‘We’re not keeping up with our current needs’: Friends of Medicare fears Budget 2025 will bring more cuts to health system

Friends of Medicare Executive Director Chris Gallaway speaks with Alberta Primetime host Michael Higgins about his organization’s priorities for Budget 2025.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Michael Higgins: In a recent pre-budget statement the finance minister indicated the government will need to make prudent choices to meet responsibilities, and that there are headwinds pushing towards a deficit. What’s your read on that messaging?

Chris Gallaway: What we fear is they’re warning that there’s going to be cuts or rollbacks in terms of funding for health care and other public services at a time where we really need, and we’ve needed for years now, a plan for capacity and for the health-care workforce.

We hear from Albertans that are concerned about accessing the health care they need when they need it. We know where thousands of beds behind where we should be, because we haven’t kept up with the infrastructure needs, and we know we’re in a staffing crisis.

This is the exact wrong time not to invest in health care. We should be putting money into the infrastructure and the staff retention that we need right now.

MH: If the budget is to keep pace with key elements like inflation, population growth, how should that translate where the delivery of health care is concerned?

CG: That’s exactly the problem, we haven’t been keeping up with population growth and inflation, in terms of our needs. Two budgets ago, we already knew we were hundreds of beds short in Edmonton and thousands across the province, and what we saw was the canceling of the South Edmonton hospital, a hospital that we already need today. We haven’t built a hospital since 1988 and the city’s population has doubled.

We have these huge infrastructure needs, and then we need have needs for staff to actually work in them, like the Calgary Cancer Centre, where we haven’t actually seen a plan to fully open that new facility.

So we’re not keeping up with our current needs, let alone the booming population that we know has been happening the last couple of years.

MH: On that point of staffing, how much flexibility should there be in the budget to address ongoing bargaining with public sector employees, notably the United Nurses of Alberta and the Health Sciences Association?

CG: Bargaining is ongoing, so we need to have some sort of buffer for whatever settlements they come to, but the bigger picture is the need for a workforce plan, something we’ve been calling for for many years, where we actually map out who we have in terms of skilled health professionals, who we need, and then make a plan to retain folks.

We continue to lose folks to retirement and other jurisdictions and then apply to recruit and train up who we need, but we haven’t done that work to make a plan, let alone invest in retention, which we really, really need right now, and then recruitment and training.

We’re not seeing that kind of work happen. It’s one-off announcements that don’t really look at the big picture. We would love to see that in this budget, a commitment to workforce planning and money to ensure we’re retaining the doctors and nurses and skilled health professionals we need to fill those gaps.

What we know is happening is that Albertans don’t have a family doctor, emergency rooms are closed, surgeries are being canceled. We need to turn that ship around.

MH: Can you be more specific in that regard? Given the government’s emphasis on restructuring the health system, what needs to be prioritized in the budget this time around?

CG: What has been historically prioritized is the restructuring plan that’s going to cost us $85 million or more: new logos, new signs, new CEOs. Then private contracts, something that’s in the news a lot right now.

The last couple budgets, we’ve seen an emphasis in money going to for profit surgical standards to other private contracts, rather than into the public system, and rather into the public systems workforce.

We should be laser focused on the frontline workforce and retention of that workforce, and instead, we’re pulling the system apart and we’re contracting it out, making those problems worse.

MH: That brings us to the ever present conversation around allegations of interference and corruption and procurement practices. Contracts with private surgery clinics, how do you see that playing into the budget dialog next week?

CG: We’ll be interested to see what they do, in terms of that budget item now, because it’s something that’s been growing the last couple of years. These are the concerns we raised from the start when the Alberta surgical initiative was announced, that when we do these private contracts with for profit surgical centres, we lose transparency and accountability as Albertans.

We don’t get to see those contracts. We don’t know what we’re paying for, what we’re committed to, what we’re on the hook for. It removes that transparency, and now we’re seeing these very serious allegations that potentially things that shouldn’t be happening, were happening in the procurement process. That’s what happens when you remove public accountability, public transparency.

We have no way of knowing how our public health-care dollars are being spent because they’ve chosen this plan that involves for profit providers, rather than using our operating rooms that aren’t fully operational.

MH: What is it going to take to clarify accountability where delivery of health care is concerned?

CG: Something that would help with the accountability is to stop contracting out services to private entities, then we would have that public accountability. But in terms of the allegations and the scenario that we’re in, we need the auditor general to be able to do their work, to have the access to the information they need, to the interviews they need, something they struggled with in the Dynalife review of that contract that we’re still waiting for.

Beyond that, we need to see an independent public inquiry that looks into this. We can’t have it be the deputy minister to the minister overseeing all of Alberta Health Services, with no board and no CEO, claiming they’re investigating what happened.

We need that third party to come in, and of course, we need the RCMP to continue looking at what they know, and get the information they need to see if there should be other investigations.