Alberta
Massive funding boosts kick off Alberta’s transition to fully comprehensive care
Dr. Paul Parks, president, Alberta Medical Association
Canada signs more than $1 billion bilateral agreement with Alberta to improve health care over three years
From: Health Canada
This investment will increase access to a primary health provider, reduce wait times for mental health services, and provide greater access to health data.
Canadians want and deserve a health care system that provides timely access to health services whenever and wherever they are needed. That is why the Government of Canada is investing over $200 billion over 10 years, which includes $25 billion for tailored bilateral agreements with provinces and territories, to support the Working Together to Improve Health Care for Canadians plan.
Today, the Honourable Mark Holland, Canada’s Minister of Health, and the Honourable Adriana LaGrange, Alberta Minister of Health, announced a bilateral agreement to invest $1.06 billion over the next three years, marking a crucial step in a 10-year plan for collaboration. This includes $285 million per year in new funding by the Government of Canada and continuing $70 million per year in previously-announced mental health and substance use funding, which will help accelerate efforts already underway in Alberta to improve health care access and services.
Through this federal funding, Alberta has a three year action plan to deliver improvements to its health care system by 2026, including:
- Increasing access to primary care providers for Albertans and reducing emergency department visits that could have been addressed by a family medicine office. This will be achieved by expanding team-based care and enhancing virtual care, and increasing the number of appointments available to patients.
- Funding community providers to increase diagnostic imaging capacity in the province, reducing wait times for CT scans and MRIs.
- Improving patient care by enhancing Albertans’ ability to access digital health services and their own health information by implementing e-referral services and accelerating the secure exchange of data across the health system.
- Expanding integrated services for youth mental health services in the province through school-based and community day programs, and offering more supports for youth with complex needs as they transition into adult services.
- Reducing median wait times for community mental health and substance use services by establishing new and improving existing treatment spaces, along with prioritizing culturally appropriate Indigenous community supports.
- Ensuring that First Nations and Métis people have access to high-quality, culturally safe care that meets their unique health needs. This will be achieved through dedicated funding for initiatives to enhance access to primary care in Indigenous communities, and funding for communities to develop health workforce capacity and infrastructure to improve the collection and use of health information and data.
- Improving access to health care for underserved Albertans, including through expanded community pilots that bring testing services to rural, remote and Indigenous communities, advancing French-language health services, and greater clinical care for women.
Progress on these initiatives and broader commitments will be measured against targets which Alberta will publicly report on annually.
Through this new agreement, Alberta will improve how health information is collected, shared, used and reported to Canadians; streamline foreign credential recognition for internationally educated health professionals; facilitate the mobility of key health professionals within Canada; and fulfill shared responsibilities to uphold the Canada Health Act to protect Canadians’ access to health care that is based on need, not the ability to pay.
Recognizing the significant disparities in Indigenous health outcomes, the Government of Canada and the Government of Alberta also commit to meaningfully engage and work together with Indigenous partners to support improved access to quality and culturally appropriate health care services. Alberta’s action plan is informed by continued engagement with its Indigenous partners and recent discussions involving the federal government. All orders of government will approach health decisions in their respective jurisdictions through a lens that promotes respect and reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples.
Alberta and the federal government will continue working together to improve access to health services and deliver tangible results to all residents across the province, including responding to the needs of Indigenous and other underserved and disadvantaged populations.
Quotes
“Our government is working together with provinces and territories to get Canadians the healthcare they need. This agreement is an important step in our collaboration with Alberta to take measurable actions to transform our health care system. The funding will help improve access to primary care and create better mental health services in Alberta. Together, we will continue working to achieve better health outcomes for all Canadians.”
The Honourable Mark Holland
Minister of Health of Canada
“Mental health is health, and through this agreement, we will be working with Alberta to integrate mental health and substance use care as a full and equal part of our universal health care system. This agreement will strengthen the capacity of family health providers, reduce substance use harms, and expand virtual care for youth to improve access to quality and timely mental health care and substance use supports. Together, we must ensure that all Canadians have access to supports and services for their mental health and well-being – when they need them, wherever they need them.”
The Honourable Ya’ara Saks
Minister of Mental Health and Addictions and Associate Minister of Health of Canada
“Alberta’s government is taking a serious look at the way health care is being delivered in our province. This is why we are refocusing our health care system to ensure Albertans have access to timely care, when and where they need it. This initial funding from the federal government is a good start and will support our shared health priorities of expanding access to primary care across the province and especially in our Indigenous communities, supporting our health care workers, improving access to quality mental health, and modernizing our health systems.”
The Honourable Adriana LaGrange
Minister of Health of Alberta
“Alberta’s government is supporting Albertans to improve their mental health and recover from the deadly disease of addiction as we build out the Alberta Recovery Model and refocus our provincial healthcare system. We are doing this by increasing access to CASA Mental Health Classrooms across the province, building more bed based mental health treatment capacity for youth, and improving access to mental health and addiction treatment services in communities. This initial funding from the federal government will offer some support to these made in Alberta initiatives as we build a better system of mental health and addiction care for Albertans.”
The Honourable Dan Williams
Minister of Mental Health and Addiction of Alberta
Quick facts
- The Working Together investment includes $25 billion for tailored bilateral agreements with provinces and territories, a guaranteed 5% Canada Health Transfer (CHT) increase for the next five years—amounting to $17.5 billion—and a one time CHT $2 billion top-up to address urgent needs of emergency rooms and paediatric hospitals delivered in June 2023. Combined, these investments provide provinces and territories the flexibility to address the unique needs of their populations and geography, and accelerate health care system improvements.
- Budget 2023 outlined the Government of Canada’s plan to invest over $200 billion over 10 years, including $46.2 billion in new funding for provinces and territories, to improve health care for Canadians. Within this funding, $25 billion is allocated through tailored bilateral agreements to address the unique needs of their populations and geography in four shared health priorities:
- expanding access to family health services, including in rural and remote areas;
- supporting health workers and reducing backlogs;
- increasing mental health and substance use support; and
- modernizing health care systems with health data and digital tools.
- All provinces and territories are already making considerable investments to advance progress in all four of these priority areas, and the new federal funding is complementing and expanding those efforts.
- As part of these bilateral agreements, provinces and territories are developing action plans that outline how funds will be spent and how progress will be measured to demonstrate to Canadians that improvements are occurring in Canada’s health care system. Alberta’s initial 3-year Action Plan can be found here.
- Budget 2017 committed $11 billion over 10 years in federal funding to provinces and territories to improve access to home and community care, and mental health and addictions services for Canadians. Bilateral agreements were signed with provinces and territories to access the first six years of funding. The final four years of funding for mental health and addictions are included in the new Working Together bilateral agreements.
- The Government is also working with provinces and territories to implement a second bilateral agreement focused on helping Canadians age with dignity close to home, with access to home care or care in a safe long-term care facility. This agreement will include the remaining $2.4 billion over four years to improve access to home and community care from Budget 2017; and the $3 billion over five years for long-term care from Budget 2021 to apply standards of care in long-term care facilities and help support workforce stability.
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From the Province of Alberta
This funding will be an essential transitional step to ensure doctors can continue to provide this care as we rapidly transition to a funding model that supports fully comprehensive care.”
Dr. Paul Parks, president, Alberta Medical Association
New funding to stabilize primary health careStabilization funding is coming soon as Alberta’s government continues working to improve primary health care across the province. The government is pulling out all the stops to stabilize, strengthen and improve Alberta’s primary health care system. Additional funding of $200 million over two years will improve access to family physicians and help ensure primary health care is available for every Albertan when and where they need it. This funding is enabled through the new Canada-Alberta Health Funding Agreement with the federal government. The agreement represents a total of approximately $1.1 billion in additional health care funding over three years for shared priorities.
Stabilization funding is an important transitional measure identified through work under the memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the minister of health and the Alberta Medical Association (AMA), signed earlier this fall. The AMA has been advocating for family physicians and rural generalists through its work under the MOU. Alberta’s government will continue to engage with the AMA as it works to develop a new, sustainable physician comprehensive care model, which will also dictate how this additional funding will be distributed. In addition to work between the government and the AMA, the Comprehensive Care Task Force will, in the new year, provide a first draft of recommendations that will include additional short-term stabilization actions to help family doctors continue to practise comprehensive care and bridge the gap until a new physician comprehensive care model is developed. These short-term actions will:
Alberta’s government is committed to finalizing a sustainable physician comprehensive care model that will address the concerns of family physicians and rural generalists and ensure Albertans can access the care they need.
Other recently announced supports for primary health care include:
Related information |
Alberta Could Make A Deal With Bill Davis’ Ontario. Just One Problem.
Last month my friend Steve Paikin and I did a public appearance at the lovely Oshawa Town Square, recalling the highlights of our careers and the stories behind the stories. One of Steve’s stories was the subject of one of his 847 books, Bill Davis, the former premier of Ontario from 1971-1985.
He came to power the year our family moved to Ontario, so we watched his arc in power, from centrist Conservative to key figure in the interminable constitutional wrangles of the time. He typified a no-drama approach long before Barack Obama adopted it. His most controversial move was granting equal funding to Catholic schools. And smoking a pipe.
Which led me to ask Steve, the Most Ontario Man In The World, if it was still the same “place to stand, place to grow” province that Davis ruled. If anyone should know, the former TV Ontario stalwart was likely that person. Steve said that, generally, he felt that it was similar to what existed in the 70s and 80s. Obviously there were changes, but the mood was similar. After all, they’d elected Conservative Doug Ford three times.
My response? That would make Alberta very happy. Alberta could make a deal with Bill Davis’ Ontario. Why? A Bill Davis Ontario would never tell another province to keep its oil in the ground, to hobble its economy to suit climate obsessions in his own province. A Bill Davis Ontario would support nation-building projects like trans-Canada pipelines not forcing Alberta to sell their oil at a discount to the U.S. A Bill Davis Ontario would never support gun seizures from law-abiding owners.
With respect, Steve, the Bill Davis Ontario is no more. There is no deal to be made at the moment. It is a place captured by the globalist fevers of Great Thunberg climate. It is a province in the thrall of liberal indigenous guilt marinated by its teachers and media. It is a province whose real-estate bubble is poisoning the national economy.
It is a province where politicians and leaders struggle to define a woman. Worst of all, Ontario returned an incompetent trust fund flibberty-gibbet not once, but three times as prime minister. The damage to the nation has been incalculable. Now they’ve elected his economic advisor.
And yet many of our Eastern friends believe that we are the ones who’ve have changed. They tell us we have drunk the cowboy Kool-aid and are now irredeemable. What they mean is, you’re become a traitor to your class. “Down the rabbit hole”. Cast out for being a Bill Davis centrist.
But we have not changed. Much of Alberta’s culture has not changed significantly, despite an NDP episode in government from 2012-15. Bill Davis, who died in 2021, would not find much change outside of the immigrants dropped on it by Justin Trudeau were he to visit today.
But eastern Canada? The whiplash changes might best be summed up by Vince Gasparro, the Liberal MP for a midtown Toronto riding, claiming that Canada’s economy is swell compared to other nations. To which the interim parliamentary budget officer Jason Jacques said just because someone else is 450 pounds and sick doesn’t mean an obese 350-pound person is healthy.
Forecasting a conservative $68.5 billion deficit, Jacques called the economy “unsustainable” and said the nation is at the precipice. “We’re at a point where, based upon our numbers, things cannot continue as they are, and I think everybody knows that,” Jacques said, He was immediately attacked by Liberal bot-world claiming he’s angling for a job with the Conservatives.
The closing of the Laurentian mind reflects what happened to the NDP, the party of Tommy Douglas. Once a national lean-left collection of union workers, farmers, culture figures and academics, it took its lead from the avuncular Ed Broadbent, Audrey McLaughlin and even Jack Layton. Socialist with a friendly face. The leaders calmed the Marxist fevers of their radical fringe.
Then, in the aftermath of Layton’s death, the party convulsed. The union workers and farmers were pushed out by radicals drunk on virtue. Under the DEI hire Jagmeet Singh they purged common sense, leaving Liberals to scoop up their less unhinged members. The survivors of Jagmeet wore keffiyehs in Parliament and predicted environmental doom. The party became irrelevant in 95 percent of the nation.
Their reward was a descent from 103 seats in the 2011 election to non-party status with just seven seats and six percent of the vote this year. While they make noises of relevance, they are now like the Monty Python “Bring out yer’ dead” skit in Search For The Holy Grail.
Which is gravy for the Carney Liberals who can now talk centre but govern as far left as it wishes. Which the Toronto Star says may soon include criminalizing residential school “denialism.” The author Michelle Good says that questioning the unsupported tales of murdered babies is just like “holocaust denial”.
The NDP collapse mirrors what is happening to the Democratic Party in the U.S. By design or by accident Donald Trump has bludgeoned them into assuming most of the policies that are now putting a torpedo into the NDP. Defending crime, endorsing unfettered illegal immigration, patronizing Hamas and other bad actors on the world stage, Balkan economics. Hollywood preening.
While the reviled Trump remains unrepentant, Democrats continue to sink in the polls. Married to California values they’re at 28 percent approval in the polls, and none of their potential 2028 presidential hopefuls is adding anyone to the base.
So the DEMs leadership intimidates its followers with this fatal equation, claiming to be the party of the future. There are a scarce few who remind their colleagues of what’s been lost. Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman who won his crucial seat despite enduring a stroke during the election run-up, is sounding warnings, however.
“Unchecked extreme rhetoric, like labels as Hitler or fascist, will foment more extreme outcomes,” Fetterman wrote. “Political violence is always wrong — no exceptions. We must all turn the temperature down.”
“Absolutely, it’s a reward for Hamas,” he said after Canada and other nations recognized a Palestinian state. “That’s going to be their narrative. They’re going to claim ‘That’s why we did 10/7. That birthed our nation,’ and I can’t ever give that to them.”
But his fellow party members are too engrossed in Jimmy Kimmel’s veneration at BlueSky, the Woke site, to notice that their base has deserted them. Canada’s liberals looking over the edge still get their reinforcement from like-minded people and a bribed media. But as Jacques says, the end is nigh, and everyone knows it.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
It’s about politics and provinces are right to refuse to play along
Federal Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree’s leaked admission that Ottawa’s firearms buyback is unenforceable was no slip. It exposed the way federal power is deployed for partisan gain while provinces are left to pay the bill.
The leak matters because it exposes a pattern, not an exception. Ottawa drafts policies to suit its politics and expects provinces to carry the weight. Police budgets, university research chairs, hospital systems and housing markets are treated as levers to be pulled from Ottawa. The effects are felt locally, but the decisions are made elsewhere.
Consider the pattern. The Online Harms Act, rejected more than once, is introduced yet again, as if repetition can substitute for consent. Health care dollars are tied to federal strings that reorder provincial systems with no regard for local capacity. Immigration quotas climb at a pace provinces cannot house or school. Environmental rules descend without negotiation, upending years of co-operative planning. Each measure arrives as an edict. Consultation is reduced to announcement.
Resistance has already begun. Saskatchewan moved early, adopting legislation that makes any federal confiscation program subject to provincial authority, including RCMP operations. In Alberta, Premier Danielle Smith has gone further, declaring flatly: “We will not allow police in Alberta to confiscate previously legal firearms. I have directed two of my ministers to relentlessly defend Albertans’ right to lawful and safe possession of firearms and the right to self-defence.”
Even before the introduction of the Sovereignty Act, Tyler Shandro, then Alberta’s justice minister, announced that the province would not use its police or prosecutors to carry out confiscations. Although former premier Jason Kenney opposed a Sovereignty Act, his government likewise refused to act as Ottawa’s enforcer.
Alberta and Saskatchewan have since given themselves legislative tools, Sovereignty Acts, which assert the right of provinces to decline enforcement of federal laws they judge unconstitutional. These statutes formalize existing constitutional powers. Provinces without Sovereignty Acts have also drawn lines. Ontario has signalled its refusal to help enforce Ottawa’s firearms program.
These positions are lawful, rooted in the Constitution’s division of powers, which assigns the administration of justice and policing to the provinces.
This clarity ought to attract others. Manitoba, with one of the highest proportions of licensed hunters in the country, has strong reason to resist Ottawa’s targeting of lawful gun owners. Communities are not made safer by seizing deer rifles from responsible hunters, nor are public services improved by diverting scarce provincial resources into a program that federal ministers concede will not work. Manitoba would do well to follow Alberta and Saskatchewan in defending its jurisdiction, whether through a Sovereignty Act or by refusing to play Ottawa’s game.
The point is practical. Prairie provinces cannot spare rural detachments to seize hunters’ rifles because the Liberal caucus fears losing seats in Montreal. They cannot put their power grids at risk to meet Ottawa’s timelines while households absorb higher bills. Universities cannot be turned into federal policy pilot projects. Provinces exist to govern their own communities, not to absorb the fallout of federal experiments.
The genius of federalism lies in the division of authority, which encourages compromise and minimizes tyrannical imposition. Ottawa governs in its sphere, provinces in theirs. Where the two overlap, cooperation must be negotiated, not imposed. Sovereignty Acts sharpen that principle. They remind Ottawa that partnership is earned, not dictated.
What Anandasangaree’s admission exposed was not only the cynicism of one firearms program. It revealed a method of governing: federal power deployed for partisan gain, with provinces reduced to instruments. That cannot endure. Canada was never meant to be a chain of command. It was built as a contract—one that requires respect for provincial authority.
Provinces that refuse to carry out Ottawa’s politically motivated projects are not weakening Canada; they are enforcing its terms.
Marco Navarro-Genie is vice-president of research at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and co-author, with Barry Cooper, of Canada’s COVID: The Story of a Pandemic Moral Panic (2023).
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