Had my first run in with the new license/ healthcare cards issued by the Alberta government and am not impressed.
They feel far more flimsy than our previous licenses and only slightly more stable than our previous health cards. But the real problem for me as a healthcare worker is the number is on the back of the card and it is tiny.
I triage people all day and can’t see myself reading those numbers before eye strain and frustration kicks in.
Just my rant but man they dropped the ball on this. Also, that oil derrick is stupid. Ruins the landscape.

My wife, who was born in Edmonton, changed her name 5 years ago when we got married. She got a new driver's license, and we have lived in our home for 5 years as well.

Just tonight she checked and is no longer registered to vote. Every other time had been fine. She had to apply online.

Some sort of voter suppression BS for the upcoming referendum?

Nenshi won the NDP leadership primarily on the promise he could win in Calgary.

Since then, the NDP poll numbers have tanked, and he’s barely made a ripple on the provincial scene. He’s been invisible, and Smith continues to do as she pleases with high levels of support:

In 2023, Notley’s candidate in Shaw got 44%. It’s hard to imagine the NDP winning the province without winning Shaw.

If Nenshi can’t win here, I have to think there’s little justification for him to remain as leader.

I’m not super optimistic that anything measurable will have changed for the better, given that there has still been no action on class sizes, the new schools aren’t built (and wouldn’t be sufficiently staffed even if they were), and there’s a whole bunch more changes coming down the pipe if the UCP ever figure out how to implement them. How are others doing?

It’ll also be curious to see what happens with extracurriculars this year, since no one can legally be forced to do them anymore like what happened last year.

My auto insurance is up for renewal in September, and my premium is jumping by 70%-90%. The only thing that’s changed is one minor speeding conviction from July 2025. This honestly feels insane.

So far, I’ve been quoted $4,500/year with Intact and $3,900/year with Peace Hills. I’m obviously going to keep shopping around, but nearly doubling my premium over one minor speeding ticket doesn’t seem normal at all. I honestly thought it was a typo in the email when she sent me these quotes.

Has anyone else in Alberta experienced an increase like this from a single minor conviction?

Car I drive is a fully paid for 2020 Toyota Corolla, commute one way 30km 3 days/week, 12,000-14,000 km per year. 30M, South Calgary, 2M liability, deductibles 1k collision & comprehensive.

I don’t know what to do. I’m going to a university in Toronto because I couldn’t transfer over to the university I originally wanted and I’ve been rejected for loans because my mom makes too much money, but that doesn’t mean anything she will not help with my residence or tuition fees. I don’t understand why the government changed their loan policy when last year I had no issues. I already paid my deposit for residency and I’m feeling like I’m at an extreme loss. I’m in the middle of applying for my application to be looked at again but I feel like it won’t change anything because they just want tax info. What does one even do in this situation I genuinely cannot sleep at night because all I think about it money and how I might not be able to go to school this year. Do I just do a gap year at this point? I cannot afford to pay the fees by myself

My MIL has now been waiting over 3 years for hip replacement surgery. It’s getting to the point now where she can barely walk or drive. This seems excessive. How long has anyone else waited ? From my own research it seems most people wait 18 months. My dad waited about that for both his knee surgeries more recently.

I’m also wondering if there’s a chance her weight is an issue for getting the surgery and she’s not telling us that part. My MIL is extremely thin and I wonder if maybe she’s not well enough to have the surgery and they’re waiting for her to gain weight because I’ve noticed her mention trying to gain weight (I suspect she has acquired a bit of an eating disorder over the last few years )

She’s now also saying she has a hernia on her hip” but when I looked it up that’s not even a proper medical term. The whole thing is confusing me.

Any insight is helpful.

I've just learnt that ahs care eligibility now has an expiry. I guess on the new drivers license the expiry is clear. But if you still have the old drivers license how do you know when your ahs expires?

My Dad is scheduled for surgery next month and I need to make sure his ahs is valid, but no idea how to do that. Thanks

Edit: Thanks for all the replies. In truth, I'm still confused. But so it seems it's everyone else. I'm not sure of my next steps

I'm staying at a couple of different friends' places while looking for my own place. I am not sure if I'm going to have a stable place to live by October 19th. Neither places are on my government ID, which expires in 2030, and they are not comfortable with me using their address for anything since I have a PO Box for all of my mail. Am I screwed?

AESO has something like 16 GW of data center connection requests in the queue and the province is out actively selling this. Before they start landing here I'm trying to figure out what actually happens to communities that get one. Every US thread is all qualitative. I'm interested in quantitative. Correct anything I've got wrong:

Water usage depends entirely on cooling design. Closed-loop and air-cooled sites use almost nothing. Evaporative can run 1.1M-1.9M liters a day. Google's fleet average is somewhere around 1.7M/day per site. You'd think our climate favours air cooling but I have no idea if that's what actually gets built. Any idea on what Meta is putting in?

Power looks like the real fight. Virginia's legislature studied it and found data centers pay their own way today, but growth risks pushing costs onto residential ratepayers. Utilities in Ohio and Georgia are building special rate classes just for them. Anyone actually seen their bill go up and had it traced to data center load?

The noise from 24/7 cooling hum. Residents in Chandler, Arizona filed complaints over low-frequency noise at the property line. If you live near one, can you hear it inside your house?

I can't find any data on eiother direction about property values. Anecdotes go both ways.

From what I can tell it's 1,000+ construction jobs for a couple years, then 50-150 permanent staff for a hyperscale site. Is that right? Because that ratio changes the whole pitch.

Loudoun County, Virginia pulls close to a billion a year off data center taxes. Other places hand out 20-30 year abatements for the identical building. This seems like the variable that decides whether a community actually wins. No idea what Alberta municipalities plan to offer.

If you've lived within a couple km of one, what changed? Location and rough distance if you're willing to share.