EDMONTON — As the downtown landscape changes, Edmonton’s City Centre Mall is adapting to new consumer trends and could be getting a facelift.

Renderings of the potential redevelopment appeared online. When contacted by CTV News Edmonton, a representative from City Centre said the renderings were accidentally released online early and have not been finalized.

Puneeta McBryan, with the Edmonton Downtown Business Association, is excited about the prospective renovations.

“It’s a really critical time,” McBryan said. “It’s City Centre, but also a bunch of other businesses are rethinking how they’re oriented, how they use their platform, and also how to attract tenants.”

The mall lost its anchor tenant Hudson’s Bay last fall.

McBryan added that the experience consumers are looking for when shopping today has completely changed and now malls and shopping centres are trying to adapt.

“The street front and sidewalk experience is huge right now,” she said. “People don’t want to be in enclosed spaces and in mall hallways anymore. They want to feel apart of the action and feel like we are reclaiming public space in a new way.

“We’ve come to realize that we really appreciate that community hub, energetic feeling,” McBryan said.

While many have been complaining about the construction phase downtown is experiencing, McBryan said the payoff will be worth it. Alongside City Centre’s proposed project there is Valley Line LRT construction, Ice District development, and Jasper Avenue revitalization.

“You can expect to see some more creative and innovative uses (of downtown space),” McBryan shared. “You can definitely a much better pedestrian experience across downtown.”

Coun. Scott McKeen says a new look is finally taking shape for Edmonton’s downtown and the facelift for City Centre could help draw further interest into the area.

“We ignored downtown for decades,” McKeen said. “It’s critical for the new owners to open it up.

“Experiential shopping is the new term,” he added. “If you want to sell stuff, you need to give people a reason to come. You can’t just offer them the same stuff they can buy online.”

On top of the shift in consumers’ expectations, McKeen believes downtown is moving towards becoming more of a residential space as more condos and apartment complexes rise up.

“It’s getting better every year,” the city councillor said. “I think if you squint your eyes and look five to 10 years down the road, I think we’re going to have a fantastic downtown.”

EDMONTON — The Edmonton Public Schools Board will consider renaming one of its schools and creating a new committee to review the existing inventory of names at its next meeting this Tuesday.

Two motions are slated to be presented to the board overseeing the second largest school division in Alberta regarding the naming of schools.

The first will be to request a change to the name of Prince Charles School in the north side of Edmonton. The K-6 school offers full-day kindergarten and the Awasis language and culture program, which serves the needs of urban Indigenous students.

“Many staff, family, and community members have been writing the Board to request a change to the name of Prince Charles School to better reflect the students and teaching happening in the school,” Trustee Shelagh Dunn said in the recommendation report for the motion.

The majority of students attending Prince Charles are First Nations, Metis, or Inuit and Dunn said the current name does not properly reflect the culture and history of Indigenous students.

“The name of the school carries with it the history of colonization, and the history of colonization on this land has harmed First Nations, Metis and Inuit people through policies such as residential school,” Dunn added.

“Community conversations on school names in Edmonton Public Schools have highlighted the importance and power held by a name and the need for thoughtful, inclusive, and representative school names.”

The school was named after the Prince of Wales in 1953 who is slated to be the next in line for the throne as the son of Queen Elizabeth II.

Should the motion pass, the district would commit to consult students, families, and staff of Prince Charles School, as well as community Elders and Knowledge Keepers to gather feedback.

The second motion the board is to consider includes creating a committee to review all Edmonton public school names and inform a future renaming policy for the district.

In 2017, the board passed a motion to research and create a renaming policy. The board at the time ultimately did not pursue the project.

Trisha Estabrooks, board chair, proposed the motion and said in the recommendation report that while the district successfully renamed two schools in September last year, a coordinated approach to renaming schools should be created.

“The renaming of schools is an important part of becoming a more anti-racist and equitable school division,” Estabrooks said. “Students must be able to see themselves reflected in the namesakes of our schools.”

If the motion passes, a special committee consisting of students, staff, parents, and community members would be struck to create a policy draft on renaming schools and review all existing names. Two trustees and other individuals involved in anti-racist work would also sit on the board.

“Naming a school after someone is the highest honour the Board of Trustees can bestow upon an individual,” Estabrooks added. “Let’s ensure that the honour is still appropriate so that our students can walk through the doors of our schools feeling inspired, proud to be part of their school communities and feel a sense of belonging.”

EDMONTON — Some doctors are disappointed with Alberta’s government for not introducing vaccine passports, which they say would be a better tool to fight the fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We had hope and then we entered a dark phase where all of a sudden we lost our leadership,” said Dr. Darren Markland, an ICU physician.

On Friday, Alberta announced financial incentives in the form of $100 gift cards for unvaccinated people if they get vaccinated. This is in addition to the Open for Summer Lottery, which recently drew for its second $1-million prize.

“It does not work,” said Markland. “The people who’ve decided not to get vaccine won’t until they literally get skin in the game and that skin is to participate in their previous lives, which everybody wants, so no, a hundred bucks isn’t going to do it.”

On Friday, Health Minister Tyler Shandro said that financial incentives have been used successfully in the U.S. An infectious disease physician called the evidence around such incentives “mixed.”

“New York City offered $100 incentives and that wasn’t sufficient and they’ve fundamentally needed to institute vaccine passports,” said Dr. Leyla Asadi. “Let’s stop underestimating this virus, please, please, now, finally… and do what we need and get through this.

“We don’t want to be shutting down businesses, businesses have been through enough and it fundamentally seems unfair to have to keep doing that when we could say, ‘Okay, if you are at high risk of becoming infected or spreading the virus we don’t want you in these places where you could be a super spreader.’”

The premier has stated that vaccine passports will not be implemented in Alberta.

“We really need to move to this model where we’re not punishing everybody, where we acknowledge that we need to take measures to reduce the number of cases, we acknowledge that there’s potential for strain on the health care system but we want to take steps that are not as drastic as what we had previously,” said Asadi.

With COVID-19 cases in the province rising, Alberta Health Services is postponing non-urgent surgeries in all five health zones.

“A scheduled surgery is not a minor thing, someone might have waited 12 months or longer to get their hip fixed because they can’t walk without pain,” said Dr. Paul Parks, Alberta Medical Association Emergency Medicine Section president. “The choices people, Albertans, are making right now to not get vaccinated are impacting other people.”

According to AHS CEO Dr. Verna Yiu, intensive care units across the province were sitting at 95 per cent full as of Friday.

“One of the things people forget… is that we need those ICU beds for non-COVID patients too,” said Parks.

With schools back in session, Asadi said that it is only a matter of time before community transmission rates increase.

“I would’ve liked to see the province say, ‘Okay, in schools we want to invest in better ventilation, filtration with portable HEPA filters, I would’ve liked to see them encourage masking in schools,” said Asadi.

“To pretend that transmission somehow doesn’t happen in schools, I don’t think that that’s founded in the science, I don’t think that that’s a reasonable stance anymore.”

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Amanda Anderson 

EDMONTON — Industries hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic have been dealt another financial blow after new public health restrictions announced by Jason Kenney stop alcohol sales by 10 p.m.

The restrictions were announced Friday alongside a $100 vaccine incentive to drive the number of immunizations in Alberta higher.

Ahead of what was supposed to be a busy long weekend, several businesses told CTV News Edmonton they were caught off guard by the new measures.

“It was a bit of a surprise,” said Nathan Brass from Blowers and Grafton. “Didn’t know it was coming.”

“Tough timing. We were just getting our feet on the ground again,” said Cathal O’Byrne, director of O’Brynes.

The new policy is also a blow to those who make a living playing live music.

Musician and agent Cody Mack tweeted that he lost $2,200 this weekend alone, and believes the new restrictions punish the wrong people.

“With the 10 p.m. last call, it limits the amount of business that pubs, clubs, and social house can have after those hours, and most of that time is when live music shows its worth,” Mack told CTV News Edmonton in an interview.

“There’s a feeling of anger,” he added. “It seems unfair to those doing everything they can to go back.”

Venues across the city, like the Starlite Room, have been implementing their own proof of vaccination policy to help create a safe environment.

Mack believes this is a fair trade-off to the current legislation.

“We just want to save our industry,” Mack said. “There’s a lot of colleagues having a real hard time just getting through the day, working day jobs when they had a full-blown career doing what they loved, now doing something they don’t enjoy just to provide for their family.”

While the restrictions are now in force, some events say they’ve gotten an “exemption” from officials, including the Airdrie Pro Rodeo.

With files from CTV News Calgary’s Michael Franklin and Timm Bruch

EDMONTON — The union representing nurses says Alberta Health Services (AHS) informed them it will “immediately” begin filling staffing shortages by hiring contract nurses from three agencies across Canada.

In a statement on Saturday, United Nurses of Alberta (UNA) disclosed it received an email notifying them that “AHS will use contracted resources to address short-term contracting issues” as the hospital system deals with surges in patients due to the fourth wave of COVID-19.

According to the UNA, the three nursing agencies are Toronto-based Greenstaff Medical Canada, Northern Nursing Solutions from Airdrie, Alta., and Vancouver’s Brylu Staffing.

AHS also told the union it was withdrawing a previous labour relations board complaint against the UNA where the health care authority alleged the union participated in bargaining in bad faith by making public statements that AHS was in talks with Greenstaff.

According to the email UNA received, AHS said the nurses’ collective agreement permits the use of contract nurses and is the health care authority’s “current practice.”

AHS told the UNA it would disclose when a contract with any of the agencies was reached. The UNA says it has not received information from AHS about what staffing agencies will pay nurses.

“UNA nurses have not received any pay increases for the past five years and will continue to press the employer in negotiations to being to take negotiations seriously for Registered Nurses and Registered Psychiatric Nurses, and to address the chronic staffing crisis faced by Alberta health care facilities,” the UNA said.

In August, the UNA said Greenstaff Medical offered to pay nurses it employs to work at AHS facilities $55 an hour for general acute care and up to $75 an hour for ICU and emergency department shifts, as well as weekend premiums, a housing allowance, and shift differentials. Union member nurses working for AHS are currently paid between $36.86 and $48.37 per hour.

‘SIGNIFICANT’ CAPACITY ISSUES: AHS

Kerry Williamson, AHS spokesperson told CTV News Edmonton in a statement, that Alberta is facing “significant” capacity issues, particularly in ICUs.

“We are doing all we can to open additional capacity, however our biggest challenge right now is finding available healthcare workers to staff those surge beds,” Williamson said. “This critical staffing challenge is limiting our ability to open additional beds, which in turn is placing strain on our ability to care for patients.

“In order to alleviate this staffing challenge, AHS is again working with contract staff supplied by staffing agencies, as a last resort to prevent further disruption of services and patient care.”

Williamson added that there are no specifics about the use of third-party nurses as conversations with the agencies have just begun.