EDMONTON — Vaccinations among eligible Albertans rose to 64 per cent on Wednesday as the province reported 410 new cases of COVID-19.

Active cases fell to 6,305 the lowest since March 22. Four more Albertans, including two in their 50s, were reported to have died Wednesday, bringing the total number of COVID-19 deaths to 2,232.

More than 2.4 million first doses of vaccine have now been administered, or 64 per cent of the eligible population. Just over 406,000 individuals have had a second dose, about 10.7 per cent of the eligible population. 

The are now 435 people in hospital including 122 in intensive care units. 

The province reported a 5.24 per cent test positivity based on approximately 8,300 tests. 

Alberta entered Stage 1 of its reopening program on Tuesday.

With more than 60 per cent of eligible Albertans having had a first dose as well as fewer than 500 COVID-19 patients in hospital, the province has already met the thresholds for Stage 2 of the reopening plan.

Stage 2 relaxes restrictions on outdoor gatherings, sports, and post-secondary institutions among other changes. It is scheduled to begin June 10, two weeks after the vaccination and hospitalization targets were met. 

Stage 3, which lifts almost all restrictions, will begin two weeks after 70 per cent of eligible Albertans have received at least a first dose. 

CALGARY — Photographs of Premier Jason Kenney and members of the UCP caucus dining together on a rooftop patio are drawing criticism over the alleged flouting of the province’s own gathering rules.

The group was spotted on the balcony of the Sky Palace of the Federal Building in Edmonton on the evening of June 1 by a ‘concerned Albertan’ who captured images of their meal, complete with wine, from another downtown building. The photographs were sent to CTV News Calgary with a request for anonymity.

Among the attendees were the premier, Health Minister Tyler Shandro, Finance Minister Travis Toews, Minister of Environment and Parks and House Leader Jason Nixon and Deputy Speaker Angela Pitt.

Duane Bratt, a Mount Royal University political scientist, questioned the optics of the gathering.

NDP Opposition Leader Rachel Notley took exception with what she views as a violation of pandemic-related restrictions.

“Albertans expect leaders to lead, not break the rules from the top of their castle,” said Notley in a posting to Twitter Wednesday afternoon.

A statement from the premier’s office said the meal was on the up-and-up.

“Albertans are happy that our province is moving in the right direction, and we fully expect that many Albertans are now enjoying the increased gatherings that Stage 1 allows,” said spokesperson Jerrica Goodwin in a statement to CTV News. “The Premier, with a few ministers and staff members, held a working dinner last night.

“You’ll note the gathering was outdoors. I suggest you review the Stage 1 guidelines, which began yesterday: “Outdoor social gatherings – up to 10 people (indoor social gatherings still not permitted).

“Attendance was kept under 10. Costs were not incurred by taxpayers.” 

The executive director of communications and planning for the premier confirmed the gathering size was in line with the current rules.

Under the current restrictions imposed by Alberta Health that remain in place as part of Stage 1 of Alberta’s ‘Open for Summer’ reopening plan, outdoor patio dining at restaurants is limited to a maximum of four members of the same household or three people if diners live alone. Tuesday’s gathering atop the Sky Palace included a server.

The Stage 1 rules for outdoor social gatherings place a cap of 10 participants who must maintain physical distancing at all times and the gatherings must not have an indoor component, meaning movement in-and-out of the buildings in not permitted.

Meanwhile, the Alberta Hospitality Association, a group that includes many restaurant and bar owners who have been severely impacted by the government’s COVID-19 health guidelines, is upset at the apparent lack of regard.

“We’ve been doing our best these last 14 months to work with the government to get reopened, it’s very angering,” said president Ernie Tsu. “It just does not make any sense.”

Keith Brownsey, a political scientist at Calgary’s Mount Royal University, feels its a “bad look” for the Kenney government.

“The hypocrisy of it is that they impose these rules on everybody else but they don’t have to follow them,” he said. “It shows a disconnect between the average Albertan and this UCP government.

(With files from Tyson Fedor)

EDMONTON — For bargain-hunting lovers in Alberta, Amazon returns can now be purchased for liquidation-low prices at a store called Krazy Binz.

The discount store — found across Canada in Edmonton, Red Deer, Calgary, Hamilton, Kitchener and London — is known to sell thousands of products from brand name vacuums, hair tools, children’s games, foot massagers, home goods and mini fridges.

The store receives products from big box retailers that have over stocked their shelves, and from customers returning unwanted items.

The company says not even employees know what items will come through its doors. 

Edmonton shoppers will see a 30-minute limit enforced at the store. There will also be a testing station for tech gadgets, and employees wearing bright vests will be available to assist shoppers. Shoppers will be allowed to buy as much as they can fit in an equivalent-size IKEA bag.

Samer Abualjeibad, Krazy Binz partner, calls the store a treasure-hunt-like experience with the bins containing hidden eggs. Inside is an expensive item that can be bought for the price of the day.

“You open the egg and there is an expensive item to buy for that day,” he said.

There is plenty of stock coming in from various major online retailers.

“On Thursday, Friday, Saturday we keep restocking so those three days you will find your treasures,” he said.

He lists some of the top finds including an iPhone, iPad, weighted blanket and security camera system.

Prime Day Thursday is the re-stock day where shoppers can find every single item in the bin priced at $25. Item pricing will drop throughout the week until items are priced at $1 by the following Wednesday.

While walk-ins are accepted, pre-bookings are highly recommended. Registration for the temporary Edmonton location at 11531 160 St. NW is available online. The store is set to open on Thursday.

CALGARY — Alberta Premier Jason Kenney spoke out Tuesday afternoon about what he calls an ongoing “cancel culture” in Canada and warned if it continues, most of the country’s founding fathers could one-day be removed from the history books.

Kenney was asked for his thoughts on the Calgary Board of Education changing the name of Langevin School to Riverside School — a move done to remove the name of Hector-Louis Langevin, who is considered one of the Fathers of Confederation and also an architect of Canada’s residential schools — and whether the same should be done for Bishop Grandin School and Sir John A. Macdonald School because of their namesakes’ ties to the program.

The renewed calls come after the discovery of 215 buried bodies of children who went to a residential school in Kamloops.

“I’m not aware of the decisions they’ve made let me look into that,” Kenney said of the name change, which was announced about 9:30 a.m. Tuesday.

Kenney then spoke favourably about Macdonald, noting that he co-sponsored a bill as a sitting MP to recognize Canada’s first prime minister “without whom Canada would not exist.”

“And as his authoritative contemporary biographer Richard Gwyn said, ‘No Macdonald, no Canada.’ I think Canada is worth celebrating. I think Canada is a great historical achievement. It is a country that people all around the world seek to join as new Canadians.”

Kenney said Canada “is an imperfect country, but it is still a great country.”

“Just as John A. MacDonald was an imperfect man, but was still a great leader,” he said. 

“If we want to get into cancelling every figure in our history who took positions on issues at the time that we now judge harshly, and rightly in historical retrospective, but if that’s the new standard, then I think almost the entire founding leadership of our country gets cancelled.

“Tommy Douglas, who recommended the use of eugenics to sterilize the weak as he said, to … the Famous Five heroes of Canadian feminism, and the fight for equality for women.

“Some of them were advocates of eugenics that we would now regard as deplorable. So if we go full force into cancelled culture, then we’re canceling most, if not all of our history.”

Instead, Kenney said Canadians we should learn from our history, but also our failures.

The move came days after the horrific discovering in Kamloops, despite years of calls to ditch the Langevin name from the Calgary school.

More than 150,000 First Nations, Métis, and Inuit children were forced into the residential school system between the mid 1800s and 1990s.

In Alberta alone, at least 821 children died while attending 25 schools operated throughout the province, but experts say that number is likely much higher.

St. Mary’s (Blood) Residential School, located near Cardston, Alta. — about 78 kilometres south of Lethbridge — was the last residential school in Alberta. Opened in 1898, it was closed in 1988.

EDMONTON — A local Indigenous historian and researcher says the likelihood of finding another unmarked mass grave in Alberta to the scale of the one found in Kamloops is “definitely a possibility.”

Last week, the remains of 215 children were found on the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in a mass grave.

Crystal Gail Fraser, an assistant history professor at the University of Alberta specializing in residential schools in Canada, said if the same ground-penetrating radar technology used to locate the grave site in Kamloops was used in Alberta residential sites it would be possible to find similar unmarked mass graves.

“That is definitely a possibility,” Fraser told CTV News Edmonton in an interview. “There will be more remains found.”

Fraser is Gwichyà Gwich’in and originally from Inuvik and Dachan Choo Gę̀hnjik in the Northwest Territories. Her grandmother and mother are residential school survivors.

CONSERVATIVE NUMBERS

Alberta had at least 25 residential schools of the 134 officially designated residential schools in Canada.

The province reported one-fifth of all official residential school deaths in Canada, Fraser said.

“With conservative numbers, that is over 800 children,” she said. “I really believe that would just scrape the surface.

“Each school had an official graveyard. Many of them had unmarked graveyards. So we are actually talking about a minimum of 25 sites.”

The Canadian count for Indian residential school deaths is 4,100.

“These statistics that we have only speak to conservative numbers for the Indian residential schools that were officially recognized.”

That number only includes Indigenous children who died from disease or accidents, Fraser said.

The province has signalled its intention to support research in an attempt to discover unmarked Indigenous graves around residential schools in the province.

In an announcement on Monday, Indigenous relations minister Rick Wilson said it was a priority for the province to ensure unmarked Indigenous graves were located.

No details regarding the funding, including an amount or how it would be administered, was given.

READ MORE: Funding to find unmarked Indigenous graves in Alberta to be granted by province 

Yet, Fraser said there are many deaths that fall outside that purview, like children who ran away from residential schools but died while trying to get back to their community as well as Indigenous people who died from the spread of diseases.

“Often the students caught the disease at (residential) school,” Fraser added. “If the child was gravely ill, the school often sent the child home to die so that their death would not be reflected on the school record.

“In doing so, the child would then generally spread the disease to their household or to their community promoting further deaths.”

CHARLES CAMSELL BUILDING

Additionally, Fraser said receiving homes, orphanages, hospitals and Indian sanatoria were operating with the same mindset and policies guiding residential schools but that their deaths are overlooked.

Fraser gave the example of the tuberculosis hospital in Edmonton for Indigenous people that was used after the Second World War at the Charles Camsell Building, in what is now Edmonton’s Inglewood neighbourhood.

READ MORE: Finding the truth: Unearthing legacies of Indigenous burial sites in Alberta

“There were people, particularly from the north, from where I am from,” she described, “who against their will were transported to the Camsell hospital, sometimes for years at a time, largely for infections that they picked up at Indian residential schools in the north.

“While they were at the Camsell, they were learned English from their beds, were taught the same curricula from residential schools.

She believes a search for unmarked graves at that site and other similar sites tied to the legacy of residential schools needs to happen with Indigenous-led experts and leaders.

“They need to be the ones leading these projects,” she said.

“Not every community is going to be ready for something like this because I believe there will be remains found,” she added.

For Fraser, searching sites is one thing. Uncovering what lies below the surface can be extremely traumatic for Indigenous people.

“We don’t want to be defined by our trauma. We want to be defined by our strength and our resilience.”

Contact the Indian Residential School Survivors Society toll-free 1 (800) 721-0066 or 24-hour Crisis Line 1 (866) 925-4419 if you require further emotional support or assistance.