Alberta transferring ownership of health care properties April 1

Edmonton's Royal Alexandra Hospital in April 2024. (Darcy Seaton/CTV News Edmonton)

In a matter of weeks, Alberta’s government will transfer ownership of hundreds of hospitals, care centres and other assets from Alberta Health Services (AHS) to Alberta Infrastructure.

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AHS currently owns about 700 structures and 380 land titles in the province. But as of April 1, ownership of these properties will be centralized under Alberta Infrastructure and leased back to health entities and agencies.

The transfer of titles on hospitals and other health properties “will allow for us to choose the operator, and it will allow us to repurpose them to our needs,” Premier Danielle Smith said at a press event on Feb. 28.

Smith said the province’s rules for how capital projects are owned, maintained and sold has been a frustration for her government as long as she has been in office.

The Real Property Governance Act, passed in 2024, amended legislation to give the province first right of refusal when provincial agencies, boards, or commissions are selling buildings, and ended the practice of transferring ownership of new buildings like schools, hospitals to the entity running them.

At a United Conservative Party members-only event in Drayton Valley last August, Smith spoke about setting up this structure where the government retains ownership of new buildings and leases them out, and indicated the next phase would involve determining how many of the hospitals AHS operates the government could retake ownership of.

Though the capital plan in Alberta’s recently released budget notes additional legislative amendments will permit property owned by health entities to be transferred to Alberta Infrastructure, it appears the second phase of Alberta’s ownership centralization plan will also be accomplished through the Real Property Governance Act.

“There is no sale or purchasing involved in the transfer of these buildings. All properties will be transferred over on April 1 as part of the Real Property Governance Act (which was passed last year) and consolidating all Government owned property under one management,” said Benji Smith, Press Secretary to Minister of Infrastructure Martin Long.

“The properties will be leased back to the applicable health entity or agency for no cost, but the leasing organization is responsible for all costs under the lease including insurance, property maintenance and utilities (as is the case already).”

Sarah Hoffman, Alberta New Democrat shadow minister of health, said the transfer of health care properties and land titles to Alberta Infrastructure raises serious alarms for the future of public health.

“We’ve seen this before with Holy Cross Hospital in Calgary, where the government shifted ownership while allowing private organizations to manage health care. They privatized it and then they paid a profitable company to continue using it. Now, the UCP government is expanding this model, opening the door to more privatization in health care,” Hoffman said.

“This is about more than just ownership of buildings; it’s about control. If our public providers no longer directly own the facilities they operate, the government could step in — as we’ve seen with CorruptCare — and further privatize our health care with worse outcomes.”

Brett McKay, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, St. Albert Gazette