Alberta Report

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This article is about a Canadian magazine. For the unrelated Cantonese Fairchild TV program, see Alberta Report (TV series).

Alberta Report was a sprightly right-wing weekly newsmagazine based in Edmonton. It was founded and edited by Ted Byfield, later run by his son, Link Byfield, and ceased publication in 2003.

The magazine began as St. John's Edmonton Report in 1973. Originally it grew out of the older Byfield's lay religious order called the Company of the Cross which operated boarding schools) in the 1970s, where employees were paid $1.00 per day, and lived in a communal apartment building.^[1]

The magazine was published for a time in three separate editions, the Alberta Report, BC Report, and Western Report. These merged in 1999 into The Report, later known as the Citizens Centre Report in connection with Link Byfield's successor organization, the Citizens Centre for Freedom and Democracy.

The magazine often struggled financially, with the senior Byfield mortgaging his own house four times to keep it afloat. It ultimately shut down in June 2003. According to the Edmonton Sun, some employees were still owed back pay nearly six months later, and complained when the Citizens Centre was directing money toward its political agenda.^[2]

A number of right-of-centre journalists/commentators or pundits in Canada who are prominent today began their careers writing for The Report magazines, including Kenneth Whyte, the editor in chief of Maclean's; Colby Cosh of the National Post, Kevin Michael Grace, Lorne Gunter, Ezra Levant, and Kevin Steel. Other distinguished alumni include Ric Dolphin, a journalist, and Paul Bunner, who in 2006 became a speechwriter for Prime Minister Stephen Harper.