Kilometres West: Alberta Capital and Centre Staff

kilometres west: After all, Alberta capital is only 100 kilometres west of the town of 6,000 souls that is soon to be best known once again as home of Canada largest Ukrainian egg, according to Rabble. Judging from media coverage of IRCC bombshell, someone called a meeting of the centre staff on Thursday to tell them about the move and the news spread from there like the proverbial Prairie fire. The city in question will be Edmonton, which will considerably simplify the move from Vegreville scheduled for 2018. The local MP, Lakeland Conservative Shannon Stubbs, raised the matter in apocalyptic tones during the House of Commons Question Period yesterday, calling the plan an "out of touch, deliberate attack." Immigration Minister John McCallum responded: "It is a responsibility of the government to spend taxpayers' money wisely, to improve the efficiency of immigration, to reduce processing times and that is what this move will do." For his part, Mayor Myron Hayduk told an Edmonton reporter he only heard about the coup bureaucratique from "an informal source" at the meeting -- a text message, I'd bet -- in time to run across town and crash the party. The development appeared to some to belie the Sunny Ways, Sunny Ways narrative about Justin Trudeau prime ministership, especially in light of the Liberal Party of Canada surely-not-unexpected loss of a byelection in another bedrock-conservative Alberta riding just last Monday. He said he was ready "to make a trip to Ottawa myself and jump up and down in front there." The unexpected development hit the news just as most of the province overworked media were in far-away Calgary writing fulsome, lengthy and colourful stories about the historically significant but not very impactful "state memorial service" of former premier Jim Prentice, who was killed in a plane crash on Oct. 13. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.