Health, Seniors & Community Support &

Health Care: Strong, Publicly Funded, Publicly Delivered

The Official Opposition believes in a strong, publicly funded, and publicly delivered healthcare system.

• The quality of Albertans’ health care cannot depend on fluctuating oil and gas revenues.  The Alberta Liberals would commit to stable, sufficient funding for our healthcare system, maintaining current service levels, while finding efficiencies where they do not affect patient quality. 

• Expand the support and scope of public health in Alberta.  The health care system is heavily focused on treating chronic illnesses, which is often expensive.  Through sufficient support for public health initiatives, Albertans will be healthier and have less reliance and use of the health care system.

• We support true community and stakeholder involvement.  This would translate to communities having a strong voice and influence in the delivery of health care for their area.  It is the people who live in an area that know what a community’s needs truly are.  Albertans feel as though the government is ignoring them and their concerns with the current centralized healthcare model.This would be enabled through clear roles, responsibilities and powers given to Community Health Councils that would give them a true ability to influence decision making in their area.

• We would commit to immediately dealing with the current backlog of elective surgeries in Alberta.  This is one area where the funds spent now would reduce the long term costs to system, and would pay off in the long run.

• We would plan and prepare to have adequate health professionals for both urban and rural areas, as a solution to the rollercoaster that health staffing has gone through since the
1990s.

• This means we would plan on training and recruiting sufficient numbers of nurses, doctors, LPNs, and diagnostic technologists so that as the working population ages and retires, we are not hit with even worse staff shortages.

• We would have a clear, transparent, and open dialogue with Albertans regarding health facility infrastructure.  In the past there have been capital projects started and completed without having the adequate funding in place to actually open the beds.  Any new capital project would involve community and stakeholder input, use the best evidence to determine the area’s needs, and make sure that there is sufficient workforce capacity to go ahead with the project. 

• Examine the current funding structure used for hospital budgeting.  It is clear that there needs to be more accountability and equity throughout the province, and we would start a review to determine the best way to accomplish this.

• We support expanding the public delivery of continuing care services, rather than depending on private industry to fill need that clearly currently exists for Alberta’s seniors.