#ucp

Skate Canada says it won’t host national and international-level events in Alberta, citing provincial law that restricts transgender athletes from participating in female-only sports.

The organization said in a statement Tuesday that its decision was made following its assessment of Alberta’s Fairness and Safety in Sport Act.

The law, which came into effect Sept. 1, blocks transgender athletes from Alberta who are 12 and older from competing in female amateur sports.

“Skate Canada considers a variety of criteria when selecting host locations for its national events,” the statement said. “Following a careful assessment of Alberta’s Fairness and Safety in Sport Act, Skate Canada has determined that we are unable to host events in the province while maintaining our national standards for safe and inclusive sport.”

Two advocacy groups fighting the Alberta government on transgender laws say they are switching tactics to continue their battle in court. The renewed challenge from the groups Egale and Skipping Stone comes one day after Premier Danielle Smith’s government used the Charter’s notwithstanding clause. The clause allows governments to override Charter rights and prevents courts from striking laws down. One of the transgender laws prohibits doctors from prescribing puberty blockers and hormones to those under the age of 16 and from performing gender-affirming top surgeries on those under 18. The advocacy groups say if the law can’t be challenged on the Charter, they will argue it’s a criminal law issue, given doctors who don’t comply with it could face fines or even imprisonment. They say only the federal government has the authority to make criminal law, so Alberta’s law should be ruled unconstitutional.

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Ms Smith: I think that we are acting in the true spirit of economic reconciliation.

Petition to the Minister of Health

Whereas:

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms exists to protect individuals and minority communities from discriminatory laws;

Recent legislation enacted by the Governments of Alberta and Saskatchewan restricts the rights, dignity, and safety of transgender and gender-diverse people, particularly children and youth, including access to gender-affirming and medically appropriate health care;

These provincial governments have invoked the notwithstanding clause to shield such legislation from judicial review, thereby preventing Charter challenges from being meaningfully heard;

The Constitution Act, 1867 provides the federal government, through section 90, with the authority to disallow certain provincial legislation in order to protect constitutional principles and minority rights; and

The use of extraordinary constitutional powers to limit Charter protections warrants careful federal review and response.

We, the undersigned, Concerned Allies of Transgender Canadians, call upon the Minister of Health to Recommend and support, within Cabinet, the exercise of the Government of Canada’s constitutional authority, including the power of disallowance under section 90 of the Constitution Act, 1867, to annul or repeal provincial legislation enacted in Alberta and Saskatchewan that restricts the rights of transgender and gender-diverse people and has been shielded from Charter scrutiny through the use of the notwithstanding clause, and to affirm the federal government’s responsibility to uphold Charter rights across Canada.

Dreamworks Animation Television And Disney Branded Television Team Up For "Casper The Friendly Ghost" Live-Action/Animation Hybrid Series For Disney+. Rob Letterman And Hilary Winston Set As Showrunners With Steven Spielberg As Executive Producers.

What if the two biggest animation powerhouses in recent years which brought us many beloved animated movies worked together for a live-action/animated project....... that would give us a good scare. Casper the Friendly Ghost will get the live-action series treatment with a brand new live-action/animation hybrid series, the project was part of a in a competitive bidding war with multiple streaming services with Disney+ winning the bid.

Rob Letterman and Hilary Winston, who executive produce Disney+’s “Goosebumps” series, as well as Steven Spielberg will serve as Executive Producers for this new series.

There are no details yet about the new Casper, described as a modern update on the classic ghost story, which is in the early stages of development. It is believed to have a dark edge to it the way Wednesday tackles the Addams Family lore. Letterman and Winston are writing, with Letterman set to direct. The duo are executive producing with Spielberg.

The series is produced by UCP, a division of Universal Studio Group, as well as DreamWorks Animation Television in association with Disney Branded Television. This is a rare Disney+ series project based on famous IP that is not from within the Disney ecosystem or derived from books. If Casper goes to series it will be the first time Dreamworks and Disney will work together on a project much ironic since Dreamworks was created by Jeffrey Katzenberg and Steven Spielberg to create a rival to Disney.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is currently attempting to pass Bill 2 (the Back to School Act) after over 3 weeks of all public, francophone, and Catholic teachers within Alberta going on strike due to overcrowded classrooms, a severe lack of funding (especially for public education), minimal resources, and salaries that have fallen way behind the rate of inflation (only a 5.87% pay increase in the past DECADE, while inflation in the same time frame has gone up by roughly 30%), among other issues.

Several weeks before the strike started, negotiations between the Alberta Teachers Association (ATA) and Smith have gone under way, with two offers being made by Smith but rejected by the ATA via teacher vote each time. Due to a lack of agreement up until October 6th, 2025, the entire province's education system has since gone on halt.

While multiple attempts at negotiating have been made the past few weeks, the offers made by Smith do not solve anything;

Hiring 3000 new teachers would mean an average of 1.5 new teachers in every school, but there's quite literally no physical room for more teachers, classes, or students in the average school building anymore -- even in the urban areas.

Her proposed wage increase of 12% over 4 years was also deemed unsatisfactory, given how it does not in any way keep up with inflation rates in any significant way at all.

Concerns over class sizes have been brushed aside; despite the fact that so many teachers have to tend to as many as 40-50 students per class (standard in Canada - -and what classrooms can physically and safely contain -- is 20-30 students. Even less in rural areas with smaller schools that service multiple areas), she's somehow come up with the claim that the average class size in Alberta is only 21 students, thus classroom size caps weren't even on the bargaining table at all. According to this CBC article, "The ACOL report recommended Alberta school divisions aim to have, on average, Kindergarten to Grade 3 classes have 17 students, Grade 4-6 classes have 23 students, junior high classes have 25 students and high school classes have 27 students. Alberta’s government cancelled class size reporting in 2019. Data from Edmonton Public Schools, which still tracks it, and anecdotes from teachers, students and parents suggest class sizes in many schools are much larger than those recommendations." On top of that, Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides, who reportedly has little to no experience with K9 education, claims that class size has no impact on academic performance.

One of the offers even contained free COVID-19 vaccine/booster shots for teachers. For context to anyone reading this outside of Canada, every other province and territory offers the COVID shots for free. Alberta was also like that at some point, until Smith decided to make them cost $100CAD ($71.44USD). How this was intended to solve any of the ATA's mentioned problems is...not quite clear at all.

If the Back to School Act is passed, the current strike will be deemed illegal and staff will be forced back into classrooms sometime by the end of this week. Consequences haven't yet been determined as of the time of writing this post (Oct 27, 10:13AM). What Smith is doing is highly unconstitutional and a major infringement on the right to protest (detailed in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms). This behaviour isn't new either; the Alberta Sovereignty Act, passed November 29, 2023, was put in place to have some leeway from Canadian laws, giving Smith more control over Alberta. She does not care about what's constitutional. It's not even that secretive, she herself ignited the flames for a separatism movement in the province.

Here's where student action comes into play. If the Act is officially passed and put into effect, students must take the torch and continue this protest on the behalf of teachers. Alberta's public education system cannot continue to function in its current conditions. If the strikes end up working, the younger children will finally have a system that can accommodate them and their needs without stretching itself out thin. Speaking as a 12th grader with multiple diploma exams in January, while an extended strike would be very difficult to bounce back from, the student strike would continue the chances of giving the next graduating class and all the kids beyond them a proper education. How is it that we're the richest province in the nation but experience the poorest schools?

Even without the strike, Alberta students have been put at a huge disadvantage for years when it comes to post-secondary education opportunities; students from provinces like Ontario benefit from a more functional education system that gives them more academic prowess, opportunities, and overall less stress; to put it casually, compared to Albertan public students, private students and those from other provinces are practically spoon-fed opportunities that help them exceed in academics, setting up strong foundations for whatever they choose to do with their lives afterwards. Public students in Alberta deserve the same. The ATA has been raising awareness about these problems for years now, and we've gotten to the climax.

As of the current time of me writing this (Oct 27, 11:11AM), Bill 2 has been announced to be discussed this afternoon in Edmonton.

My fellow peers: if Bill 2 is passed teachers are forced back to work, do not go back to school. Not until the UCP bends to the will of the common good. We cannot let Smith have her way again. Talks of a student strike have already been taking place for the past several days, I'm simply doing my part in educating others and spreading the word.

https://edmontonjournal.com/opinion/columnists/opinion-its-time-for-alberta-to-put-a-cap-on-class-sizes

https://calgaryherald.com/news/back-to-school-first-says-premier

Which is funny enough on its own, but then one of my coworkers was like "Not enough Jesus Points, that's for sure."

And we all looked at her like "???"

She explained that when her husband does something nice he jokes that he's racking up "Jesus Points" for the afterlife.

According to that same coworker, our current provincial government's actions regarding the teachers' strike mean "they ain't rackin' up any Jesus Points either."