 185 aging systems with 16 modern applications” in order to “support and protect critical government services, from social programs and registries to wildfire response and public safety.”
Read more: AI Fever Dream
Wednesday, July 8: Meta announces a plan to build a $13-billion data centre in Alberta, its first in Canada. The project is expected to create 300 permanent jobs and 3,000 temporary construction jobs. The province claims the project can be built “without compromising the reliability and stability of the [electricity] grid.”
Read more: Fighting back!
Thursday, July 9: The Alberta Energy Regulator fines Entrada Resources Inc. nearly $438,000 for an oil leak in Clearwater County that is estimated to have lasted over a year, resulting in significant soil contamination. The leak was discovered by a rancher.
Read more: Dirty Cleanup Scheme
July 9: Elections Alberta says it has become aware of a “spoof” List of Electors, populated by fake voter information, that it believes was designed to mislead Albertans by mimicking the agency’s real URL. Chief Electoral Officer Gordon McClure says his office lacks the authority to investigate but has contacted “appropriate enforcement agencies.”
Read more: Shakedown Federalism
July 9: The provincial government releases new population projections to the year 2051. Alberta is expected to grow from five million people today to seven million then, with most of the growth (76 per cent) coming from other countries. Alberta’s current average age of 39.2 will climb to 43.4, though Alberta will continue to be one of Canada’s youngest provinces.
Read more: False Advertising?
Friday, July 10: The province has launched a new grizzly count, its first in eight years. The data will be presented to the province’s Endangered Species Conservation Committee. Sport hunting of grizzlies was banned in Alberta in 2006. Since 2024 four Alberta grizzlies have been killed by hunters through a ‘problem wildlife’ program introduced by the UCP government.
Read more: Problem Grizzly or Problem Politics?
The Week in Alberta is updated weekdays by 4:30pm MT.
