reports
Extracted Carbon
Re-Examining Canada's Contribution to Climate Change Through Fossil Fuel Exports
This study examines Canada’s contribution to global climate change in light of the Paris Agreement by looking at extracted carbon — the total amount of fossil fuels removed from Canadian soil that ends up in the atmosphere — whether used for domestic purposes, or exported and combusted elsewhere.
Losing Ground
Alberta's Residential Elder Care Crisis
Elder care in Alberta remains in a state of crisis, with the availability of long-term care beds plummeting over the last 15 years, an ongoing shift to "supportive living" beds and for-profit residential care, and chronic understaffing.
This study assesses the impact of projected expansion in the oil and gas sector on Canada’s climate commitments, and reviews existing pipeline and rail capacity for oil exports under Alberta’s 100 Mt oil sands emissions cap.
Buried and Forgotten
Newspaper Coverage of Workplace Injury and Death in Alberta
Newspapers are one of the main public sources of information about workplace injuries and fatalities, but the analysis in this report suggests Alberta newspaper articles are creating an inaccurate picture of workplace incidents.
Equal Worth
Designing Effective Pay Equity Laws For Alberta
Alberta has the largest gender income gap in Canada. With a gender income gap of 41%, the average man in Alberta will have earned as much by Canada Day as it will take a woman the entire year to earn. Effective pay equity legislation that ensures women receive equal pay for work of equal worth is a key element in a package of needed policy changes to start closing the gap.
Hard Math, Harder Choices
Alberta's Budget Reality
Barring unexpectedly rapid improvements in the energy sector, the Notley government will soon be forced to address the previous government's budgetary legacy; not only the massive revenue hole resulting from the precipitous drop in resource revenues that began in the fall of 2014, but also a structural deficit that emerged even when resource prices were high.
Illegal and Injurious
How Alberta Has Failed Teen Workers
Most Albertans will hold a job at some point during their teen years. Yet teens employed in Alberta face widespread illegality and injury on the job, and Alberta does not effectively enforce the employment laws that are supposed to protect teen workers, including the Employment Standards Code and the Occupational Health and Safety Act.
Successive PC governments in Alberta experimented with neoliberal approaches to the non-profit social services sector, with negative consequences for the sector and the people it serves.
Ending Pay to Play
The Need for Political Finance Reform in Alberta
A ban on corporate and union donations is widely expected to be one of the new NDP government's first bills, but it is important that the government does not stop there, but rather works to systematically change Alberta's campaign finance rules to reform the provinces’s political culture in the public interest.
From Gap to Chasm
Alberta’s Increasing Income Inequality
The gap between the rich and the poor in Alberta is the widest in the country, and the disparity between those Albertans at the top of the income ladder and those at the bottom has been growing faster than in any other province.