Advocacy groups call on feds to review Alberta's Bill 11 health-care reforms
CBC
Doctors across Canada are "deeply concerned" about the Alberta government's plan to expand private health care, said Dr. Margot Burnell, president of the Canadian Medical Association — and they want Ottawa to step in.
At a news conference on Thursday, Canadian Doctors for Medicare and the Canadian Medical Association called on Alberta to pause its reforms to the health system and for the federal government to ensure those changes are legal.
"By allowing patients to be charged for medically necessary physician or hospital care, Bill 11 is in clear violation of the Canada Health Act," said Dr. Danyaal Raza, a family doctor and a board director of Canadian Doctors for Medicare.
"Silence in the face of this legislation is complicity."
Alberta's Health Statutes Amendment Act, 2025 (No. 2), also known as Bill 11, passed last year. The law allows doctors to work both in public and private health care — what Raza says amounts to "a formal two-tier system."
Canadian Doctors for Medicare and 23 other organizations issued a joint call to action for Prime Minister Mark Carney and Health Minister Marjorie Michel.
They want the federal government to conduct a review of Bill 11 and use all the powers at their disposal, "including discretionary penalties permitted under the [Canada Health Act]."
According to the Alberta government, Bill 11 will "modernize practice rules for physicians, drug coverage and health cards while implementing administrative changes to meet the needs of Albertans."
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has previously said that the law aims to reduce wait times by increasing the number of surgeries able to be performed while incentivizing doctors to stay in the province.
"Parallel private systems do not reduce wait times. They make them longer," Raza said.
"When physicians earn more in a private parallel system, this is where time, energy and expertise will disproportionately go."
Despite Alberta's proposal of minimum public system hours to act as a "safeguard," Raza said this strategy "doesn't work."
Referring to similar measures implemented in Ireland and the U.K., he said minimum public system hours are not respected in practice.
"These are not hypothetical risks. They are documented failures of precisely the kind of so-called safeguards that are now being proposed," he said.
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