NDP critics advocate for financial commitment to healthcare

By Ry Clarke - Lethbridge Herald Local Journalism Initiative Reporter on January 7, 2023.

The NDP are calling for more funding to be committed toward healthcare in the province.

On Friday, Joe Ceci, Municipal Affairs Critic and Calgary-Buffalo MLA, and Shannon Phillips, Finance Critic and Lethbridge-West MLA, held a press conference in Calgary where they spoke about Alberta’s current status with healthcare workers and pledged to commit to bringing resources to frontline workers and ending chaos in healthcare.

“We need more funding for healthcare in Alberta, we think this is critical and so do Albertans,” said Ceci. “Seventeen hour waits at the Children’s Hospital just to get a kid admitted, ambulances lined up 14 deep outside the hospital in Red Deer, and elsewhere no ambulances available to respond to emergencies at all. Hundreds of thousands without a family doctor. Sporadic and constant closures of rural health care facilities with no warnings. Furthermore, we still have serious questions about the premier’s commitment to public health care.”

With Alberta’s 2023 budget set to be released in February 2023, the NDP is hoping to see more being put forward to help healthcare issues.

“We are coming forward today demanding a serious and dedicated commitment to better funded healthcare in this coming budget, which is being drafted currently,” said Ceci. “My constituents in Calgary-Buffalo are telling me healthcare is a top priority item for them and that they are deeply concerned about the interview Danielle Smith gave a few days before Christmas in which she stated she wasn’t sure if more funding for hospitals, clinics, and EMS was needed. She is wrong. We do.”

Phillips notes the UCP has not adjusted funding to keep pace with inflation and population growth over time.

“UCP has actually cut $1.7 billion from public healthcare, and there is a direct line between the election of the UCP in 2019 and the chaos today in healthcare. Even in the face of all the healthcare challenges and chaos that we have seen, the UCP is still cutting funding and putting our healthcare at risk,” said Phillips. “We need stable, predictable, adequate funding for public health care. […] Treasury Board deliberations are happening right now, as we speak, and I say this to them: healthcare – public healthcare – has got to be a top priority in this budget. We have got to restore the cuts that have been made to healthcare so that we can rebuild our system.”

With the Alberta general election scheduled for May 29, the discussion of funding will become a hot topic amongst voters and politicians.

“In five months’ time Albertans have the opportunity to elect an NDP government that will make stable, predictable, adequate, and sustainable funding for public healthcare a top priority,” said Phillips. “We will launch the largest healthcare recruitment strategy Alberta has ever seen to make sure that people can access care.”