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Alberta

Province adding 22 ambulance crews including 1 in Red Deer

Published

2 years ago

8 minute read

Adding new EMS supports to improve response times

Record investments will build a stronger, more flexible and innovative system for emergency medical services (EMS) with better access to care and shorter wait times. 

Alberta’s government promised that help is on the way for Albertans and the province’s health system. By hiring more staff, putting more ambulances on the road and strengthening mental health supports for front-line workers, Alberta’s government is delivering on that promise.

“We are adding new ambulances and front-line staff and investing in solutions now and into the future to make sure ambulances arrive as fast as possible when Albertans call 911 for a medical emergency.”

Jason Copping, Minister of Health

The funding boost also supports implementing Health Care Action Plan priorities and recommendations made by the Alberta EMS Provincial Advisory Committee to improve EMS response and the work culture for EMS staff.

Alberta has the best front-line health care workers in the world, and Budget 2023 will put the right supports in place to ensure Albertans get the care they need, when and where they need it.

“Budget 2023 delivers the needed support to the front line and adds more resources to implement the Alberta EMS Provincial Advisory Committee recommendations. The additional funding will help ease worker fatigue and provide more mental health supports to improve the work environment for all EMS staff.”

RJ Sigurdson, parliamentary secretary, EMS Reform

Adding EMS staff and more ambulances

To improve EMS response time, Budget 2023 invests in adding staff and boosting the number of ambulances on the road. The funding increase will add EMS crews to staff 10 more ambulances in Edmonton, 10 in Calgary, one in Lethbridge and one in Red Deer during peak hours this year.

As part of the ongoing work to improve the central dispatch system and implement the EMS advisory committee’s recommendations, Alberta’s government will provide more than $1.5 million to hire and train additional staff and conduct a review of EMS available resources and how they are used in communities.

Supporting EMS workforce

Front-line staff and community partners asked for more supports to create better work environments, as reflected in the provincial advisory committee’s recommendations. Budget 2023 delivers funding to improve scheduling practices to allow for more breaks, more flexibility in the length of shifts and opportunities to take time off, in addition to providing for more training and development opportunities.

Nearly $1 million will go towards boosting mental health supports for EMS staff across the province. A $3-million investment will address paramedic fatigue in rural communities by adjusting work hours and shift schedules as part of the AHS EMS hours of work initiative.

“This funding increase enables aggressive action on our priority of improving emergency response times. We will hire more staff, increase hours of ambulance capacity, expand partnerships with other community supports and deliver innovative projects. This is about getting Albertans the care they need, where and when they need it.”

Mauro Chies, president and CEO, Alberta Health Services

EMS-811 shared response, inter-facility transfers and treat and refer

Alberta’s Health Care Action Plan is helping to speed up EMS response times and free up highly trained paramedics from non-emergency calls and transfers. Additional funding will go towards the EMS-811 Shared Response program that transfers calls from Albertans with non-urgent conditions to registered nurses with Health Link.

All these actions will reduce EMS response time by empowering paramedics to focus efforts on urgent calls and diverting them away from situations when their level of care is not medically required.

Medical first response supports in rural communities

Medical first responders provide life-saving care in rural and remote communities until an ambulance arrives. Budget 2023 invests in supporting medical first response and implementing the EMS provincial advisory committee’s recommendations to add capacity and provide additional training and equipment.

Budget 2023 secures Alberta’s future by transforming the health care system to meet people’s needs, supporting Albertans with the high cost of living, keeping our communities safe and driving the economy with more jobs, quality education and continued diversification.

Quick facts

In 2023-24, Alberta’s government is providing $723 million in operating funds for EMS, an increase of $138 million to support EMS priority actions, including:

  • $47 million for additional EMS capacity to put more ambulances on the road, hire additional paramedics and emergency communications officers, and create dedicated inter-facility transfer capacity in Edmonton, Calgary and Red Deer.
  • $24 million for recruitment and workforce initiatives and supports, including training programs and mental health supports for front-line staff.
  • $24 million to continue initiatives that were implemented last year such as the 19 additional ambulances in Calgary and Edmonton, and enhanced scheduling changes made in high-priority stations around the province to reduce paramedic fatigue.
  • $21 million for ground ambulance contract changes, increased mileage and fuel, including for air ambulance/air ambulance supports and other operational pressures from the increase in the number of events.
  • $7 million to support strategies to enhance the EMS system, such as enhancements to the medical first response program, public education and response, and a review of the ground ambulance resource allocation policies and capacity.
  • Almost $7 million to support other initiatives such as clinical improvement initiatives like expanding the vital health response program to the south zone, which will make it possible for paramedics to provide life-saving heart medication in the event of a heart attack, and expanding the mobile integrated heart program to support community paramedics across the province.
  • $3 million for the EMS-811 Shared Response program.
  • $3 million for other initiatives related to implementing recommendations.
  • $2 million for a project related to air ambulances.
  • Budget 2023 provides $196 million in new EMS funding over three years to hire more staff, put more ambulances on the road and implement recommendations made by the EMS advisory committee and the EMS Dispatch Review Report.
  • In addition, $15 million over three years will fund a new capital program to purchase more ambulances and related equipment.
Related Topics:

This is a news release from the Government of Alberta.

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Is Canada’s Federation Fair?

Published on April 6, 2025

By

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.

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Alberta

Big win for Alberta and Canada: Statement from Premier Smith

Published on April 2, 2025

By

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.”

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