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Alberta

Preparing for the Return of the Calgary Winter at the Mustard Seed

Published

5 years ago

5 minute read

As Calgary prepares for the descent back into winter, the reliance on nonprofit organizations throughout the city is set to increase as the most vulnerable members of the community turn to support programs and shelters to weather the cold months. 

The Mustard Seed is a Christian-faith based organization that values transparency, accountability, respect, communication and holistic innovation. As one of Calgary’s oldest homeless relief organizations, The Mustard Seed has been operating in the city for nearly 40 years. 

By offering a range of products and services to compromised community members in Calgary and across western Canada, The Mustard Seed’s ultimate vision is to eliminate factors that contribute to homelessness and poverty. The organization pursues this goal every day by “providing basic needs (food, clothing and hygiene items), education, employment programs, health and wellness services, spiritual care, housing, and emergency shelter.” 

Founded in 1984 by Pat Nixon, who had experienced homelessness himself as a teenager, The Mustard Seed began as a small drop-in coffee shop. From there, it expanded into a downtown house, and then officially opened as a shelter on 11 Ave SE in 1992. Beginning with just 80 mats and a single location in ‘92, The Mustard Seed now operates five different locations across Calgary, and has the capacity to house 370 adults every night at their Foothills Shelter location. According to Dave Conrad, Community Engagement Manager for the Mustard Seed, the shelter serves close to 315,000 meals every year, and often hits overnight capacity in the winter months, averaging 328 individuals per night in 2019.

In addition to the Foothills Shelter, the Mustard Seed also operates the Downtown Support Centre, the Wellness Centre, the Neighbour Centre, and the Resource Sorting Centre. Across these 5 locations, The Mustard Seed is able to provide a series of advocacy, health and wellness, transportation, employment and spiritual care services to those who need them most. 

The Mustard Seed is also responsible for the 1010 Centre, Canada’s largest permanent supportive housing facility, which provides affordable, sustainable housing options in the city of Calgary. They have a total of 285 affordable housing units among four locations: 224 units in the 1010 Centre, 30 units in the Downtown Support Centre, and 31 units in two external housing units. 

Providing aid and relief, and fulfilling the most basic human needs as well as educational, employment and social needs for those who require it most is no small task. Issues such as homelessness and poverty pay no attention to a pandemic, and COVID-19 has had a major impact on operations at the Mustard Seed and organizations similar. 

In order to maintain compliance with COVID-19 health and safety mandates, the capacity of the Mustard Seed to house individuals has been reduced from 370 at one location to 238 between two locations, which will pose a unique challenge heading into winter. However, Conrad says they are committed to making it work, whatever it takes. “As the winter comes, we tend to see our numbers go up, which will create some unique challenges with the pandemic this year” he says, “but we will continue to work with the community and collaborate with other organizations to ensure that everyone who needs a bed, has a bed.” 

Despite the new and ongoing challenges of 2020, the support from the public during the pandemic has been extraordinary, says Conrad. ““We have all been incredibly humbled by the public response over the course of all this,” he says, “we are so encouraged by the outpouring of support from our community.”

Heading back into winter, some of the most pressing needs for The Mustard Seed currently include warm clothes and new underwear, and the organization is also encouraging people to explore available opportunities to return to volunteering. 

For more information about The Mustard Seed, visit https://theseed.ca. 

To find out how you can contribute and for a comprehensive list of items urgently needed by the Mustard Seed, check https://theseed.ca/urgent-items/. 

For more stories, visit Todayville Calgary.

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Alberta

Alberta takes big step towards shorter wait times and higher quality health care

Published on April 9, 2025

By

From the Fraser Institute

By Nadeem Esmail

On Monday, the Smith government announced that beginning next year it will change the way it funds surgeries in Alberta. This is a big step towards unlocking the ability of Alberta’s health-care system to provide more, better and faster services for the same or possibly fewer dollars.

To understand the significance of this change, you must understand the consequences of the current (and outdated) approach.

Currently, the Alberta government pays a lump sum of money to hospitals each year. Consequently, hospitals perceive patients as a drain on their budgets. From the hospital’s perspective, there’s little financial incentive to serve more patients, operate more efficiently and provide superior quality services.

Consider what would happen if your local grocery store received a giant bag of money each year to feed people. The number of items would quickly decline to whatever was most convenient for the store to provide. (Have a favourite cereal? Too bad.) Store hours would become less convenient for customers, alongside a general decline in overall service. This type of grocery store, like an Alberta hospital, is actually financially better off (that is, it saves money) if you go elsewhere.

The Smith government plans to flip this entire system on its head, to the benefit of patients and taxpayers. Instead of handing out bags of money each year to providers, the new system—known as “activity-based funding”—will pay health-care providers for each patient they treat, based on the patient’s particular condition and important factors that may add complexity or cost to their care.

This turns patients from a drain on budgets into a source of additional revenue. The result, as has been demonstrated in other universal health-care systems worldwide, is more services delivered using existing health-care infrastructure, lower wait times, improved quality of care, improved access to medical technologies, and less waste.

In other words, Albertans will receive far better value from their health-care system, which is currently among the most expensive in the world. And relief can’t come soon enough—for example, last year in Alberta the median wait time for orthopedic surgeries including hip and knee replacements was 66.8 weeks.

The naysayers argue this approach will undermine the province’s universal system and hurt patients. But by allowing a spectrum of providers to compete for the delivery of quality care, Alberta will follow the lead of other more successful universal health-care systems in countries such as Australia, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland and create greater accountability for hospitals and other health-care providers. Taxpayers will get a much better picture of what they’re paying for and how much they pay.

Again, Alberta is not exploring an untested policy. Almost every other developed country with universal health care uses some form of “activity-based funding” for hospital and surgical care. And remember, we already spend more on health care than our counterparts in nearly all of these countries yet endure longer wait times and poorer access to services generally, in part because of how we pay for surgical care.

While the devil is always in the details, and while it’s still possible for the Alberta government to get this wrong, Monday’s announcement is a big step in the right direction. A funding model that puts patients first will get Albertans more of the high-quality health care they already pay for in a timelier fashion. And provide to other provinces an example of bold health-care reform.

Nadeem Esmail

Senior Fellow, Fraser Institute
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Alberta

Alberta’s embrace of activity-based funding is great news for patients

Published on April 9, 2025

By

From the Montreal Economic Institute

Alberta’s move to fund acute care services through activity-based funding follows best practices internationally, points out an MEI researcher following an announcement made by Premier Danielle Smith earlier today.

“For too long, the way hospitals were funded in Alberta incentivized treating fewer patients, contributing to our long wait times,” explains Krystle Wittevrongel, director of research at the MEI. “International experience has shown that, with the proper funding models in place, health systems become more efficient to the benefit of patients.”

Currently, Alberta’s hospitals are financed under a system called “global budgeting.” This involves allocating a pre-set amount of funding to pay for a specific number of services based on previous years’ budgets.

Under the government’s newly proposed funding system, hospitals receive a fixed payment for each treatment delivered.

An Economic Note published by the MEI last year showed that Quebec’s gradual adoption of activity-based funding led to higher productivity and lower costs in the province’s health system.

Notably, the province observed that the per-procedure cost of MRIs fell by four per cent as the number of procedures performed increased by 22 per cent.

In the radiology and oncology sector, it observed productivity increases of 26 per cent while procedure costs decreased by seven per cent.

“Being able to perform more surgeries, at lower costs, and within shorter timelines is exactly what Alberta’s patients need, and Premier Smith understands that,” continued Mrs. Wittevrongel. “Today’s announcement is a good first step, and we look forward to seeing a successful roll-out once appropriate funding levels per procedure are set.”

The governments expects to roll-out this new funding model for select procedures starting in 2026.

* * *

The MEI is an independent public policy think tank with offices in Montreal, Ottawa, and Calgary. Through its publications, media appearances, and advisory services to policymakers, the MEI stimulates public policy debate and reforms based on sound economics and entrepreneurship.

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