Alberta
Alberta leads the country in eliminating surgery backlog

Surgery volumes exceed pre-pandemic levels
Alberta is now exceeding 100 per cent capacity for surgical volumes and is leading the country in eliminating the COVID-19 surgical backlog.
While all provinces delayed surgeries during the pandemic, Alberta delayed fewer surgeries than other provinces. For example, in the second wave, five to 10 per cent of surgeries were delayed in Alberta compared with between 30 and 60 per cent of surgeries postponed in Ontario, British Columbia and Quebec.
“As the pandemic recedes, Alberta’s government will be pushing as hard as we can to ensure that any delayed surgeries are completed as fast as possible. Thanks to the incredible dedication of surgical teams in AHS and at chartered surgical facilities, we are getting closer and closer to that goal.”
Through its surgical recovery plan, Alberta expects to recover faster than many other provinces.
The surgical recovery plan is now integrated into the Alberta Surgical Initiative, which will provide all Albertans the surgeries they need within recommended wait times. The initiative is improving and standardizing the entire surgical system from the time patients seek advice from their family doctor, to when they are referred to a specialist, to their surgery and rehabilitation.
“By carefully reducing the number of surgeries being performed in response to the pandemic, we were able to increase capacity in our intensive care units and ensure people with COVID-19 who needed ICU care could receive it. Now, we are able to focus on our surgical recovery plan. I am so proud of our teams who continue to work hard to ensure Albertans have high-quality care.”
Quick facts
- Throughout the 2020-21 fiscal year, surgical teams were able to support surgical activity at about 92 per cent of pre-COVID levels, with more than 268,000 surgeries completed compared with approximately 290,000 in the previous fiscal year.
- About 40,000 surgeries were delayed in Alberta over the past 16 months:
- 25,000 surgeries were delayed in the first wave in the spring of 2020. All delayed surgeries from the first wave have been completed.
- 5,000 surgeries were delayed in the second wave during fall 2020 and early winter 2021. Another 10,000 surgeries were delayed in the third wave beginning in April 2021.
- 95 per cent, approximately 12,000, of these surgeries have been rebooked.
- No emergency or urgent surgeries were delayed or postponed during the pandemic.
- Most cancer surgeries continued during Alberta’s pandemic response.
Alberta
Temporary Alberta grid limit unlikely to dampen data centre investment, analyst says

From the Canadian Energy Centre
By Cody Ciona
‘Alberta has never seen this level and volume of load connection requests’
Billions of investment in new data centres is still expected in Alberta despite the province’s electric system operator placing a temporary limit on new large-load grid connections, said Carson Kearl, lead data centre analyst for Enverus Intelligence Research.
Kearl cited NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang’s estimate from earlier this year that building a one-gigawatt data centre costs between US$60 billion and US$80 billion.
That implies the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO)’s 1.2 gigawatt temporary limit would still allow for up to C$130 billion of investment.
“It’s got the potential to be extremely impactful to the Alberta power sector and economy,” Kearl said.
Importantly, data centre operators can potentially get around the temporary limit by ‘bringing their own power’ rather than drawing electricity from the existing grid.
In Alberta’s deregulated electricity market – the only one in Canada – large energy consumers like data centres can build the power supply they need by entering project agreements directly with electricity producers.
According to the AESO, there are 30 proposed data centre projects across the province.
The total requested power load for these projects is more than 16 gigawatts, roughly four gigawatts more than Alberta’s demand record in January 2024 during a severe cold snap.
For comparison, Edmonton’s load is around 1.4 gigawatts, the AESO said.
“Alberta has never seen this level and volume of load connection requests,” CEO Aaron Engen said in a statement.
“Because connecting all large loads seeking access would impair grid reliability, we established a limit that preserves system integrity while enabling timely data centre development in Alberta.”
As data centre projects come to the province, so do jobs and other economic benefits.
“You have all of the construction staff associated; electricians, engineers, plumbers, and HVAC people for all the cooling tech that are continuously working on a multi-year time horizon. In the construction phase there’s a lot of spend, and that is just generally good for the ecosystem,” said Kearl.
Investment in local power infrastructure also has long-term job implications for maintenance and upgrades, he said.
“Alberta is a really exciting place when it comes to building data centers,” said Beacon AI CEO Josh Schertzer on a recent ARC Energy Ideas podcast.
“It has really great access to natural gas, it does have some excess grid capacity that can be used in the short term, it’s got a great workforce, and it’s very business-friendly.”
The unaltered reproduction of this content is free of charge with attribution to the Canadian Energy Centre.
Alberta
Alberta Next: Taxation

A new video from the Alberta Next panel looks at whether Alberta should stop relying on Ottawa to collect our provincial income taxes. Quebec already does it, and Alberta already collects corporate taxes directly. Doing the same for personal income taxes could mean better tax policy, thousands of new jobs, and less federal interference. But it would take time, cost money, and require building new systems from the ground up.
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