Connect with us

Alberta

Albertans endure some of the longest health-care waits in Canada

Published

3 minute read

From the Fraser Institute

By Mackenzie Moir and Tegan Hill

Alberta’s long wait times come despite high levels of health-care spending. The province ranked second-highest on health-care spending per person (adjusted for age and sex) among provinces in 2021

Last week, the president of the Alberta Medical Association sounded the alarm about Alberta hospital wait times, saying they’re as “as bad as we’ve seen it in 25 years.”

But in fact, it’s worse than that.

According to a new study, in Alberta the median wait in 2023 between a family doctor’s referral for a specialist appointment and receipt of treatment was 33.5 weeks—that’s the longest total median wait outside the Maritime provinces and almost six weeks longer than the national median wait (27.7 weeks). And Albertans now wait 23 weeks longer than they did in 1993 when the wait for care was only 10.5 weeks.

Alberta’s long wait times come despite high levels of health-care spending. The province ranked second-highest on health-care spending per person (adjusted for age and sex) among provinces in 2021, the latest year of available data. In 2023/24, health-care spending will consume a projected 41.2 per cent of Alberta’s program spending.

Moreover, Canada itself is a relatively high spender among universal health-care countries, yet ranks poorly on the availability of hospital beds, doctors and key diagnostic technologies such as MRIs. In other words, Alberta is a comparatively high spender and poor performer in an already high spending and poorly performing country.

Of course, there are serious consequences from lengthy delays for medically necessary care including ongoing pain, worsening of health outcomes and psychological distress. Unfortunately for Albertans, the median wait for treatment after seeing a specialist was almost two months longer than what doctors in the province consider reasonable.

The unreasonableness of these waits also varied significantly depending on the specialty. For example, after seeing a specialist, Albertans who needed an orthopedic procedure, which includes knee replacements and spinal surgeries, could expect to wait 40.1 weeks for care—more than 28 weeks longer than what physicians deemed reasonable that year. For those needing care for ears, nose and throat, the wait for treatment was 13 weeks beyond what’s considered appropriate.

Regardless of the specialty, waiting for treatment has become the defining issue for health care in Alberta. And these waits have been increasing since at least the early ’90s. The president of the Alberta Medical Association is right to sound the alarm, but the province’s health-care system has been struggling for years. Albertans obviously deserve better than this, but without a fundamental departure from the status quo they’re unlikely to see any long-term relief from the unreasonable waits they endure for routine care.

Todayville is a digital media and technology company. We profile unique stories and events in our community. Register and promote your community event for free.

Follow Author

Alberta

Is Canada’s Federation Fair?

Published on

The Audit David Clinton

Contrasting the principle of equalization with the execution

Quebec – as an example – happens to be sitting on its own significant untapped oil and gas reserves. Those potential opportunities include the Utica Shale formation, the Anticosti Island basin, and the Gaspé Peninsula (along with some offshore potential in the Gulf of St. Lawrence).

So Quebec is effectively being paid billions of dollars a year to not exploit their natural resources. That places their ostensibly principled stand against energy resource exploitation in a very different light.

You’ll need to search long and hard to find a Canadian unwilling to help those less fortunate. And, so long as we identify as members of one nation¹, that feeling stretches from coast to coast.

So the basic principle of Canada’s equalization payments – where poorer provinces receive billions of dollars in special federal payments – is easy to understand. But as you can imagine, it’s not easy to apply the principle in a way that’s fair, and the current methodology has arguably lead to a very strange set of incentives.

According to Department of Finance Canada, eligibility for payments is determined based on your province’s fiscal capacity. Fiscal capacity is a measure of the taxes (income, business, property, and consumption) that a province could raise (based on national average rates) along with revenues from natural resources. The idea, I suppose, is that you’re creating a realistic proxy for a province’s higher personal earnings and consumption and, with greater natural resources revenues, a reduced need to increase income tax rates.

But the devil is in the details, and I think there are some questions worth asking:

  • Whichever way you measure fiscal capacity there’ll be both winners and losers, so who gets to decide?
  • Should a province that effectively funds more than its “share” get proportionately greater representation for national policy² – or at least not see its policy preferences consistently overruled by its beneficiary provinces?

The problem, of course, is that the decisions that defined equalization were – because of long-standing political conditions – dominated by the region that ended up receiving the most. Had the formula been the best one possible, there would have been little room to complain. But was it?

For example, attaching so much weight to natural resource revenues is just one of many possible approaches – and far from the most obvious. Consider how the profits from natural resources already mostly show up in higher income and corporate tax revenues (including income tax paid by provincial government workers employed by energy-related ministries)?

And who said that such calculations had to be population-based, which clearly benefits Quebec (nine million residents vs around $5 billion in resource income) over Newfoundland (545,000 people vs $1.6 billion) or Alberta (4.2 million people vs $19 billion). While Alberta’s average market income is 20 percent or so higher than Quebec’s, Quebec’s is quite a bit higher than Newfoundland’s. So why should Newfoundland receive only minimal equalization payments?

To illustrate all that, here’s the most recent payment breakdown when measured per-capita:

Equalization 2025-26 – Government of Canada

For clarification, the latest per-capita payments to poorer provinces ranged from $3,936 to PEI, $1,553 to Quebec, and $36 to Ontario. Only Saskatchewan, Alberta, and BC received nothing.

And here’s how the total equalization payments (in millions of dollars) have played out over the past decade:

Is energy wealth the right differentiating factor because it’s there through simple dumb luck, morally compelling the fortunate provinces to share their fortune? That would be a really difficult argument to make. For one thing because Quebec – as an example – happens to be sitting on its own significant untapped oil and gas reserves. Those potential opportunities include the Utica Shale formation, the Anticosti Island basin, and the Gaspé Peninsula (along with some offshore potential in the Gulf of St. Lawrence).

So Quebec is effectively being paid billions of dollars a year to not exploit their natural resources. That places their ostensibly principled stand against energy resource exploitation in a very different light. Perhaps that stand is correct or perhaps it isn’t. But it’s a stand they probably couldn’t have afforded to take had the equalization calculation been different.

Of course, no formula could possibly please everyone, but punishing the losers with ongoing attacks on the very source of their contributions is guaranteed to inspire resentment. And that could lead to very dark places.

Note: I know this post sounds like it came from a grumpy Albertan. But I assure you that I’ve never even visited the province, instead spending most of my life in Ontario.

1

Which has admittedly been challenging since the former primer minister infamously described us as a post-national state without an identity.

2

This isn’t nearly as crazy as it sounds. After all, there are already formal mechanisms through which Indigenous communities get more than a one-person-one-vote voice.

Subscribe to The Audit.

For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.

Continue Reading

Alberta

Big win for Alberta and Canada: Statement from Premier Smith

Published on

Premier Danielle Smith issued the following statement on the April 2, 2025 U.S. tariff announcement:

“Today was an important win for Canada and Alberta, as it appears the United States has decided to uphold the majority of the free trade agreement (CUSMA) between our two nations. It also appears this will continue to be the case until after the Canadian federal election has concluded and the newly elected Canadian government is able to renegotiate CUSMA with the U.S. administration.

“This is precisely what I have been advocating for from the U.S. administration for months.

“It means that the majority of goods sold into the United States from Canada will have no tariffs applied to them, including zero per cent tariffs on energy, minerals, agricultural products, uranium, seafood, potash and host of other Canadian goods.

“There is still work to be done, of course. Unfortunately, tariffs previously announced by the United States on Canadian automobiles, steel and aluminum have not been removed. The efforts of premiers and the federal government should therefore shift towards removing or significantly reducing these remaining tariffs as we go forward and ensuring affected workers across Canada are generously supported until the situation is resolved.

“I again call on all involved in our national advocacy efforts to focus on diplomacy and persuasion while avoiding unnecessary escalation. Clearly, this strategy has been the most effective to this point.

“As it appears the worst of this tariff dispute is behind us (though there is still work to be done), it is my sincere hope that we, as Canadians, can abandon the disastrous policies that have made Canada vulnerable to and overly dependent on the United States, fast-track national resource corridors, get out of the way of provincial resource development and turn our country into an independent economic juggernaut and energy superpower.”

Continue Reading

Trending

X