Alberta Watch Dog

Civic engagement is a right, not a credential. Helping Albertans keep track of issues that matter to them

[Alberta Watch Dog @watchdogAB]

685 people filed a simple online form.

That slowed Canada’s largest data centre in Olds - not politicians, not lobbyists. Citizens using the AUC.

Meta. Wonder Valley. Beacon Foothills. All the same process.

https://t.co/vuc0ykwLfd shows how

[Alberta Watch Dog @watchdogAB]

@TrueEager @Reil76 Similar to how Danielle Smith refuses to call a public inquiry about the healthcare debacle

[Alberta Watch Dog @watchdogAB]

@ABLabourToday That would’ve been so scary. I’m so sorry that happened to them. I hope everyone’s safe and healthy.

[Alberta Watch Dog @watchdogAB]

I barely recognize this province anymore. We need anti-slapp laws.

[Alberta Watch Dog @watchdogAB]

@DrouinNorm32708 I know 😞 we can’t lose hope though. If enough of us are engaged we CAN make changes

[Alberta Watch Dog @watchdogAB]

685 people filed a simple online form.

That slowed Canada’s largest data centre in Olds - not politicians, not lobbyists. Citizens using the AUC.

Meta. Wonder Valley. Beacon Foothills. All the same process.

https://t.co/vuc0ykwLfd shows how

[The Breakdown @TheBreakdownAB]

“Did Smith really welcome to her province a corporate miscreant now lobbying the U.S. government to amend its laws to grant it legal immunity from thousands of lawsuits from young people and their families harmed by its products?

Yes, she did.” https://t.co/1fo9XQsWkw

[Gil McGowan @gilmcgowan]

Given these robust, record-setting profits, why are we, the citizens of Alberta, being asked to pick up the $100 billion-plus tab for the proposed new pipeline and carbon-capture facilities? Why are we, the owners of the resource, being asked to forego billions in royalties?

[BladeoftheSun @BladeoftheS]

13 workers left Palantir and issued this statement.

"Palantir is increasingly complicit, normalizing authoritarianism under the guise of a 'revolution' led by oligarchs. We must resist this trend."

[@JohnBeggs @jbeggs252]

US has been banning/eliminating heath regulations and inspections of food and food related products. They have removed the ban on cancer causing products used to boost ag production. Canada needs to ban US food products from entering our food chain.

[michael clarke @ClarkeRaodi123]

Rural towns like @TownOfOlds think that having an AI center will be an economic boom. Folks you are being sold a monorail. The O/G do not even pay their taxes. You think Smith is going let these douche bags pay your town any taxes? She and her UCP MLAs will tell us to F O.

[DM @DeannaM59056819]

How about creating a hospital wait time complaint line?
Corruption tip line? Data breach line? Human rights infringement line? Compromised media tip line?

ABns need to focus on the UCP’s real disasters.

#FireTheUCP #ableg #CorruptCare #abhealth #abed #FireDanielleSmith

[DKGray @TheRealDKGray]

Thanks to every media outlet except the Globe and Mail for sweeping the blatant corruption of the Smith/Anderson Government under the rug.

If this had happened under Klein, Stelmach or Redford, it would have been front fold of every paper, and on the news nightly.

Do your fucking jobs.

[🇨🇦Wayne🇨🇦 @Reil76]

WHY ARE THEY ALL SO SHADY?!?

Mitch Sylvestre Won’t Show His Books

Mitch Sylvestre wants Albertans to hand him a mandate for independence. He can’t be bothered to hand Elections Alberta his group’s bank records.

Sylvestre runs the Alberta Prosperity Project and leads Stay Free Alberta, the petition drive behind the push for a separation referendum. He’s built his public image around plain-spoken populism: a guy from Bonnyville who built a business, and now just wants Albertans to get a vote. But the paper trail on his group’s finances tells a different story.

Election Commissioner Paula Hale’s office sought a court injunction against APP after the group defied two separate formal notices to produce financial records, where the money comes from, how it’s spent. That’s the legal threshold for any group doing political advertising in Alberta: cross $1,000 in spending, you register as a third-party advertiser and show your work.

APP’s answer, delivered through lawyer Jeffrey Rath, was that zero dollars had been spent on advertising and no invoices existed, this from a group that put up a billboard on the highway between Edmonton and Calgary, ran dozens of town halls, and solicited donations through its own website.

When that story didn’t hold, it changed. Rath told investigators Sylvestre had informed everyone connected to APP that the group had no role in the petition campaign and individuals were on hiatus, a pivot that landed right as disclosure obligations were closing in.

The Election Commissioner didn’t accept the loose-affiliation framing. Her office noted APP incorporated as a society on Jan. 26, with Sylvestre as chair and Rath as a director, a corporate entity with named officers, not a handful of unaffiliated individuals.

Sylvestre also has a documented history of circulating false claims: that billions in federal spending were personally diverted by Justin Trudeau, that large numbers of immigrants entering Canada could be foreign soldiers, and that Canada profits from organ sales tied to assisted dying.

Even the headline number driving the movement is softer than most coverage treats it. The claim that Stay Free Alberta collected 300,000 signatures rests almost entirely on Sylvestre’s own say-so, with academics flagging it as unverified.

Sylvestre has also claimed Premier Danielle Smith personally asked him what he’d think about Alberta trading in U.S. dollars, a claim her office has denied, saying she supports a sovereign Alberta within a united Canada.

Add it up and the picture isn’t a folksy outsider fighting the system. It’s the head of an organization that stonewalled a lawful records request, changed its story when caught, and is asking hundreds of thousands of Albertans to trust it with the most consequential vote of their lives.

If Sylvestre wants Albertans to believe he’s running a transparent, grassroots movement, the bar is low. Show the books.

[Novara Media @novaramedia]

Dozens of workers are suing Meta over claims it used AI to identify workers for mass layoffs, with those taking disability or maternity leave disproportionately targeted.

The lawsuit, filed in California on Monday on behalf of 26 employees, alleges that a “constellation of internal artificial intelligence systems” was used to sack people by looking at their keystroke and activity monitoring data.

“Meta did not assemble the termination list through the considered judgment of managers who knew the work,” it reads.

The lawsuit points to the company’s recent layoff of 8,000 workers, and alleges that Meta used AI to assess workers’ productivity but did not take into account time off for medical reasons or because they were due to give birth.

“The result was that employees who took protected leaves were disproportionately selected for layoff, based on scoring that not only failed to account for their protected leaves, but in effect penalised the employees for exercising their legal rights to these leaves,” the complaint said.

One of the plaintiffs was told she was being laid off just two days before she gave birth, despite the fact she had been approved for pre-birth pregnancy leave. Another is an engineer who received a “lowered rating” because he took time off for an injury.

A Meta spokesperson told the Guardian the claims in the lawsuit “lack merit and are not based on fact,” adding that “workforce management and organisational decisions were and are made by people, not AI”.

Meta, which owns Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, introduced an AI employee-monitoring program this year to capture keystrokes, mouse activity, browser history, messages, emails and location data on company devices.

“The AI models learn from watching really smart people do things,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly said in an internal meeting.

[Alberta Watch Dog @watchdogAB]

@gilmcgowan @lilmizshelley Wait until you hear about the (Kevin O’Leary) Wonder Valley data centre! It’s not going to be a “sovereign” project - based on the investors and the customers it will serve- but our resources will be used for it.

[Alberta Watch Dog @watchdogAB]

@cspotweet @Iluvhikingjen He needs jail time

[Gil McGowan @gilmcgowan]

It’s happening again. Alberta’s four big oil sands companies are raking in HUGE profits. But, somehow, the Smith government wants us to believe that we, the citizens of Alberta, need to provide them with more “incentives” (ie corporate welfare) to invest.

[Peter Guthrie @PeterGuthrie99]

Here’s a fun fact: Companies associated with the Mraiche family continue to bid on Alberta government contracts including Health, while relatives of that same family continue to work in government ministerial offices—offices where staffing decisions are ultimately made under the authority of the Premier and the Premier’s Chief of Staff.

Those facts raise legitimate questions about the adequacy of conflict-of-interest safeguards and the public’s confidence in the integrity of government decision-making.

#abpoli #ableg #alberta #accountability #ethics #cdnpoli #abtory

[Alberta Watch Dog @watchdogAB]

This is unacceptable

[CTV News Calgary @CTVCalgary]

Alberta leads Canada in gender pay gap https://t.co/R7LoYigvyx

[CanadaWill 🇨🇦 @CanadaWillPrj]

"Alberta Independence." That was the pitch.
US Statehood. That's the plan.

If they'll hide the destination, what else are they hiding from you? And if that worries you, you're far from the only one.
#FreeAB #alberta #albertasovereignty #ableg