Front Page News

Alberta schools would be prohibited from charging student fees, if Danielle Smith becomes the province's next premier. The Wildrose party leader announced the ban - accompanied by more tax support for public schools - during a campaign stop Friday in Lethbridge.

Canadians were led to fear Thursday's budget would have more serious repercussions. But that's part of the Harper Conservatives' strategy, says a Lethbridge political scientist.

In mid-February, students at Lethbridge College and Athabasca University surveyed a randomly selected group of 738 Lethbridge and Coaldale residents, asking them - in a series of seven telephone interview questions - to rate Lethbridge regional police officers' performance, attitudes and behaviour while on the job.

There could be a surprising outcome in both Lethbridge ridings April 23, if voters cast their ballots strategically. That's the proposal from a province-wide group hoping to motivate centre-left voters when they go to the polls.

But even after they've completed four decades in power, says Lethbridge political scientist Peter McCormick, the provincial election is still the Progressive Conservatives' to lose.

While thousands of curling fans packed the Enmax Centre Sunday afternoon for the final championship match, the nine-day world tournament attracted a total of about 55,400 people, fewer than the national Scotties tournament that brought nearly 80,000 people to Lethbridge in 2007.

Almost 140 years ago, the officers who arrived in Fort Macleod to police the west were probably tired and bedraggled after their march across the Prairies.

Snow-covered roads caused mayhem during the Friday morning commute and the icy conditions contributed to numerous collisions in southern Alberta. Both Whoop-Up Drive and Crowsnest Trail were closed as police responded to collisions and to allow sanding of the roadway.

Dave Mabell

Lethbridge Herald

This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Southern Alberta’s watersheds must be preserved — not logged. But protecting the region’s vital water supply is just one of the issues facing voters next month, a Lethbridge audience was warned Thursday.
Officials in Edmonton are already talking with a global company that wants to bottle and sell our water, according to provincial New Democrat leader Brian Mason. Meanwhile, they’re allowing a logging company to clear-cut areas near the Castle River, an important watershed area.
And if the province doesn’t step in to control exploration companies’ “fracking” operations, much of southern Alberta’s water could be poisoned — or diverted for industrial uses.
Mason, speaking to the Southern Alberta Council on Public Affairs, predicted protection of allocation of the south’s scarce water supply will become one of the key issues when Albertans go to the polls next month. (All party leaders have been invited to speak, SACPA officials said, but no others have yet accepted.)
“Alberta is the driest province in Canada,” Mason pointed out, and the south — part of the Palliser Triangle — is even more arid. No more water can be alloted from the Oldman River, he noted, and water scarcity is already limiting growth.
The scope of the water monitoring panel chaired by former University of Lethbridge president Howard Tennant should be enlarged to include the Oldman as well as the Athabasca River, he urged.
A New Democrat government would do that as part of a comprehensive water-use program, Mason said. It would also halt hydraulic “fracking,” until scientists are able to predict its long-term effects.
Responding to questions, he repeated his criticism of the Conservative government for failing to protect the Castle River wilderness area,
“It’s unforgiveable to cut down trees in the Castle watershed,” as many citizens’ groups have said. “It has really caught the attention of many Albertans,” not just in the south.
Maybe there’s a reason the Castle, alone, has not been protected along with the rest of the province’s designated “special places,” he suggested. It could be because of the logging company’s “close links with former leadership candidate Ted Morton,” until recently the minister of sustainable resource development.
“We have to look closely at those relationships.”
Mason suggested Albertans should keep an eye on Nestle, the international food giant, and its talks with Conservative government members.
“They want to commodify our water,” just as companies have in parched Australia. There, Mason said, irrigation districts assumed the powers of municipalities — and began buying and selling the rights to water in their region.
New Democrats say water should be allocated “in the public good,” considering social and environmental issues as well as its economic impact, he said.
Responding to other issues, Mason restated his party’s opposition to two massive power transmission lines — priced at $17.5 billion, compared with $1.5 billion for all of Alberta’s present lines — and to the Conservatives’ continuing shift away from professional nursing care for those who need it, to lower-service but higher-priced “assisted living.”
Mason noted the federal New Democrats’ continuing public support: in the latest poll, they’re tied with the Conservatives at 30 per cent each. But he wouldn’t say which of the federal leadership contenders he’d like to see elected this weekend.