CBC’s West of Centre convenes a powerhouse panel to dissect the key issues shaping southern Alberta. Industry and local leaders tackle everything from the future of energy to Western alienation.

Tune in for a live broadcast from Medicine Hat as CBC’s West of Centre convenes a powerhouse panel to dissect the key issues shaping southern Alberta. Industry and local leaders tackle everything from the future of energy to Western alienation.

As calls mount for the Alberta government to ensure the province's next top doctor is free to speak publicly, Premier Danielle Smith has confirmed the chief medical officer of health left of his own accord this week.

Liberal Leader Mark Carney faced jabs from his opponents at Wednesday's French-language leaders' debate, with accusations he's out of touch with working people and won't offer enough change from his unpopular predecessor.

Scientists have identified fossil dinosaur footprints from a new species in B.C. and Alberta. They're believed to be the first tracks found in the world that were left by club-tailed ankylosaurs, offering new insights about gaps in the fossil record.

An officer who kneed a Calgary man in the torso multiple times was not responsible for that man’s death, the provincial police watchdog said in a new report, while also concluding blunt-force trauma was the primary cause of death.

The United Conservative Party caucus expelled Airdrie-Cochrane MLA Peter Guthrie on Wednesday, following his resignation from cabinet and his outspoken support for a full judicial public inquiry into the provincial government's procurement practices.

Catch all the live stream action of the inaugural Northern Super League season on CBC Sports and Gem with the first-ever match taking place tonight at 10 p.m. ET between Calgary Wild FC and Vancouver Rise FC at B.C. Place Stadium.

Despite coming from behind to win yet again on Tuesday night, the red-hot Calgary Flames have been eliminated from playoff contention.

Three people are dead and two others are severely injured after a collision between a semi-trailer truck and a minivan near St. Paul on Tuesday afternoon. 

Patrick Osborne is frustrated by the federal Liberals’ gun control measures, arguing they unfairly target law-abiding Canadians like himself while doing little to reduce gun violence in the country. As a gun owner, he’s looking for a party that understands his perspective.

Yasmeen Awadh is a proud Canadian who sponsored her family successfully to also move to Canada. Whether it was Stephen Harper’s bill to distinguish between naturalized and Canadian-born citizens or the housing crisis facing newcomers under Justin Trudeau, she has reservations about how genuinely federal parties care about the plight of the newcomers.

From now until the election day, the Orchard will be releasing weekly election update podcasts with a different guest each episode. The entirety of each election update episode will be free for anyone to listen to or watch.

Joining me this week is MacEwan University communications professor and freelance journalist .

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• Conservative Candidate Used a Secret Signal Group Chat With Freedom Convoy Leaders, Right-Wing Media and Far-Right Influencers, PressProgress

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Marco Arop powered to victory in the Grand Slam Track 800-metre race at the organization's inaugural event in Kingston, Jamaica on Sunday.

A decision to dismantle Tyra the Tyrannosaurus, known as the world's largest dinosaur, has drawn public backlash and a petition to save the structure has more than 20,000 signatures.

A Conservative government would ban any new supervised consumption sites from opening, while also making it harder for existing sites to operate, as leader Pierre Poilievre provided in greater detail Sunday his approach, if elected, to a form of harm reduction he has repeatedly condemned.

Canada's Brad Jacobs defeated China's Xiaoming Xu 11-2 on Sunday to win the bronze medal at the world men's curling championship in Moose Jaw, Sask.

With Blanchard's seven-year parole ineligibility period now over, the Parole Board of Canada says he can't be safely managed in the community, and has refused to engage in recommended sex offender programming.

There are two fewer villages in Alberta this year and a third may soon emerge. Caroline and Halkirk are now hamlets within their respective rural municipalities, while Delia is set to vote on its future later this month.

The federal government provided $2.6 billion for heat pumps, solar panels, insulation and other green upgrades to Canadians' homes through the Canada Greener Homes Grant. But did it make enough of a difference? A new report takes a closer look.

An Edmonton-based foundation is launching a first-of-its-kind resource to connect new mothers with culturally-appropriate health professionals for the BIPOC community. The Mesh of Mothers Foundation has over 150 practitioners in their new database and is looking to expand across Canada.

Brad Jacobs and his Calgary-based team dropped a 7-4 semifinal decision to Scotland's Bruce Mouat on Saturday at the Temple Gardens Centre.

For more than 40 years science enthusiasts from grade 1 through 12 have gathered for the science olympics. Hundreds of curious and creative students have been working on their projects for months, hoping to take home the top prize.

Nearly 30 of the province's emergency pediatricians are calling on the government to address long wait times for children in hospitals. They say the system is chronically underfunded, and as Ishita Verma reports, doctors are having to do more, with less.

Jasper, Alta., is preparing for summer tourism, as the town continues to recover from a monster wildfire that ripped through last July.

Jagmeet Singh promised to hire more doctors Saturday, while Mark Carney announced measures for trades workers and Pierre Poilievre pledged to cut red tape.

As voting wraps up on Saturday to crown the next Kraft Hockeyville, Crossfield is bidding to claim Alberta's first grand prize in more than a decade. 

Edmonton Oilers centre Leon Draisaitl is "out short term" but should return "well before" the playoffs begin after sustaining a lower-body injury against the San Jose Sharks Thursday night, says head coach Kris Knoblauch.

People of all political stripes are weighing the stakes of the upcoming federal election as they make their choice for who Canada should have at the helm in the midst of the U.S. trade war. CBC asked Albertan voters, experts, and businesses if this election feels different.

A Calgary group is leading the effort to restore native plants to Fish Creek Provincial Park — by rescuing them from private development sites.

Brenda Schofield and Mervin Chicksi discovered they were half-cousins in 2023 after submitting their DNA to an ancestry website. Schofield visited the North for the second time late last month.

An Edmonton piano teacher, who was already facing sex charges involving a 10-year-old girl, is now facing charges involving another child, police say.

Calgary is one step closer to getting four new communities on the city’s outskirts, after a city committee approved four applications for council to consider during budget adjustments in November.

The Canadian team skipped by Brad Jacobs ticked a few boxes with its victory Friday afternoon at the BKT World Men's Curling Championship in Moose Jaw, Sask.

The woman who was killed on Stoney Trail as Good Samaritans tried to save her life has been identified as Heather Brent, 57, a registered nurse from Calgary. 

Fears of a tariff-driven recession have led to a steep drop in the price of crude oil, walloping Canadian energy stocks and stoking worry about the sector's outlook should the weakness persist.

As the spread of measles shows no sign of slowing in Alberta, some health experts are calling for stronger public health messaging and are questioning why the province's top doctor isn't front and centre.

The post March 31-April 4, 2025 appeared first on Alberta Views.

Queer films were a catalyst for Roshan Sethi's coming out. Now, the doctor-turned-director has made his own with A Nice Indian Boy.

Liberal Leader Mark Carney says he governs for all of Canada and called prominent conservative Preston Manning's comments on Western independence "dramatic" during a campaign stop in Montreal on Friday. 

A new version of a government-commissioned report about Alberta's inactive oil wells and what to do about them now says the province should manage a new insurance fund, rather than backstop it with taxpayer funding.

The Liberals have dropped Rod Loyola as an Edmonton-area candidate in the federal election race, the latest dismissed from party ranks since the campaign began.

Seniors enjoying karaoke night at Edmonton's Norwood Legion told CBC what matters to them in the upcoming federal election. Their issues? The cost of living, pension security, affordable housing and top-notch health care.

Opinion

Lorne Fitch — Lethbridge, AB

A local politician opened a conference on water with what he thought was a witty observation. He said he wasn’t sure why the conference was being held since water is basically colourless, odourless and tasteless and didn’t evoke much enthusiasm on his part since it is so commonplace. There was muted applause.

Water is part of our language and holds a unique place in the tapestry of metaphors: a drop in the bucket, a sea of trouble, drowning in work, a flood of emotions, and a wave of relief. In the span of a daily conversation, one of many water metaphors will rise to the surface or float past you.

Despite being an integral part of our language and communication, water lies below the surface of our sensibilities. When that happens we can become all dried up. That’s the tone and tenor of an essential message about water and where it comes from.

All of us need to learn more about our water — maybe something new, reactivate something we knew but forgot — and, most importantly, understand the implicit need to protect the headwaters from which most of our water comes. One essential message is that the Eastern Slopes provide the rest of Alberta with over 80 per cent of our water.

Call the Eastern Slopes our headwaters, the water towers, the rain barrels, the essential taps or just the well, there is a growing recognition the well is running dry. Or, at least the headwaters are not acting as they once did, as a reliable and predictable source of water. The past does not adequately reflect the future.

The reasons are varied for that reality. Climate change is resulting in significant modifications in how much water the Eastern Slopes receive, how it is received, as snow or rain, how it is stored, the changing seasonality of water delivery, and the nature of wicked, unpredictable storms. Climate change also is priming the forests for more and bigger fires that change the nature of the absorptive sponge tree cover represents.

Our human land-use footprint in the Eastern Slopes continues to grow, especially the extent of logging and roads. This exacerbates the effects of climate change. The cumulative effect of this footprint changes how the headwaters respond to water delivery from rain and snow. Water has less time to soak into the shallow groundwater aquifers, runs off faster, causes more erosion, and leaves us with less water later in the season. A large land-use footprint provides a double whammy of flooding and drought.

As the amount of water declines, we need to be doing much more to steward what we have. Rather than treating our headwaters as warehouses to be ransacked, we need to engage in planning efforts to define what we want the Eastern Slopes to be and do for us. We had the template for that in the 1970s with the Eastern Slopes Policy, which defined watershed protection as the primary directive. This crucial direction has been ignored for the past five decades.

We need to get back to the future with a sense of restraint, reclamation, and critical management to reduce and repair the footprint of over five decades of industrial-strength land use like logging, and longer with the legacy of coal mining. 

Blind boosterism and benign neglect will not take us into a desirable future. The Eastern Slopes are temples for water, not just a place to unsustainably extract other resources. That recognition might start to prepare us for a dry horizon.

The Eastern Slopes aren’t just our headwaters, they are so for much of Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Alberta is a headwaters province with responsibility and obligation to our fellow downstream Canadians.

Without water we will all return to cosmic dust. It’s that simple. Knowing this now might create a trickle of understanding, a wash of concern and a river of change to get us out of a mudhole of complacency.

Shootin’ the Breeze welcomes submissions about local issues and activities. Personal views expressed in Mailbox items are those of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Shootin’ the Breeze ownership and staff. Mailbox articles include letters to the editor, op-eds, news releases and notes from our readers.

The post Dry horizons: a focus on the source of our water appeared first on Shootin' the Breeze.

A large section of a major road in Edmonton has been closed due to collisions and wintry weather.

A new 12-month pilot program will see peace officers more closely monitor and educate on traffic safety around Calgary.

Justice C.A. Rickards of Court of King’s Bench denied a request by Aaron Brown, a man with opioid use disorder, to keep the OPS open beyond March 31. 

The fear of measles has some parents with infants in Alberta looking for ways to avoid exposure and take advantage of early vaccination opportunities.

With the discovery of two new measles cases in central Alberta, the virus has now found its way into all five of the province's health zones.

One of the country's top Conservative strategists who just helped Ontario Premier Doug Ford win a sizable majority government says Pierre Poilievre urgently needs to make a pivot and start talking more about the issue voters care about most — the U.S. threat — or he risks losing the federal election.