Public-record watch · Alberta policy update

The Bill 208 Dashboard Alberta Should Publish

If Bill 208 moves ahead, Alberta should not ask the public to guess whether it worked. It should publish a dashboard.

Seven questions Alberta should answer

1. Youth sourceWhere youth report getting products, separated by store, online, social supply, and other channels.
2. Inspection countHow many legal retailers were inspected, by region and month.
3. Failure rateHow many age-verification failures occurred among inspected legal sellers.
4. Illegal supply actionsHow many unlicensed sellers, online channels, and contraband files were investigated.
5. Product displacementWhether restricted products appear more often in illegal channels after the rule changes.
6. Adult accessWhether legal adult access falls in rural and smaller markets.
7. Tax leakageEstimated loss where legal sales move to illegal channels.

A dashboard will not solve the policy debate by itself, but it will stop both sides from pretending that outcomes are invisible.