ICYMI: Oct. 28 - Nov. 3

Your weekly roundup.

I spent a couple days with more than 6,000 UCP members at the party AGM in Red Deer on Friday and Saturday, producing two dispatches for this newsletter:

Danielle Smith fuses far-right appeal with mainstream caution at UCP AGM

It's the extremists' party, Danielle Smith is just leading it

Many thanks to everyone who pitched in to help send me there.

I wrote an additional AGM story for Canada’s National Observer on a policy resolution members overwhelmingly passed to honour CO2 as a “a foundational nutrient for all life on earth,” which called on the government to abandon any emissions reduction targets. 

An Open Letter in Defence of David Pugliese

For the Progress Report, I covered a Law Enforcement Review Board hearing in which the parents of Anthony Heffernan, a 27-year-old man shot four times and killed by Calgary cops during a 2015 wellness check, alleged that the officers who shot him may have colluded in their statements to investigators.

In Alberta Native News, I reported on meetings chiefs of Treaty 6, 7 and 8 First Nations had with Minister of Indigenous Services Canada Patty Hajdu to express concerns about the Clean Water Act. These meetings came, awkwardly, as federal government lawyers were arguing in court that the feds have no legal obligation to provide First Nations with potable water.

I also wrote a piece about an Edmonton-based startup working to develop AI that is culturally sensitive towards Indigenous people, which was picked up by CTV and the Hamilton Spectator, as well as the Medicine Hat News print edition and Fort Frances Times.

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What I’ve Been Reading

Story of the Week