Southern Alberta Council on Public Affairs (SACPA)

Tourism is vital for the success of many economies around the world. It boosts revenues, creates thousands of jobs, helps to develop infrastructure and plants a sense of cultural exchange between visitors and residents. With four UNESCO World Heritage sites and the largest facilities for Sports and Business Events south of Calgary, opportunities are available to invest, grow and capture additional...

The Alberta Government recently announced their intention to ban gender-affirming care for trans youth under the age of 18, despite contemporary research and internationally recognized best practices, as set out by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), agreeing that this could end up hurting many of those vulnerable youth. Additionally proposed measures for transgender...

The ability to ride your bike off highway and jog or walk safely along a 15 km paved pathway between Lethbridge and Coaldale is something the LINK Regional Pathway Society is working towards. And they have the support of the City and Lethbridge County, St. Mary Irrigation District (SMRID) and the Town of Coaldale. The society has been working on a vision to connect the Henderson Lake area with the...

ALERT’s (Alberta Law Enforcement Response Teams) ICE (Internet Child Exploitation) teams investigate a range of criminal offences involving child pornography, any computer-related child sexual abuse, child luring over the internet, voyeurism involving underage victims, and child sex trade/tourism. ICE teams also investigate sextortion involving minors. Intakes and case referrals have nearly triple...

Through Kainai Peacemaking we continue to strive for quality of life and provide an orderly and acceptable way of conducting our lives within the Kainai community by providing opportunities for individuals to resolve conflicts with the law. Speakers: Debbie Melting Tallow, Sherry Tailfeathers and Leon Day Chief Debbie Melting Tallow is administrative support/Intake worker for the Kainai Peacemakin...

In January 2024, Rachel Notley announced that she’s stepping down as leader of the Alberta NDP. Notley, the daughter of former NDP leader Grant Notley, was elected to the Alberta Legislature in 2008, representing Edmonton – Strathcona. She won the provincial party leadership in October 2014 and subsequently served as premier of Alberta from 2015 - 2019 after the NDP won the 2015 provincial electio...

Combining firm ideological commitments with shrewd political tactics, Jason Kenney was a key figure in bringing right-wing populism to the mainstream of Canadian politics, but in doing so he unleashed forces he couldn’t control, which eventually produced his downfall. The speaker will argue that from Jason Kenney’s days as an anti-abortion activist at the University of San Francisco, and through h...

Sometimes it’s difficult to tell if what we’re seeing online is true. With so much information coming from countless different sources the internet can be an overwhelming landscape. There are a lot of tactics misinformers can use to catch us off guard and no one is excluded from getting caught up in it from time to time. ScienceUpFirst is an initiative from the Canadian Association of Science Cent...

There’s no question our communities face major struggles within the K-12 education system in Alberta - unfunded students, overwhelmed staff, crowded classrooms, and insufficient inclusive learning supports. So is anything actually working in education? Here’s the answer key: “Yes”. Creating a vision for a successful learning for every student is a critical part of developing our communities. Krist...

Dams don’t make water. They store it. Water actually comes from the headwaters landscape and we are squandering our future because of a collective failure to see that the most important water management decisions are actually land use decisions. There is more water to be found, but only if we demand changes to how our Eastern Slopes are managed. And time is running out. Speaker: Kevin Van Tighem K...

In a 2015 ruling, the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously voted that the prohibition on assisted death in the Criminal Code was unconstitutional. This led to Parliament passing Bill C-14 in 2016, amending the Criminal Code to allow legal exemptions for MAiD. Since its passage, MAiD usage has increased every year, with a total of 10,064 MAID provisions in 2021 alone, accounting for 3.3% of all deat...

The Lethbridge Historical Society (originally the Whoop-Up Chapter of the Historical Society of Alberta) has been publishing occasional papers/books since the 1960s. The Society’s current publication – Upon Further Reflection: Lethbridge Then and Now – is the Society’s 62nd publication. The book is an update of the LHS’ 1980 publication: Reflections: Lethbridge Then and Now, written by Warren Hall...

The Indigenous Recovery Program is dedicated to proactively addressing the opioid crisis by implementing a comprehensive and collaborative approach rooted in cultural sensitivity, compassion, and harm reduction. Our mission is to reduce opioid-related deaths, raise awareness about opioid misuse, enhance access to culturally relevant, compassionate, and non-judgmental services, and forge a holistic...

While Opioid addictions and overdoses is a crisis across the country and provincially, the statistics are staggering for Southern Alberta. The speaker will provide context and put a face to these statistics. The presentation will address Policies developed to stem the tide of addiction and drug poisonings. Policies purported to assist individuals to treatment and support will be reviewed. The advo...

Pro-Choice YQL’s goal is to empower individuals in Southern Alberta with the knowledge and resources necessary to make informed choices about their reproductive health and sexual wellness. We are dedicated to advocating for access to safe and legal abortion services, contraception, and comprehensive sexual education. Our vision is a future where reproductive justice is a reality for all. We firmly...

Despite its seemingly objective stance towards history, rooted in the analysis of material remains of past societies, archaeological interpretation is often contested and invoked to make arguments about the present. Archaeology acts, in some ways, as a metaphorical fault line in contemporary societies, upon which power and identity is negotiated through reference to past peoples and things. Becaus...

Energy transition — moving away from fossil fuels toward more renewable sources of energy — is well underway, even in Alberta. For example, Alberta will move completely away from coal-fired electricity by the end of 2023. Despite this, energy transition is sometimes presented as, and for some genuinely perceived as an “existential” threat to economic prosperity, particularly for provinces like Alb...

Lethbridge’s existing Land Use Bylaw has served our community since 1986. During this time, several amendments have been undertaken to this Bylaw to address market demands and resident aspirations. However, since its creation almost 40 years ago it has not undergone a comprehensive renewal. The Land Use Bylaw sets out the rules for what kind of building or activity can take place on private proper...

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and Take Back Alberta supporters in the United Conservative Party arguably want to take Albertans out of the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) and substitute an “Alberta Pension Plan” (APP). Given its possible long-term effect on the lives of Albertans, this should have been one of the more important issues in the recent election campaign. Instead, the Premier refused to dis...

Arguably, Alberta’s hydrocarbons are not ethical, at least no more so than what is produced in most other oil and gas producing jurisdictions. The speaker will contend that both UCP and NDP governments have subscribed to some version of “ethical oil,” which holds that Alberta’s are some of the most environmentally responsible hydrocarbons in the world, bolstered by democratic institutions and a “w...

In October 2022, the Town and MD of Pincher Creek collaborated with the Piikani Nation land department to begin developing a Climate Resiliency and Adaptation plan. This process was enabled due to funding provided by the Municipal Climate Change Action Center. The plan development focused on a stakeholder-driven methodology to identify key climate risks in the region and develop plans to adapt to...

Each year the Government of Alberta acknowledges October as Child Abuse Prevention Month. Recently the Chinook Sexual Assault Centre renovated space in downtown Lethbridge to accommodate the needs of the Chinook Child and Youth Advocacy Centre – a program that provides coordinated, multidisciplinary approach in a safe, comfortable environment to address the needs of abused children, youth and thei...

Interfaith Food Bank is on the front lines of addressing food security issues in our community, and is an organization that has had to grow and adapt to the ever-evolving food security crisis in order to meet community needs. Food banks in Alberta experienced a 73% increase from 2019 – 2022 and in just the last year, local need has increased again by 30%. This presentation will discuss the rise in...

While many have heard of donating blood, donating plasma is still a relatively next concept. Some people still believe that donating blood and plasma are one and the same, and while both have you sitting in a chair hooked up to a machine, they are different processes with different purposes. When people think of blood donation, they are typically thinking of whole blood donation. Whole blood donat...

For more than 130,000 years, bison roamed the ecosystems of western Canada and US and while doing so, influenced the lives of Indigenous Peoples and every other species they shared space and time with, before they were hunted to near extinction in the late 1800s. The speaker will talk about his journey to the Bob Creek Wildlands in Alberta’s foothills and finding evidence of past bison existence t...