2025; Twenty-Twenty Five;
Part 1: Alberta in the News
The year of endings and the catalyst to new beginnings:
Thank you to all the people who have chosen to join us this year and to be part of the ABR community! We would be a very small band of rebels without you.
2025 has been a year like none other in my memory. Let’s recap first and then look at where we are and where we might go in the future to fix this timeline. Welcome to Part 1. We will post the information three months at a time to give you time to digest it. Looking back, we have been in a pressure cooker this year, and like the tale of the boiling frog, the heat keeps getting turned up. It’s time to reflect, regroup, and plan our way forward, together. We may have different concerns, but there is one solution - stopping the UCP from tearing apart Alberta and selling us to the highest bidder. We don’t have the answers, but together we can come up with them. We appreciate you taking the journey with us to uncover what the UCP has done and sharing a vision to create an Alberta that works for everyone.
January:
Education:
Several Locals of CUPE - Educational Assistants went on strike. They were on strike until the end of March.
School boards responded by having special needs children who needed one-on-one support stay home.
Executive Council:
Danielle Smith visits Washington for Trump’s inauguration.
Health Care:
We had the firing of another CEO of AHS - Athana Mentzalopolous. She was fired because she was too diligent at her job. She was questioning the payments to private Surgical Companies to do knee, hip, and shoulder surgeries in Alberta. She noticed some anomalies in her investigation that led us to Sam Mraiche of MHCare and his group of merry men - Jitendra Prasad and Blayne Iskew, who were responsible for the “Parol” procurement and Albertans being out almost $100 million for that ($49 million still outstanding). Back to Athana, they are currently in a lawsuit for breach of contract.
Danielle Smith, in order to explain away the issue, claims that Athana was hired to disband AHS and that she was not doing as she was asked.
Social Services:
Cuts funding to organizations that support disabled Albertans. Continuing Care gets a new name: Assisted Living.
February:
Education:
The government is accused of interfering with local school boards and CUPE.
Families with Special Needs children take Alberta Education/School Boards to court to force them to provide education for their children. They win
School boards respond by having alternate classes go online on alternate days so they can provide adequate coverage.
Executive Council:
UCP Ministers go to Washington’s Prayer Breakfast - including Williams, LaGrange, Neudorf, and three staffers.
Trump’s Border Czar visits Edmonton and forms the opinion that Alberta is a quagmire of fentanyl and disorder. This happened in the summer - the evidence is revealed in February.
Former Edmonton Police Chief Dale McFee becomes Deputy Minister of Executive Council - Danielle Smith’s right-hand man. He knows Sam Mraiche through donations to EPS.
Finance:
The Government faced a difficult decision: Alberta Budget 2025 delivers a $1.2 billion tax cut but also projects a $5.2 billion deficit.
Health Care:
The entire AHS Board was fired and replaced with Andre Tremblay, Deputy Minister of Health Care. The Procurement/Corrupt Care Scandal continues to unfold. (There are really two parts to this - the procurement of substandard PPE and Parol from Turkey and the contracts with private surgical groups.) . * Currently, Alberta Health has no oversight - there is only the CEO, Erin O’Neill, Sr VP of Finance, and Shared Services is now overseeing Health Care in Alberta. She replaced Andre Tremblay, the Deputy Minister of Health and CEO of Alberta Health, on Dec. 4, 2025.
Flu cases are up.
Constituents start protesting outside LaGrange’s constituency office.
EMS started highlighting ambulance issues.
Sam Mraiche sued the Breakdown for $6 million.
Policing:
Alberta is accused of letting fentanyl across the US border, and the Premier starts a border patrol (end-of-year update - they made 4 arrests in 300 + days)
Social Services:
Nixon announces ADAP, the program they are moving AISH recipients to ADAP which will save the government $200/individual/month. More youth centers and community groups lose their funding.
March:
Children and Family Services:
Alberta has cancelled the Child Care Subsidy for parents and has gone to a flat-rate child care fee for children from birth to 6 years old. The subsidies are still available for after-school care. Many families cannot afford $15/day child care.
Education:
Many articles were published regarding education funding in Alberta, highlighting that the province had the lowest funding per student in Canada.
The ATA let people know that the budget fell nearly $1 billion short of meeting basic education needs in the province.
To cope with the EA strike and schools being ordered to provide programming for Special Needs Students, schools started rotating online classes.
This month, a directive came out from Nicolaides, the Education Minister’s office, that teachers were to instruct students that Alberta produced the most ethical oil in the world. (The Fossil Fuel Industry provided the curriculum for classrooms)
CUPE got a deal and went back to work. Money went into the budget for schools to develop and provide career programs (trades), planning for new schools, testing, and $7.5 million for support.
Executive Council:
Alberta taxpayers paid for Danielle Smith and Rob Anderson to attend the Prager U fundraiser in Florida.
Finance:
Education taxes increased (municipalities collect this). 4.5% https://edmontonjournal.com/news/politics/alberta-budget-2025-education
Alberta cancelled benefits for adopted children
They also cut funding to legal aid.
Health Care:
This is the month that Alberta let the public know they were transferring hospitals to Infrastructure on April 1. They moved EMS from AHS to Acute Care.
We had our first measles outbreak in northern Alberta.
The province also sought to cut $400 million in billing fees from doctors.
This is the month it came out that the provincial government has for years kept a hand in the contracting-out of private surgeries through Alberta Health Services, despite repeated comments by the premier and health minister that any potential issues with procurement are AHS’s own responsibility.
To investigate the procurement of Parol and the firing of the CEO, the Alberta Government contracted a retired judge from Manitoba, Judge Wyant. There was public commentary, particularly around his 2025 appointment as investigator into Alberta Health Services procurement issues, notes that Judge Wyant is the brother of Gordon Wyant, a long-time Saskatchewan Party MLA for Saskatoon Northwest (2010–2024). Gordon Wyant served in multiple cabinet roles under Premiers Brad Wall and Scott Moe, including as Minister of Justice and Attorney General (twice), Deputy Premier, Minister of Education, and Minister of Advanced Education.
This familial connection was highlighted in discussions questioning potential political ties, given Gordon Wyant’s senior position in the conservative Saskatchewan Party. No official biographies of Judge Wyant explicitly list family members, but the relation appears in public discourse, tied to his Saskatchewan roots (he earned a BA Honours from the University of Saskatchewan before moving to Manitoba for his legal career).
https://www.alberta.ca/system/files/jet-bio-judge-raymond-e-wyant.pdf
Human Rights/Transgender/LGBTQI2S+:
The bill is one of three transgender laws the government seeks to implement.
Alberta tables bills on transgender youth health care, students’ pronouns, opt-in sex education | CBC News (when the bills were being passed)
Union says pride flags are banned from EPL locations
Social Services:
Cut funding for the Sex Assault Center in Edmonton/ Plans for the switch from AISH to ADAP move ahead.
The province informs AISH recipients that they will be losing $200 off their checks for the Canada Disability Benefit. AISH recipients are on the hook for filling out the forms to apply for CDB.
Transportation:
Minister of Transportation’s orders to stop photo radar in municipalities take effect. Red light cameras are operational, but the speed portion is shut down.
This was the first three months of the year. There was more, but these were what we felt were the highlights. Please add your information if you wish. Part 2 will be posted this week.
Thanks for the summary!
Thinking outside the box: https://youtu.be/F4tFYXTjTec?si=WTH6gNkdgGSTkVqO