Premier Smith proud of Alberta's 'major transformation' of health care in 2024

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says transforming the province's health-care system defined her government in 2024.

In November 2023, Health Minister Adriana LaGrange announced Alberta would overhaul its health-care system and divide it into four agencies: primary care, acute care, continuing care and mental health and addiction.

The mental health and addiction agency Recovery Alberta started in September while primary care began operations in November.

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“I think that next year you’re going to see a refinement on that as we get people connected to good primary care,” Smith told CTV News Edmonton on Dec. 4 in a year-end interview.

“We feel like we’ve got the big pieces in place in order to be able to make some major moves on improving services.”

In November, Chris Gallaway, executive director of Friends of Medicare, said the overhaul is making the system difficult to navigate for patients.

He believes the province should put a full stop on the four agencies and solely focus on the front-line workforce to help Alberta stop losing family doctors.

This summer the premier revealed a plan to transfer hospitals away from Alberta Health Services and turn facilities over to other operators like faith-based public provider Covenant Health.

Smith claims the move would improve how health care is delivered and add “competition and fear” among providers.

NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi slammed the premier for revealing the policy to a members-only United Conservative Party event with no feedback from the public.

At odds with Ottawa

In November, Smith invoked the province’s sovereignty act to push back against Ottawa’s plan to green Canada’s electricity grid by 2035, a plan she said could wreak havoc on Alberta’s natural-gas-based grid.

“What I would just love to see is the federal government recognize that we have a right to develop our resources and to stop passing obnoxious policies that prevent us from doing that, then we’d have a great relationship,” Smith said.

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Smith is pointing fingers at the federal government saying it’s the one “creating the conflict” by going outside “their lane.”

“We’ve been watching what has happened in other jurisdictions as well and seen how the federal government sometimes likes to lean on municipalities to implement federal agenda,” Smith added.

Controversial bills

The premier defends her decision to amend the province’s Bill of Rights, calling it “the right thing to do.”

The new bill aims to protect people with capacity from being compelled or coerced into receiving medical treatments or vaccines, but leaves it up to the courts to decide how the law is applied.

Smith says the recommendation came from a report by Preston Manning, an 82-year-old retired politician who served as a Calgary MP and leader of the Reform Party of Canada for 13 years.

“There's been increasing amounts of concern that the world has had about the approach to gender identity and gender confusion,” Smith said.

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Smith says changing the province’s legislation around transgender health restrictions came from a recommendation from U.K doctor Hillary Cass.

“We want to make sure that kids aren't making permanent changes to their body and a permanent decision that will affect their fertility before they're old enough to understand the consequences of that,” Smith said.

Earlier this month, the premier said she would be willing to use the notwithstanding clause on the trans bill as a last resort.

Alberta doctors have previously criticized Smith for her “medically false” statements about transgender youth care and gender reassignment surgery, saying her plans would risk harming vulnerable groups.

Relationship with U.S.

Earlier this month Smith announced the province would create a team of specially trained sheriffs tasked with patrolling the Alberta-U.S. border.

The decision is in response to incoming U.S. president Donald Trump's threat to impose a 25-per-cent tariff on Canadian goods if Canada doesn’t take action on illegal immigration and drug trafficking at its border.

“I hope that we can have a meeting of the minds so that we'd be able to avoid tariffs altogether, but I think we have a pretty good relationship with a lot of our U.S. counterparts, and we're going to continue to press that,” Smith said.

She adds the province can have a collaborative relationship with the U.S. by providing a “secure supply of energy” to Americans, which will help their energy costs.

While oil and gas are important to Alberta’s economy, so is new green technologies, Smith said.

Diversifying the province’s economy is on Smith’s list of goals in the next year, including forestry and agricultural food.

"It just seems like every part of the province has a different industry that is really now, finally turning the corner and on the way up.”

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Geoff Hastings and The Canadian Press