Alberta's New Petition Rules: Blackout, Fees, Deepfakes

0:00Alberta's government is shaking up its citizen petition rules again. This is the third tweak in under a year. Justice Minister Mickey Amari dropped a new bill that blocks starting constitutional or policy referendums one year before or after provincial. Elections, creating a two-year blackout window. Existing petitions stay safe, and their referendum deadlines get scrapped. They say it's to keep elections focused, without these initiatives stealing the spotlight from voters. The United Conservative Party crew has been fine-tuning the system, like dropping signature thresholds last year, stretching collection times, clearing paths for tricky referendums, and jacking up application fees to $25,000 from $5,000. Right now, petitions are buzzing. One pushing Alberta to split from Canada needs about 178,000 signatures by May 2nd. An anti-separate's drive succeeded back in December under old rules, while pushes against public funds for private schools flopped in February, and another banning new coal mines on the Eastern

1:02Rockies has until June 10th. The bill also simplifies the sunshine list for public salaries, dropping the bar to $130,000 base pay to cut red tape, and duplication. Plus, it targets deepfakes, slapping fines up to $10,000 on people, or $100,000 on groups for misleading election fakes. All this aims to streamline democracy, protect fair votes, and handle new tech threats head on, with more laws brewing on deepfake harms. This has been Canada News Today, powered by AI.