Alberta’s health care system needs help.
Emergency rooms across the province have been closed for thousands of hours since 2019, according to data gathered by The Globe and Mail.
The Consort Hospital and Care Center is among the hardest hit, with nearly 19,000 hours of closures since 2019. Since August 2022, its ER has been closed fully or overnight every day.
Hardisty Health Center was also hard hit – its ER was closed for 20,194 hours since 2019. In mid-2023, Hardistry’s ER resumed normal operations.
Wait times for surgeries are also astronomical. In the first half of 2025, over 40 percent of patients waited longer than expected to undergo surgery.
“Our public health care system is, without exaggeration, in open crisis,” Friends of Medicare said in a statement on July 17. “Staffing shortages are a national catastrophe, forcing emergency departments to close and leaving health care workers with impossible workloads while patients wait longer and suffer more.”
Privatization increases
The UCP’s response to Alberta’s health care crisis has been to increase privatization. Budget 2025 invested $265 million to increase the Alberta Surgical Initiative’s (ASI) capacity to receive patients. The ASI “represents a significant expansion of for-profit, corporate health care” according to the Parkland Institute.
Privatization is creating a two-tier health care system in Alberta. Those with extra money can pay private clinics to have procedures done, while those who do not have the means wait in line in the public system.
Proponents of privatization say that government-funded health care leads to wasteful spending and unreasonable wait times.
Critics say privatization costs small businesses more money and encourages health care providers to prioritize profit over efficiency and care.
Case for Privatization
Premier Danielle Smith has said that no Albertan should have to pay for healthcare.
However, before becoming premier she championed the idea of using privatization to change and improve the system.
“Money is not the problem in health care,” she wrote in a 2021 paper for the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy. “A culture of complacency is the problem.”
“If the can-do attitude of the private and non-profit sectors were present in Alberta Health Services, the approach would have been entirely different.”
“Once people get used to the concept of paying out of pocket for more things themselves then we can change the conversation on health care,” she wrote.
Double the cost
While the majority of health procedures still take place through the public model, Alberta has worked to expand its private health care options over the past five years. Private surgeries through the ASI have more than doubled.
Still, this has not improved Albertans’ access to surgery.
Wait times “remains well beyond the benchmark — not despite this parallel delivery system, but because of it,” Rebecca Graff-McRae wrote in the Calgary Herald last year.
Since the province invested in private surgery clinics, “the total number of surgeries performed in the province dropped by six per cent overall, while the percentage of patients receiving treatment for knee and hip replacements within the benchmark dropped further,” she wrote.
Private surgeries also cost double what they cost through the public system. The Alberta Surgical Group charged the Alberta government $8,300 for hip replacement surgeries that cost just over $4,000 through the public system.
Economic impacts
Comparing Canada’s system with the US’s gives an indication of the health outcomes of the two systems.
In the 1970s, Canada and the US both had private systems. At the time, Americans could expect to live about a year longer than Canadians.
By 1972, all of Canada’s provinces and territories joined the Medical Care Act, and had begun managing their health care through a public system.
Today, the average American can expect to live just over 78 years. Canada’s life expectancy, however, has risen to 83 years.
The US system also costs more per person to run. Whereas Canadian provinces spend an average of $7,000 per person per year, US per capita costs are nearly double – $13,000 annually.
Better for business
While health care costs the government billions each year, this money drives Alberta’s economy.
Health care is Alberta’s fifth largest sector, after oil and gas, real estate, construction, and manufacturing. The sector employs 247,000 Albertans, or 11 percent of all workers. The industry generated $16.7 billion of the province’s GDP in 2020.
According to the Center for Future Work, “Canada spends 6% of GDP less on health care than the U.S., which is equivalent to an annual saving of $180 billion. Yet, Canada’s system delivers superior outcomes by many indicators, including longevity, infant mortality, and infectious disease.”
Government investment in health care also saves businesses money.
In the US, businesses can expect to pay more than $25,000 per year for employee health care. Albertan businesses who sign on to provide employees group benefits pay significantly less. Comprehensive employee benefit coverage in Canada is usually around $4,000, at most. Basic plans are even more affordable.
“The economy exists to serve people,” Friends of Medicare said. “The values of equity and compassion that underlie our public health care for all are foundational principles for our society.”
But the financial benefit of public health care is clear too. The data shows that paying for health care communally rather than individually allows Albertan citizens and businesses to save financially.
The numbers are telling. Rather than steering money into the private system, Alberta might fix its health care woes by reinvesting in the public system.
