Airdrie, a fast-growing community north of Calgary, will be seeing a new health centre that will help address the needs of the thousands of residents that call the city home. The Airdrie Covenant Health Centre will be made up of two new facilities: an urgent care and birthing centre and a new primary, surgical and ambulatory care centre. “This new health centre means more surgeries, more urgent care, and new birthing and specialized services for families in Airdrie. It’s a major step forward for health care in this community and one that will serve families for generations,” said Premier Danielle Smith on Monday. Officials say the urgent care and birthing centre will provide care for non-life-threatening urgent health concerns as well as maternal and birthing services. It’s expected to handle 1,000 deliveries and support more than 30,000 urgent care visits each year. The primary, surgical and ambulatory care centre will add capacity for approximately 10,000 surgical procedures annually. Covenant Health will be working closely with the province to plan and align services based on projected demand in the city of Airdrie. “We’re grateful to the government of Alberta for partnering with us to bring this vision to Airdrie, with more care closer to home. And we’re just getting started,” said Patrick Dumelie, president and CEO of Covenant Health. ‘Airdrie is not Calgary’ The announcement comes after years of advocacy from municipal leaders and community groups for more health-care services in the rapidly growing city. Alberta Health Minister Adriana LaGrange said the community’s growth means its health-care resources need to grow as well. “One thing has always been clear: Airdrie is not Calgary, and it is time this community’s health resources reflected that,” LaGrange said. “A city this size, growing this fast, deserves care that’s built for who they are, not whatever capacity happens to be left over next door.” The province says the project will add more than 300,000 square feet of health-care space to Airdrie as part of the first phase of a planned Covenant Wellness Community. LaGrange said the government is also working to increase health-care capacity elsewhere in Alberta. “We delivered a record 332,000 surgeries last year, and we’ll add an additional 50,000 more over the next three years,” she said. “We’re also adding more than 1,000 new acute care spaces in Calgary and Edmonton, and over 1,500 new spaces in continuing care, and that’s only the beginning.” Province points to changes at AHS Smith also used the announcement to highlight changes to the way health-care infrastructure is planned in Alberta, saying Alberta Health Services (AHS) had previously been a barrier to projects like the one announced Monday. “We can’t have AHS acting as a blocker to others who want to build these kinds of facilities, and that was the case before,” Smith said. “AHS has lots of facilities of their own to run, and that’s the reason we wanted them to refocus on running their own hospitals well, and allow the department, led by Acute Care Alberta, to make the determination about where the needs were in the rest of the province.” When asked whether AHS was ultimately responsible for delays in building health infrastructure in Airdrie, LaGrange pointed to a lack of planning she said she encountered after becoming health minister in 2023. “When I came in in 2023, and I looked at all the zone plans, or the ones that actually were missing, there were no zone plans in a number of those zones,” she said. “It was indicative to me that we needed to do things differently.” Smith said future hospital planning by AHS had not been completed in several areas of the province. “When Minister Lagrange went in, she found out that there had been no planning for future hospitals by AHS in all of the different zones,” Smith said. “We had two zone plans that were outdated to 2018, and three zone plans that hadn’t been done at all.” Critics say Airdrie still needs a hospital The announcement, however, does not include a full-service hospital with an emergency department. Friends of Medicare executive director Chris Galloway said the expansion of services is welcome but argued the project does not go far enough for a city approaching a population of 100,000. “The expansion of health-care services in Airdrie is good news and long overdue,” Galloway said. “But we still haven’t heard an announcement for a full hospital for the community, which would have services like an emergency room.” Galloway said an urgent care centre does not provide the same services as a hospital emergency department and questioned what the plan is for other hospital services. “Urgent care isn’t an emergency room,” he said. “What about dialysis patients, overnight patients, and so on?” Galloway also criticized the province’s decision to point to AHS when discussing the history of health-care planning in Airdrie. “They try to deflect blame whenever there’s criticisms or concerns about access to health care,” Galloway said. “Ultimately, the buck stops with them.” He said the province’s previous decisions about capital spending contributed to the lack of health-care infrastructure in the city. “The government made choices on what to fund and not to fund in capital budgets,” Galloway said. “They cannot blame Alberta Health Services or others for there not being more services in Airdrie. That was their choice in consecutive budgets year after year to not start building these services.” Future hospital expansion not ruled out Smith acknowledged that the new facility will not be a full-service hospital, but said there is room on the site for future expansion. “You have to start somewhere,” Smith said. “And the nice part is there’s, as you can see, a lot of land.” She said further planning will be required before any additional hospital services are announced. “There for sure is a secondary planning process that we have to do,” Smith said. “Point is, it’s now happening.” Galloway said he would like to see a commitment to a full hospital, even if it is built in phases. “We don’t have a plan for it to become a full hospital, we have a plan for a community health centre,” he said. “Every time we announce something that isn’t a full hospital, we delay there ever being a full hospital in Airdrie.” Covenant Health says care can move closer to home Covenant Health says the model is intended to provide more services in the community rather than directing patients to traditional hospitals. The facility will include primary care, urgent care, day surgery and ambulatory care, along with lab, diagnostic imaging, pharmacy, physiotherapy and other services. Dumelie said the goal is to reduce pressure on hospitals while making routine and specialized care more accessible. “What we’re talking about here is being able to deliver everyday health care, health care that people need, primary care, urgent care, and what it does is it makes hospitals work better,” he said. “We should get good care in community, which will not only take away some of the pressure, but will help people be healthier and not need the urgent care, emergency care, you know, invasive surgeries, and the things that hospitals should be reserved to do.” Project details still to come The province has not yet released a total government investment or estimated project cost for the facility. In a statement to CTV News, the ministry of hospital and surgical health services said the figures will not be available until land acquisition and competitive bidding processes are complete. “The total government investment and estimated project cost will be released once land acquisition, and competitive bidding processes are complete,” the ministry said. “We look forward to keeping Albertans updated on this important project.” Galloway also raised questions about the project’s cost, timeline and eventual operation. “We don’t know the cost. We don’t know if it’s fully funded,” he said. “They suggested that a four-year timeline would be doable, but we don’t actually have a project with a timeline and construction costs and tendering and so on to really know when this will be completed.” The province has not provided a firm construction completion date, although Smith said during Monday’s announcement that she hopes the facility can be completed within four years. He also questioned the eventual role of Covenant Health in operating the facility. “We don’t actually know for sure that Covenant Health will operate the health center,” Galloway said. “They may just build, own it, and they could subcontract services within it. We’re not totally sure because none of that was really shared today.” Airdrie’s population continues to grow The City of Airdrie, which has a population of 93,957 according to its 2026 census, is currently served by the Airdrie Community Health Centre. The province spent $8.4 million to renovate the facility, which expanded its capacity to about 20 treatment beds in September 2025. Mayor Heather Spearman said the new project addresses a longstanding concern among residents as the city has nearly tripled in population since 2005. “Families want care closer to home. Seniors want support in their own community. Parents want to know services are available when their loved ones need them most,” she said. “This project is about more than buildings; it’s about the people.”
