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(Note from Steve: Danielle Smith doesn’t have children or grandchildren, and she obviously doesn’t care about ours)

Alberta is taking the federal government to court, saying Ottawa has failed to follow through on what Premier Danielle Smith calls necessary changes to a law governing resource development.

The federal Impact Assessment Act, enacted in 2019, determines whether certain major resource projects should be approved based on the environmental, economic or social impact each project might have.

Smith told reporters that the government failed to make the amendments she requested, and the amendments approved earlier this year didn’t go far enough to bring the legislation in line with the constitutional division of powers between levels of government.

“Their amendments contain some clever word games, but still ultimately gave the federal government control over projects that fall under Alberta’s exclusive jurisdiction,” she said.

Alberta taking federal government to court over revised impact assessment law | Read more |
#abpoli

Besides being an admin at ReBoot Alberta, I’m also the admin of two FB Groups I started, #cdnpoli, and another one dedicated to keeping the Bay of Fundy clean.

Just recently I joined BlueSky as well. Plus, the website in the monitor in the above image is a new web consulting business I’m starting, to help people find a good hosting company, and offer advice on building their websites. You can find the website at SteveMacLellan.net.

I use this space for discussing politics, but I’ve worked as an electrician, and electronic technician, have taken IT courses and worked as a web developer for 20+ years, so I think I’m qualified enough to recommend good companies to host with and offer advice on building websites.

Thanks for hanging with me!

Planning to Retire at 65? Why Many Canadians Are Leaving the Workforce Earlier Than Expected | Read more |
#cdnpoli

People are fed up with Loblaw stores’ rising prices. Would a boycott accomplish anything?

It may very well have started with a tweet about a $37 package of chicken breasts. Or it could have been the $10 birch sticks.

The $9 butter didn’t help, or $30 for Feta cheese — allegedly twice the price a competitor was charging for the same product.

Whatever may have been the social media tipping point, a lot of people are angry about high prices in grocery stores, Loblaw brands in particular. Throw in shrinkflation, skimpflation and greedflation, and now a growing group of people online is calling for a boycott.

“I think a lot of people have very little faith in our political leaders to actually hold corporations accountable for the positions they are putting Canadians in,” said Emily Johnson, a mental health and addictions worker in Milton, Ont., who runs a quickly growing Reddit community called “Loblaws is out of control.”

“People feel voting with their dollar is the best way of showing companies that they’ve had enough,” Johnson told CBC News.

In a post last month, she and the other moderators of the subreddit encouraged its 45,000 members to start boycotting Loblaw and Loblaw-owned stores, such as Superstore and No Frills, in May. The movement has gained traction on other social media platforms like X, formerly Twitter, and TikTok.

“Canadians are facing a cost-of-living crisis, and grocers are a major contributor to this. Vulnerable populations such as seniors, persons with disabilities, and those on fixed incomes are left further behind,” the post reads: https://www.reddit.com/r/loblawsisoutofcontrol/comments/1bff9rm/boycott/

For those looking to participate in the sub boycott:

We are boycotting Loblaw and Loblaw owned stores for the entire month of May 2024 (obviously you can boycott past this point in time)

*  We are asking for a reduction in prices by 15%

* We are asking Loblaw remove "member only pricing" where customers are forced to sign up for a PC optimum card in order to receive sale prices

* If shopping is taking place at Loblaw stores, we are focusing on purchasing loss leaders

Loblaw is a massive company, extending into groceries — where it has nearly a third of national sales — as well as pharmacy, health and beauty, apparel, general merchandise, financial services and wireless mobile products and services.

In terms of grocery stores, there’s Loblaws, Atlantic Superstore, Dominion, Maxi, No Frills, Provigo Le Marché, Valu-Mart, Real Canadian Superstore, Wholesale Club, Your Independent Grocer, T&T and Zehrs.

|Read more https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/loblaws-boycott-canada-1.7164506| cbc.ca/news/business/loblaws-b…

#cdnpoli #boycott #Loblaws #BoycottLoblaws #PriceGouging

Now that bird flu is spreading among cows, scientists worry where H5N1 will jump next

On March 25, American officials published an urgent announcement: Dairy cows in Texas, Kansas, and New Mexico were falling sick.

The cows had low appetites, and produced less milk than normal. Some farms also discovered wild bird carcasses on their grounds. Tests on a cow throat swab and raw milk samples all confirmed an unusual finding: for the first time, cattle were catching a dangerous form of bird flu.

Within days, highly pathogenic avian flu — a type of influenza A known as H5N1 — was identified in at least a dozen herds across six states, from Texas in the south, up to Michigan and Idaho on the Canadian border.

Louise Moncla, an avian influenza researcher and assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania, was stunned.

“The overwhelming feeling that all of us have is that this is mostly just incredibly strange,” she said. “To our knowledge, I’ve never seen a cow be infected with any influenza A viruses.”

But the curveball wasn’t entirely unexpected. And it may be a harbinger of more species-jumps to come, including the rising possibility of H5N1 appearing in pigs — which could offer it a new route to better adapt to infect humans, inching the world closer to a bird flu pandemic.

Sporadic human cases — and deaths — are also occurring around the world. The second-ever human infection in the U.S. was reported just days ago in Texas, in an individual with mild symptoms who’d had direct exposure to cattle. |Read more https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/avian-flu-h5n1-cow-outbreaks-1.7162626| cbc.ca/news/health/avian-flu-h…

#cdnpoli #health #environment #disease #virus #H1N1 #influenza A #human danger #infectious diseases