Alberta health officials said Saturday the province's H1N1 immunization clinics have been suspended immediately because of a national reduction in the number of available vaccine doses.And then they go on to justify not targeting high-risk people first to begin with.
Officials said they will roll out a plan early next week for targeted H1N1 vaccines, focusing only on those at the greatest risk. Mass immunizations likely will not resume for at least a few weeks.
Targeted recipients are pregnant women, children six months to five years of age, people under 65 with chronic health conditions, people living in remote and isolated communities and health-care workers.
Alberta Health Services' senior medical health officer Dr. Gerry Predy said the details of the targeted immunization clinics will be released Monday.
He said the suspension of mass immunizations is in effect until further notice.
"It is important for the public not to panic and to respect the priorities for vaccination," Predy said.
"Again, we're asking people to be calm. There will be more vaccine and there should be enough vaccine for everybody who wants it."
The announcement comes after H1N1 vaccination clinics in Edmonton and Calgary were overwhelmed Saturday, forcing clinics to close their lineups and turn people away.
Thousands of people showed up looking for vaccines, some lining up as early as 4 a.m.
At the Olympic Oval in Calgary, more than 3,000 people lined up.
By the time the clinic was shut down early Saturday morning, officials said the wait had already reached an estimated eight hours and the lineup stretched about half a kilometre outside the building.
Liepert, meanwhile, said "Albertans are not getting the message" about prioritizing vulnerable patients for the vaccines.
However, he maintained the government is not going into "Soviet Union mode" where they will have people in lineups prove they're in the highrisk category.
The Tory MLA for Battle River-Wainwright, Doug Griffiths, has been fielding complaints from his constituents after a clinic in Wainwright ran out of vaccine earlier this week.Gee. Maybe the word "pandemic" and the message from various levels of government that people should be vaccinated has something to do with that - no?
Griffiths believes both politicians and the public need to settle down.
"This sort of pandemic hysteria is, is — I don't understand why people are doing it. It's the flu," he said.
People wanting the swine flu vaccine in Calgary are being turned away as the clinics in Alberta's two biggest cities prepare for an early Friday closure.What's wrong with this picture?
Clinics in Calgary and Edmonton have been open every day this week until 8 p.m. But for the next three days, the clinics are set to close at 3:30 p.m. in Calgary and 4 p.m. in Edmonton.
All five of Calgary's H1N1 vaccinations have closed their lines to new people as of noon, Alberta Health Services announced. Those already waiting in line will get the shot.
On Friday morning, new flu assessment clinics opened in Calgary and Edmonton with the aim of easing congestion in hospital emergency rooms.
Before the clinic opened Friday at 8 a.m. in Calgary, about a dozen people shivered in line, eyeing the empty chairs inside the closed building.
"Adding to that frustration is that more than 200 people waiting for the H1N1 vaccine in the very same building are being allowed to wait inside," said CBC News reporter Erin Collins.
"The response is certainly good, and we're glad to see that," said Gerry Predy, senior medical officer of health for Alberta Health Services.I'll tell you what, Dr Gerry Predy: you try waiting in line reading a book for hours on end when you're one of those high-risk people who are sick and sore to begin with and who should have been given quick, exclusive access to the vaccination before the general public and then we'll talk.
"Now we have to find ways to streamline things if we can."
Eventually that might mean extending the hours of some clinics, getting patients to fill in paperwork while waiting in line, or bringing in more staff, but Predy said it's too soon to tell.
In the meantime, he pleaded for patience and suggested people bring books to read while waiting.
That prediction was made by Global News at 8:21 pm and not 10 minutes later, Stelmach made his 
It's election day here and I'll be posting the results (in a separate thread) as they come in this evening. I haven't made it out to vote yet. Just got home from the dentist's office (where she did a fabulous job!) and I'm waiting for the freezing to wear off. (If you need a referral to a good dentist in north Calgary, let me know by e-mail.)
Alberta's Lt. Governor, Normie Kwong, delivered Alberta's Speech From the Throne (text) on Monday which was really just the Conservative government's launch of its election platform since it's expected that an election call will come at any time - most likely right after the speech with the date of March 3rd being floated.The move, which has been demanded by opposition parties and spending watchdogs for years, will save Alberta families $1,056 per year and individuals $528 annually. Municipalities, universities, schools and hospitals are expected to save more than $84 million annually.
Here's how the Conservative party/government operates in Alberta. They set up panels, committees and traveling road shows to pretend to care about the opinions of the Broken down, the government forecast additional royalties in 2010 to be as follows:
* $470 million more for natural gas -- about $270 million less than recommended by the expert panel;
* $460 million more on conventional oil -- about $4 million more than called for by the royalty report;
* $470 million more for oil sands -- nearly $200 million less than recommended by the panel.
The expected $1.4-billion increase in royalties would hike Alberta's total 2010 royalty take to about $8.6 billion from $7.2 billion.
Meanwhile, Alberta Liberal Leader Kevin Taft, who was at the premier's press conference in Calgary, declined to comment on the report. Taft said it was "undemocratic" to freeze the opposition out of the technical and media briefing, which didn't give his party advance time to review the plan.
"We need time to study it, and will get back as soon as we can."
If you don't want to get caught:"The way we found these guys out is almost comical. We only had a bunch of grandmothers there and the big 250-pound guy in the middle eating all the cookies was the ex-RCMP cop."
Public money spent to spy on landowners: NDP
Alberta's arms-length energy regulator hired a private investigator to pose as a concerned citizen and infiltrate a group of landowners opposing the construction of a massive power line, new documents show.
The provincial NDP released documents obtained under Freedom of Information legislation Thursday that also show investigators gave the Energy and Utilities Board passwords that would allow it to listen in on the landowners' private conference calls.
NDP leader Brian Mason said it is a case of using public money to spy on Albertans.
"This goes far beyond what's necessary to protect the integrity of the hearing," Mason said.
"This was intelligence gathering and it was political intelligence."
This is what happens in a province in the middle of an oil boom when a Conservative government that admitted it had no plans to handle it refuses to impose rent controls.A new $9-million provincial rent assistance fund is being swamped with hundreds of unanticipated requests for cash and will run out of money by September, prompting the associate minister of affordable housing to ask her colleagues to cough up more than double that amount to keep the program afloat until next year.
Yvonne Fritz said a newly created rent supplement program that began distributing money last month has been so heavily used it will likely run out in September, when her department predicts it will have provided funding to about 1,500 Albertans hammered by rent increases.
When the money was announced in April's budget, it was supposed to last until March 2008.
The potential for new money is little comfort for David and Ann Murray, two Calgary seniors who say the rent supplement program isn't working well in its current state.
David, 69, is a retired heavy duty mechanic, and his wife Ann, 67, is hobbled and weakened after battling cancer for the last decade. Their rent will go up by $400 Sept. 1. After applying for the rent supplement program, they were told Wednesday morning they will qualify for $80 in monthly assistance.
The couple says they will never be able to afford the new $1,200 rent for their two-bedroom duplex -- plus utilities -- with their monthly net income of about $2,500 and only $80 in help from the program. They say the rent increase will force them to leave the city for somewhere cheaper.
"That was a subsidy in name only," said David. "It's another situation where (Premier) Stelmach has promised things but when it comes out, it's a little dribble."
Referring to the province's announcement this week that it will contribute $15 million to the Stampede expansion, David added: "He has money for the Stampede, but not for low-cost housing or other people in Calgary."
The province's widespread housing crunch continues to be an issue for anyone who doesn't own their home, with the city's vacancy rate sitting at 0.5 per cent and rents increasing by an average of 18 per cent in Calgary last year -- the highest in the country.
Well, hallelujah! Maybe there's hope for Alberta after all.Liberals declare victory in Calgary-Elbow byelection
Calgary dealt Premier Ed Stelmach's Tory government a sobering blow Tuesday night, with voters electing a Liberal in the heart of the city.
Though the Conservatives re-captured the rural stronghold of Drumheller-Stettler in one byelection in the southeast of the province, Liberal Craig Cheffins seized victory in Calgary-Elbow -- a riding that had been Tory blue since 1971 and was last held by former premier Ralph Klein.
The new MLA for Calgary-Elbow took the stage at his campaign headquarters shortly after 9 p.m. to the strains of We Are the Champions, delivering a victory speech to more than 100 supporters.
"You know there's a message to be delivered to the Stelmach government," he said, as the crowd chanted his name. "We know we can have better government in this province."
"Calgarians have sent a message and I have heard that message clearly," Stelmach said. "Let me assure you, mine is a government with a clear plan for dealing with the growth pressures in Calgary."
In the wake of a public infrastructure funding feud with Mayor Dave Bronconnier, what some say is an unchecked housing market, labour shortages and other boom-time stresses in the city, earlier opinion polls suggest Conservative-government support is dropping.
Housing prices are soaring in Edmonton, delighting property owners and causing financial headaches for those just starting their search for a new home.
The average price of a new house in the city is now $440,000 -- an increase of 40.5 per cent over the past year, according to Statistics Canada. That's a greater increase than anywhere else in the country.
[...]
Only cities located in the West showed a sharp increase, although not nearly as high as Edmonton:
* Calgary: 27.4 per cent
* Saskatoon: 24.9 per cent
* Regina: 17.3 per cent
By contrast, the increase in the average cost of new housing in Vancouver was 6.7 per cent, and 2.3 per cent for the Toronto and Oshawa area. In Montreal, it was 3.9 per cent.
[...]
Richard Goatcher, spokesperson for the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, said housing prices could level out if fewer people move to Alberta.
In the Drumheller-Stettler by-election 1/3 of eligible voters cast their vote. The riding has 21,790 voters and only 7144 voted. Of these 4,180 voted PC.
Via columnist Rick Bell:You kick it long enough and hard enough and somebody just might kick back.
So here we are, nearing six months since some of Stelmach's less-conscious supporters crowed about applying some boot to this city after their man won, and a growing number of locals are beginning to feel this crowd is a big pain in the posterior.
According to the noses being counted by well-respected pollster Bruce Cameron of Calgary's own Cameron Strategy, there are an increasing number of nostrils out of joint with Unsteady Eddie and his Conservatives without a clue.
Yes, flicker, flicker, lightbulbs are actually going on in these parts. About time.
In fact, an amazing half of Calgarians think the Tories don't deserve to win the June 12 byelection to replace Ralph as MLA for Calgary-Elbow.
That's not all.
Since January, Stelmach's sad sacks have tumbled 19 points in this city, to 40%, two numbers lower than in Edmonton, where the party support is also down.
Yes, the poll shows fewer Tory backers here than in Edmonton, as in the city with all the Liberal and NDP MLAs and the nickname Redmonton. Oh my.
So I was reading this news article last week that said a new museum was opening in Kentucky that espouses the belief that there were dinosaurs on Noah's Ark. Who are these people?? I wondered.Opponents argue that children who see the exhibits will be confused when they learn in school that the universe is 14 billion years old rather than 6,000.
"Teachers don't deserve a student coming into class saying 'Gee Mrs. Brown, I went to this fancy museum and it said you're teaching me a lie,'" Dr. Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, told reporters before the museum opened.
A Gallup poll last year showed almost half of Americans believe that humans did not evolve but were created by God in their present form within the last 10,000 years.
Three of 10 Republican presidential candidates said in a recent debate that they did not believe in evolution.
BIG VALLEY - Alberta will soon have a museum filled with "scientific evidence" that the flood in the Book of Genesis and other biblical events actually happened, and that people walked the Earth at the same time as dinosaurs.
[IIRC, my great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather was squished to death by a brontosaurus toe on his way to work one day. Or maybe he just died naturally. I can't remember... -catnip]
Canada's first creationist museum will open June 5 in Big Valley as "a scientific and biblically based alternative to the evolutionary view of Earth history" put forward by the Royal Tyrrell Museum [no dinosaurs stomping on people there. -catnip] 60 kilometres to the south, said Harry Nibourg, founder of the Big Valley Creation Science Museum.
[...]
Nibourg, a 46-year-old oilfield service worker, has been planning, building and preparing the museum for four years.
He put his own money and sweat into the facility, building it himself with no public funding, although he did get a few private donations.
"We're not trying to push an agenda," he said Wednesday. "We just think that people should see both sides of everything."
One video shows a bacterium and describes how it travels by rapidly moving its tail -- suggesting that even the most primitive creatures must have been intelligently designed. Children can push a button and activate a giant bacterium.
Well-lit cases display fossilized plants from species that still exist, to show that fossils aren't necessarily very old.
Making the same point is a teddy bear treated with mineralized water to make it appear fossilized.
"We don't refer to creationism -- we don't refute it or support it."
