EDMONTON — Hockey fans in Alberta have a chance to win big with the online 50/50 raffle draw.

The pot for the online draw was $1.6 million as of 2:55 p.m. Wednesday.

Tickets are available for purchase from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. on game days.

The Edmonton Oilers Community Foundation will reinvest the proceeds in the community. The first two Stanley Cup playoffs draws will benefit organizations supporting frontline workers.

EDMONTON — Alberta Education Minister Adriana LaGrange announced Wednesday afternoon that K-12 students will return to in-person learning on May 25.

The return to in-class learning includes all Alberta students with the exception of the entire Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo.

“All those students in K to 12 in this region will continue to learn at home for another week, with a targeted return to in-person learning on May 31,” said LaGrange.

The pause on extracurricular activities in Alberta schools remains in place. 

During the announcement, LaGrange called the “education system reset” announced earlier this month “very successful.”

“It has helped to alleviate the operational pressures tied to the rise of COVID-19 cases in our communities,” she said.

The education minister said all health protocols that were in place in Alberta schools before the May 7 shutdown will continue.

“Including mask requirements, cohorts, screening for symptoms, and seating arrangements,” she said. 

LaGrange was joined by Alberta Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Deena Hinshaw, who endorsed the minister’s decision to resume in-person learning in the province after the May long weekend. 

“I’m confident that we can all work together to keep cases falling in young Albertans,” Hinshaw said.

“I know that in-person learning is critically important for many kids’ educational and social development, and can provide a sense of normalcy in these unusual times.”

Hinshaw said a “sharp decline” in cases in school-aged children in the province in recent weeks serves as evidence that the decision to reopen classroom doors to students is the right one.

“From an average of 68 new cases a day for every 100,000 children and youth in early May, we are now down to about 31 cases per 100,000.”

Alberta’s top doctor said that with over 50 per cent of Albertans over the age of 12 now having received their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine – and with that number still growing – the move back to in-class learning makes sense.

“With additional people every day getting vaccinated, the protocols that we’ve had in place, plus the rapid screening approach – all of those things together, I believe, are making our schools as safe, or safer than they have ever been,” said Hinshaw. 

During a Facebook Live session Tuesday evening, Premier Jason Kenney said he expects students will no longer need to wear masks in class by the beginning of next school year.

K-6 students in Alberta shifted to online learning on May 7, while students from Grade 7 – 12 have been learning online in some COVID-19 hot spots since April 20.

On Tuesday afternoon Jason Schilling, president of the Alberta Teachers’ Association, expressed concern over the possible return to in-class learning next week and the government’s handling of schools in the province throughout the pandemic.

ICU DOCTOR ON IN-PERSON LEARNING

Edmonton ICU physician Dr. Darren Markland tells CTV News it’s difficult to determine the right thing to do when it comes to the issue of reopening schools for in-class learning.

“There’s a lot of emotional connection to this question,” said Markland. “I think when you ask a simple question and you get a very long, complex answer it just tells you that nobody has the right answer to this.”

Markland noted that every time the province has shut in-person learning in schools down, COVID-19 infection rates have dropped.

“That’s undeniable,” he said. “The problem is when we do that we also cause significant distress to children and families.   

“When you’re a public health physician you have to balance all those things,” Markland added.

The ICU doctor said that getting a large majority of the population at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine would go a long way in making in-person learning safe for everyone.

“Until we get our vaccinations up to 85 per cent (of the population),” said Markland, “we’re going to have the same problem that they had that got us here.

“Reopening schools until we’re there is going to create the same issues,” he said.

Markland believes the province’s previous pandemic strategies were “partially thought out and poorly implemented.”

“To have people go back and forth, back and forth between their plans for their kids, and for their kids to have whiplash from going from different educational strategies,” said Markland. “If we picked one and stayed in our lane, no matter what it was I think our kids would be better off and so would we.”

LaGrange said the province has made an effort to “minimize that yo-yoing.”

“Unfortunately at times it has been necessary, but we’ve been able to keep our schools open right through the whole school year,” she said. 

“It’s so important for our students to be in school with their peers, with their teachers,” said LaGrange.

EDMONTON — The man who attacked a woman with a crowbar in a fit of road rage has lost his bid to have his sentenced shortened by the Court of Appeal of Alberta. 

Jared Eliasson was appealing his 3 1/2 year prison sentence for aggravated assault after he lost an appeal of his conviction last December. He has two years less one day to serve after credit for time served.

In a written ruling issued Wednesday, the three-justice panel dismissed his appeal, ruling the judge used a “sound approach” in determining his sentence.

“The sentencing judge can hardly be faulted for concluding, as he did here, that the circumstances are so egregious as to defy rational explanation. That is what occurred on this record,” the ruling reads. 

On March 7, 2017, Eliasson was delivering newspapers when a woman driver honked at his vehicle that was stopped and blocking a right-hand turn lane. 

The ruling recounts how he then moved his vehicle but then followed the woman, backed up behind her and took out a crowbar which he then used to beat the woman, breaking both of her arms. 

“The trauma and injuries that she suffered were both physically and emotionally life altering,” the ruling reads. 

Eliasson was sentenced in April of 2019 and remained out on bail pending his appeals with two years remaining on his sentence with credit for time served.

In appealing his sentence, Eliasson’s lawyers had argued he was only given “trifling” credit by the sentencing judge for complying with strict bail conditions. 

They also noted he was completing community college classes as well as volunteering with his church. They cited media coverage of his case as a further mitigating factor, claiming it had limited his employment and rehabilitation prospects. 

The panel rejected those arguments, ruling that Eliasson’s time in custody and negative media attention had both been accounted for in his sentence. 

“The proposition that a sentence should be reduced because the grave circumstances of it are such as to foreseeably attract widespread public condemnation is counterintuitive.”

EDMONTON — It’s a popular way to get around Edmonton, but business owners and pedestrians are seeking stricter enforcement for people who ride their scooter on the sidewalk.

Jonathan Hopkins, the director of government relations and partnerships for Lime, told CTV News Edmonton, 30 per cent of Lime scooter trips are happening in downtown Edmonton and 15 per cent in the Old Strathcona area.

While Edmonton has a robust use of e-scooters in the city, one merchant on Whyte Avenue doesn’t want them in the neighbourhood at all.

“They’re dangerous,” Gayle Martin, the owner of The Wish List Gifts, said.

Martin recalled a time she had an unexpected run-in with an e-scooter while leaving her store.

“I just came out of the door of the store, just walking out, and didn’t hear it coming and it ran right into me,” she explained.

“All he was doing was burning up and down the block.”

Martin told CTV News most of the people who are using the scooters are visitors who are not familiar with the rules. She said people treat it like a “theme park ride” on Whyte Avenue.

Hopkins said they host public safety events to educate riders on safe operation. There are also marked slow down zones in high traffic areas like 124 Street, Jasper Avenue and Whyte Avenue, and prompts on the app to indicate safe use.

“The public will never be educated about this,” Martin added.

“They’re never going to be able to police them.”

In a statement to CTV News, the City of Edmonton said: “The city’s goal is to establish the safe and secure operation of e-scooters for users and the community, as they offer Edmontonians a sustainable mode of transportation.”

The city added it has asked the three e-scooter companies to “improve their efforts on educating users on safe e-scooter use and parking.” 

‘IT’S NOT ABOUT GETTING RID OF THE MODE’

According to Hopkins, the next step would be enforcement where “the city is on the right track.”

“The lessons for how to get people to ride scooters correctly are the same lessons about how we get people to drive cars correctly,” he said.

A number of cities in the states have started handing out tickets to riders, Hopkins said. He said it’s proven to be effective in deterring people from ignoring the guidelines.

“I think if we all focus on those people who are not following the rules and educating, and enforcing the rules with them, that is the key.

“It’s not about getting rid of the mode,” he said.

Hopkins added the people who don’t follow the rules are a small minority and that’s where the focus for improvement should be.

“It’s a motor vehicle,” Martin explained. “It’s being ridden on the sidewalk, it’s being parked on the sidewalk.”

According to Hopkins, studies show for every 1,000 scooters on the ground they bring in about $1,000,000 in economic development every six months to a city like Edmonton.

Even though tickets and further enforcement are being discussed, Martin would like to see all e-scooters banned on public streets, similar to what’s been done in Montreal and Toronto.

“It’s making my work environment not enjoyable, and not safe,” she said. 

“They have to be gone.”

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Jeremy Thompson