St. Albert news

• Municipal plans to fight wildfire and floods in focus as draft bill hits the road

  03-04-2018 23:04 via edmontonjournal.com
  Around a dozen Alberta municipalities lack the emergency plans they need when a big flood or fire hits. 
  That’s of grave concern to officials, who will hit the road this spring and summer to consult on a bill tweaking the emergency management act. 
  The focus will be ensuring municipalities understand what’s required in their emergency management plans. That means not just having a binder on a shelf to gather dust, but actually practising the plans, updating them r
  
  Read more

• Edmonton looking for sweet spot in cannabis regulation as it enters a new world

  03-04-2018 22:58 via edmontonjournal.com
  Edmonton councillors are aiming for a balance between “liberal” and “puritanical” regulations for Canada’s looming legalization of cannabis.
  The urban planning committee is discussing land use and zoning matters related to marijuana Tuesday.
  The committee wants to address the distance between pot retailers and schools as well as the distance between stores. 
  “It’s a new world for us. It’s a new world for Canada,” Coun. Michael Walters sa
  
  Read more

• Leduc-based oilsands camp company bought by American multinational

  03-04-2018 22:38 via edmontonjournal.com
  One of Alberta’s major oilsands accommodation companies has been bought for $367 million by an American multinational workforce housing firm.
  Nisku-based Noralta Lodge Ltd., which operates 11 lodges and a total of 7,900 rooms for workers across northern Alberta, was taken over by Houston’s Civeo Corp. in a deal completed last weekend, the companies said in a news release.
  Civeo, spun out of Oil States International in 2014, owns 19 lodges and villages in Canada and Australia with mor
  
  Read more

• Man shot in vehicle during crime spree now in stable condition

  03-04-2018 21:30 via edmontonjournal.com
  A 38-year-old man shot as he drove in north Edmonton by a gunman in a stolen vehicle last week is no longer listed in critical condition, say police. 
  The victim — shot a week ago Tuesday night at Manning Drive and 18 Street in what investigators called a crime spree by a group of five people — was this Tuesday listed in stable condition, said police in a statement. 
  Investigators are still processing charges against the two adults and three youths (two female and one
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Minchau school reopens after water damage repairs complete

  03-04-2018 20:52 via edmontonjournal.com
  Students have returned to their Mill Woods elementary school after flood damage displaced them for three months.
  Eleven public schools and four Catholic schools across the city sustained damage during a late December and early January cold snap that prompted burst pipes in many buildings.
  Minchau School, at 3615 Mill Woods Rd. East, was the hardest hit when a staff washroom pipe burst on New Year’s Day. When school caretakers discovered the leak the following day, most of the school&r
  
  Read more

• Edmonton to receive $878 million for transit projects

  03-04-2018 20:12 via edmontonjournal.com
  Edmonton’s transit system is receiving a healthy boost thanks to a cash injection from the federal government.
  Federal, provincial and city officials held a news conference in Edmonton Tuesday where they announced Alberta’s $3.3 billion  share of Ottawa’s $33 billion infrastructure fund will go towards transit, green infrastructure, recreation and other needs in the next 10 years.
  The money represents Phase 2 of the infrastructure fund first promised in the 2015 federal el
  
  Read more

• Restaurant pop-ups and tasting events galore coming up in YEG

  03-04-2018 20:10 via edmontonjournal.com
  Why Not Café and Bar is hosting a Northern-inspired pop-up on Tuesday, April 10 from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. at the restaurant, located on the second floor at 8534 109 St. Chefs Levi Biddlecombe and Tyson Wright will be working with chef Robin Wasicuna of Twin Pine Diner in Yellowknife. Wasicuna has appeared on Chopped Canada, as well as You Gotta Eat Here. The menu for the evening will feature fusion comfort foods, including bison sourced from the Yellowknife area. Chef Wright will m
  
  Read more

• Alberta Avenue slaying victim identified

  03-04-2018 19:26 via edmontonjournal.com
  Edmonton’s fifth homicide victim of the year who died of head trauma after an attack in the basement of an Alberta Avenue home has been identified in court documents. 
  Cory Waters, 42, suffered fatal head injuries during the Sunday, March 25, attack around 10:30 p.m. at the home near 117 Avenue and 91 Street.
  A woman from the basement suite ran to a nearby convenience store to call for help after finding Waters in medical distress, police at the scene said that night.
  He was pron
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Tuesday's letters: Current name works for unremarkable bridge

  03-04-2018 19:03 via edmontonjournal.com
  Re. “Walterdale Bridge needs a new name,” Letters, March 31
  So Garth Ukrainetz is implying that the Walterdale Bridge is as majestic as Rundle Mountain in Banff and that it will define Edmonton in the same way the Eiffel Tower defines Paris. 
  I hardly think that any tourist coming to Edmonton is going to make a point of searching out the Walterdale Bridge to spend time admiring it; it is barely a functional bridge with only three lanes for traffic.
  This bridge pal
  
  Read more

• Housing sales down from last year in Edmonton region, new report says

  03-04-2018 18:55 via edmontonjournal.com
  Although house sales in the Edmonton region rose sharply last month, they’re still down by more than 10 per cent compared to this time last year, new figures show.
  While the number of single-family homes sold in March was 24 per cent higher than in February, sales were off 11 per cent from March 2017, according to statistics released Tuesday by the Realtors Association of Edmonton.
  Year-to-year sales results were also off for condominiums (down 15 per cent) and duplexes-row houses (down th
  
  Read more

• Edmonton to receive $3.3 billion in federal infrastructure funds

  03-04-2018 18:33 via edmontonjournal.com
  Edmonton’s transit system is receiving a healthy boost thanks to a $3.3 billion injection from the federal government.
  Federal, provincial and city officials held a news conference in Edmonton Tuesday where they announced Alberta’s share of Ottawa’s $33 billion infrastructure fund to go towards transit, green infrastructure, recreation and other needs over the next 10 years.
  The funding breaks down to $2.1 for public transit, $1 billion for green infrastructure, $140 million fo
  
  Read more

• Cineplex Odeon VIP theatre coming to Edmonton North location

  03-04-2018 17:14 via edmontonjournal.com
  Edmonton will soon be host to two Cineplex Odeon VIP theatres.
  The Canadian entertainment and media company announced plans Tuesday to add four specifically designed VIP auditoriums and a licensed lounge to the Cineplex Odeon North Edmonton location, 14231-137 Ave NW,  to go along with the city’s only other VIP Cinema location in Windermere, which opened in 2012.
  Construction on the new adult-only VIP theatres is already underway and is expected to wrap up in the fall.
  &ldqu
  
  Read more

• Today's Top Three: Stolen guitars destined for charity; new cannabis facility; Canada 3-1 at curling worlds

  03-04-2018 15:03 via edmontonjournal.com
  Today’s Top Three is a daily online feature highlighting a few of the most interesting and newsworthy stories you can expect to see on edmontonjournal.com.
  Stolen guitars earmarked for children’s charity
  Over the weekend, thieves made off with five signed guitars worth anywhere up to $25,000 from The Rock and Roll Society of Edmonton’s headquarters in the city’s southeast.
  The group’s executive director Todd Crawshaw said the early morning raid by thieves targeted i
  
  Read more

• Edmonton weather: You're cold, I'm cold, everything is cold

  03-04-2018 14:26 via edmontonjournal.com
  A look at today’s Edmonton weather by Environment Canada.
  Tuesday morning temperatures at the Edmonton Blatchford station measure -13.6 C with a 10 km/h wind contributing to a -20 wind chill.
  Today: Sunny. Becoming a mix of sun and cloud this morning. High -5 C. UV index 3 or moderate.
  Tonight: Partly cloudy. Low minus 13.
  Tomorrow:  Mainly cloudy. Periods of light snow beginning in the morning and ending in the afternoon. Wind becoming northwest 20 km/h gusting to 40 in the afte
  
  Read more

• Opinion: NDP gov't shows courage in land-use planning

  03-04-2018 14:00 via edmontonjournal.com
  No matter what you might think of Alberta’s NDP government, it can’t be denied that they have the courage to venture where their predecessors feared to tread.
  Need pipelines approved? No worries: here’s a carbon levy and an aggressive timetable for closing coal-fired generation facilities and encouraging the oil patch to find more innovative ways to reduce their carbon emissions. Sure, we don’t do those things in Alberta — but actually now we do.
  So, we got the pipe
  
  Read more

• Growing divergence between Canadian and American oil prices should ease this year, forecast says

  03-04-2018 14:00 via edmontonjournal.com
  Continued pipeline bottlenecks boosted the difference between Canadian and American oil prices by 86 per cent in January from the end of 2017, a new report says.
  But that gap could begin to shrink once the Sturgeon refinery northeast of Edmonton reaches full operation later this year and gives Canadian producers another processing option, according to a forecast released Tuesday by consulting firm Deloitte.
  Increased American refinery capacity and maintaining full crude pipeline operations will
  
  Read more

• New west Edmonton cannabis facility hopes to be part of major local industry

  03-04-2018 11:00 via edmontonjournal.com
  An executive with a company building a west-end marijuana production facility says Edmonton could become one of the major centres in Canada’s cannabis industry.
  But the business will likely undergo a big shakeup in coming years as some of the more than a dozen firms in the region sink or swim in the looming world of legal recreational pot, said Alan Clark, chief executive of Viridis Natural Health Products Ltd.
  “This is certainly a rush, and that’s what happened when they went
  
  Read more

• Judge orders Crown pay costs to Legal Aid Alberta in 'exceptional' case

  03-04-2018 11:00 via edmontonjournal.com
  An Edmonton judge ordered the province to pay court costs to Legal Aid Alberta after finding that the Crown prosecutor “involuntarily” forced the organization’s involvement in an appeal of an impaired driving case.
  In a decision filed Thursday, Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Doreen Sulyma ruled in favour of Legal Aid Alberta on an application to make Alberta’s Crown prosecutorial service foot the bill for dragging Legal Aid, represented by Edmonton lawyer
  
  Read more

• Alberta shuts down council tasked with improving child intervention system

  03-04-2018 11:00 via edmontonjournal.com
  The Alberta government has quietly disbanded an arm’s-length council tasked with improving the province’s child intervention system.
  “Of course we were disappointed,” said Donna Boulanger, chairwoman of the Child and Family Services Council for Quality Assurance.
  The group was established as a result of a 2010 child intervention system review panel. Saturday effectively marked its closure with the end of an 18-month renewal term.
  Its mandate included examining services, d
  
  Read more

• Player grades: Oilers outgas one last stinker on the road with miserable effort in Minny

  03-04-2018 08:56 via edmontonjournal.com
  Oilers 0, Wild 3
  In attempting to sum up Monday night’s road finale in Minnesota, Edmonton Oilers coach Todd McLellan summarized: “They found a weakness and went after it.”
  The weakness McLellan was referring to might as well have been his entire team, at least the 18 skaters, who mailed in a miserable effort in falling meekly, 3-0. Playing on what appeared to be a partially frozen swamp, McLellan’s crew couldn’t put two passes together, never mind a decent powerpla
  
  Read more

• Woman charged with arson after Leduc hospital fire

  03-04-2018 05:01 via edmontonjournal.com
  Leduc RCMP have charged a woman with arson after someone started a fire in a hospital emergency room.
  Last Thursday at around 5 a.m., police and firefighters were called to the Leduc Hospital emergency room when a suspicious fire was set in a bathroom. Soon after, police arrested a 45-year-old woman near the hospital, police said in a Monday news release. Witnesses had seen the woman taking items into the bathroom.
  Firefighters quickly contained the blaze, and no one was injured.
  The woman was c
  
  Read more

• Paula Simons: New appeal court Justice Ritu Khullar a reluctant role model

  03-04-2018 01:55 via edmontonjournal.com
  Sometimes, people ask Ritu Khullar where she’s from.
  You know, in that slightly awkward way that people tend to ask non-white Canadians with non-Anglo-Saxon names where they’re from.
  “I tell them I was born in Fort Vermilion. And raised in Morinville.”
  Not exactly the answer most people expect.
  But then, Khullar has always had a way of defying expectations. 
  Last month, Khullar, 53, was named to the Alberta Court of Appeal. Her elevation to Alberta’s highest co
  
  Read more

• Alberta pushes for exemptions to federal pipeline approval changes being proposed

  03-04-2018 01:29 via edmontonjournal.com
  The Alberta government is working to secure exemptions under proposed federal pipeline approval laws. 
  The Impact Assessment Act, currently being discussed in Ottawa, was last week labelled “an impractical and unworkable process” by the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association. 
  In a frankly worded presentation to the House of Commons environment committee last week, CEPA president Chris Bloomer said the act would “create unmanageable uncertainty.”
  Bloomer said
  
  Read more

• Graham Thomson: NDP cabinet minister gets ready for next election — by announcing she's not running

  03-04-2018 01:27 via edmontonjournal.com
  Last Thursday, associate health minister Brandy Payne, a Calgary MLA, announced she will not be running in the 2019 provincial election.
  The fact she made the announcement via Facebook on the eve of a long weekend (while MLAs were already on a weeklong constituency break) suggests she and the NDP wanted to keep the news as low key as possible.
  Not that Payne’s departure from the provincial scene a year from now will shatter the NDP government.
  Her impending retreat from the political
  
  Read more

• Thieves took $25,000 worth of signed electric guitars earmarked for children's charity

  03-04-2018 01:12 via edmontonjournal.com
  Todd Crawshaw spent most of Monday cursing the theft of five signed guitars worth anywhere up to $25,000 from The Rock and Roll Society of Edmonton’s headquarters in the city’s southeast.
  The group’s executive director was miffed for many reasons, but mostly because the early morning raid by thieves targeted instruments that were destined for auctions that raised money for a music program for at-risk youth.
  But as the day wore on, and as he calmed down, his mood began to c
  
  Read more

Follow @StAlbertNews on Twitter!