EDMONTON — On Friday heading into the long weekend, the provincial government revealed their plans for a comprehensive rebrand of our Emergency Health Services, now to be known as “ALTA Paramedic Health.” No specific costing for the rebranding was provided.
“Enough with new logos and endless restructuring! We need our government to focus on the real issue in our emergency health care system: the workforce,” said Chris Gallaway, executive director of Friends of Medicare. “If they had asked a single frontline health care worker before moving forward with this, they would have heard that no one was asking for new uniforms with a new logo on them. Paramedics are burnt out from experiencing record high vacancy rates, yet our government is focused on a rebranding exercise as part of their restructuring.”
This follows a familiar pattern with the UCP government, who continue to ignore frontline staffing issues and instead announce new branding and logos again and again. Friday's announcement has drawn criticism from Health Sciences Association of Alberta which represents paramedics at Emergency Health Services who report they were not meaningfully consulted on this change.
“The real priority on the frontlines is the need for more staffing. Where is the plan for safe staffing levels and workload management? Where is the plan for retention, recruitment and training of paramedics?” asked Gallaway. “Instead, we have a government intent on endless restructuring and queuing more and more of our health care up for privatization.”
Research and reporting consistently shows that Emergency Medical Services (EMS) staff are being asked to do more with less, such that in the Edmonton region, overtime hours rose 81% between 2021 and 2024—something the government has refused to acknowledge. Unsurprisingly, a 2025 Parkland Institute survey found that an alarming 35% of allied health care workers, including paramedics, “often think about quitting their jobs,” reporting high rates of stress and discrimination at work.
Part of the plan announced on Friday is a pilot project to start using "alternative transportation and destination models"—the private transportation industry, including taxis—to transport patients. At the same time, the government has refused to fully fund Alberta municipalities with integrated EMS, forcing them to either vote to use municipal tax dollars to fill the gap, or else end their local EMS model—a gateway to ultimately privatizing those local services.
“At every turn, the Alberta government has been using restructuring as a cover for further privatization of our health care services. Rather than working to bolster our Emergency Medical Services, we fear that they are now being queued up for even further privatization to for-profit interests,” concluded Gallaway.
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