EDMONTON — This afternoon, Danielle Smith’s government tabled Bill 22: The Health Statutes Amendment Act, following through on their previous announcement that they would be massively restructuring public health care in Alberta. None of this was part of their election platform in last year’s provincial election.

EDMONTON — Today, news broke that a provincial audit has found more than 40 medical clinics advertising membership fees for access to health care. Previous reports from the Parkland Institute and Ontario Health Coalition have shown this is a recurring problem in Alberta that has long gone unaddressed.

EDMONTON - This afternoon, Health Minister Adriana LaGrange announced two new contracts with private partners to provide interfacility transfer services, with work underway to further expand this privatization initiative across the province. These services are currently publicly provided.

EDMONTON — This afternoon, the Minister of Mental Health and Addiction announced they are tabling Bill 17, a piece of legislation that establishes the Canadian Centre of Recovery Excellence (CoRE), an entity designed to be directly aligned with the goals and priorities of the Government of Alberta.

EDMONTON — A new report released by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) shows that the UCP’s privatization of Alberta’s surgical services have failed to deliver on promises to reduce wait times. This follows a previous report from the Parkland Institute, which showed that the Alberta Surgical Initiative has actually made things worse.

CALGARY — This morning in Calgary, Friends of Medicare stood alongside Mike Parker, President of the Health Sciences Association of Alberta (HSAA), in calling on the provincial government to release up-to-date data and broaden its approach to addiction care beyond their one-size-fits-all model. 

Last week, the Alberta government sent out a post-budget update on the Red Deer Hospital project, which included their plans for Phase 2 of the project to include: “construction of an ambulatory care building using a public-private partnership (P3) delivery model.” P3s are well known to be more expensive, while harming public services. Previous attempts to use a P3 model to build labs and hospitals in Alberta have repeatedly been fought against and rejected by patients and health care workers.

Initial response to the provincial budget from Friends of Medicare’s executive director Chris Gallaway:

Albertans are increasingly concerned about accessing the health care they need when and where they need it. Today’s budget does little to ease those concerns. Right now, Alberta’s public health care system is in an urgent situation that requires urgent action to deal with the widespread short-staffing, worker burnout, and closures impacting our entire province.

Albertans will be watching for public health care investments in tomorrow's provincial budget.

Health care is expected to dominate the spring session of the Alberta legislature, which begins today. In advance of the start of session, the UCP government has already signaled an austerity budget, and has made concerning decisions around health care capital projects, including pausing the Airdrie Urgent Care Centre and the South Edmonton Hospital. As cover for these broken promises, the Health Minister announced $20 million over three years to go towards a new Stollery Children’s Hospital — an amount of funding that isn’t even enough to build an elementary school — while refusing to give a timeline for when the project would actually be fully funded and built.

Friends of Medicare, along with over a dozen advocates and health care workers from Alberta, are in Ottawa this week to take part in the Canadian Health Coalition’s Health & Hope Lobby on Parliament Hill.

OTTAWA — Participants from across Alberta will be meeting with Members of Parliament from all three of our federal parties, as well as Senators, to push for universal single-payer Pharmacare, safer long-term care, expanded public health care, and to stop privatization through the enforcement of the Canada Health Act. Friends of Medicare is also proud to support the rally for public health care on Parliament Hill tomorrow afternoon.