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PROVINCIAL / FEDERAL POLITICS
August 20, 2021 – Nurses at High Prairie Health Complex set up information pickets Aug. 11 to share concerns about government action with health care.
Members of the United Nurses of Alberta held Day of Action across Alberta to send a message to the Alberta government on issues in the public healthcare system.
“Our main message is to motivate people to contact their local MLA and provincial government and tell them Alberta nurses deserve to be treated with respect,” says Jan Robinson, president of the UNA Local 17, which covers High Prairie hospital, acute care, emergency room and J.B. Wood Continuing-Care Centre.
August 6, 2021 – There was no major announcement for the High Prairie region during a tour by provincial politicians July 30, but local politicians did get a chance to bend their ears of their esteemed visitors.
Lesser Slave Lake MLA Pat Rehn was accompanied by Alberta Minister of Infrastructure Prasad Panda. Panda again committed the demolition of the old High Prairie Health Complex and took to Twitter afterwards to make a statement.
July 22, 2021 – Banished Lesser Slave Lake MLA Pat Rehn is back in as a serving MLA for the United Conservative Party government.
UCP caucus chair Nathan Neudorf made the announcement July 14.
The UCP says since his removal from caucus on Jan. 15, Rehn has worked tirelessly to rebuild trust with local families, businesses, elected officials and Indigenous leaders.
PROVINCIAL OPINIONS
August 20, 2021 – Businesses struggled during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Now it seems that chambers of commerce in small towns are facing a similar situation.
Many businesses closed for a while and some went out of business.
Now it’s starting to hit local business organizations.
August 6, 2021 – A recent news report says the city of Lethbridge is one of many small cities and big towns across Canada seeing jumping home prices.
“We’re only a two-hour drive from Calgary,” says a Lethbridge real estate agent.
He adds that booming big city property prices, combined with the whole “COVID work from home” experience, has people looking at cheaper places.
July 21, 2021 – Treaty 8 First Nation chiefs and Elders from Treaty 8 communities met on July 11 at Willow Point near Sucker Creek First Nation to share their vision and ideas for the Treaty 8 Child Well Being Legislation at a naming ceremony.
Willow Point is the site where Treaty No. 8 was entered into on June 21, 1899.
“The focus of the developing legislation is to bring our children home,” Grand Chief Arthur Noskey says.
LOCAL INTERESTS
High Prairie & Big Lakes County
August 19, 2021 – A longtime High Prairie healthcare proponent is urging town council to lobby government to bring chemotherapy to the local region.
George Keay spoke to Town of High Prairie council at its regular meeting Aug. 10 in response to news that a group in Slave Lake is pushing to get chemotherapy in that community 115 km east of High Prairie.
“We have to start a lobbying group,” says Keay, who was a key leader to persuade the government to build the new High Prairie Health Complex that opened in April 2017.
August 6, 2021 – The owner of Shadow Creek Resort at Joussard is proposing to build a spray park.
However, one local council supported the resort’s project while another did not.
Big Lakes County agreed at its July 14 meeting to support any organization applying for the Canada Community Revitalization Fund; however, High Prairie town council did not at their July 27 meeting after accepting the request for information.
July 22, 2021 – There will be no physician coverage at the Sacred Heart Community Health Centre emergency department July 17-19.
Alberta Health Services made the announcement July 16. No reason was disclosed for the disruption of service.
Specifically, the emergency department will be temporarily without on-site physician coverage Saturday, July 17 from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m., and again from 7 a.m. on Sunday, July 18, to 7 a.m. on Monday, July 19.
TOPICAL POSTS
August 20, 2021 – Big Lakes County wants to encourage more physicians to serve the High Prairie region, male and female.
At its regular meeting Aug. 11, council turned down a request from the Town of High Prairie for a letter of support to ask Alberta Health Services to ensure a female physician for High Prairie.
“I still think we need to get the best most component physicians,” Reeve Ken Matthews says.
August 6, 2021 – In 1950, Canada faced a difficult choice between the desire to be a leader in the development of nuclear energy technology and the fear that such technology would bring the end of the world a little closer.
Despite concerns related to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Canada elected to be in the vanguard.
As a result, world-class Canada Deuterium Uranium [CANDU reactors] were developed in this country and exported around the world.