Friends of Medicare say access to healthcare has gotten worse at Calgary townhall
Posted Jan 25, 2026 1:14 pm.
Last Updated Jan 25, 2026 1:16 pm.
The Friends of Medicare stopped in Calgary for a town hall and stressed the need to improve accessibility in Alberta’s healthcare system.
On Your Province, Your Premier, a call-in radio show hosted by Wayne Nelson on Corus Radio, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith talked about healthcare, including long wait times for diagnostic procedures, hiring doctors in smaller communities, and more.
At the Friends of Medicare town hall in Calgary, former president of the Alberta Medical Association, Dr. Paul Parks, says healthcare accessibility is going backward.
“Not having a workforce plan. Where should we have our people? Where are our family physicians? Where is everyone, and are they meeting their needs?” Parks told CityNews.
“That lack of coordination and planning has really made it extremely difficult to deliver safe and timely care.”
The Calgary town hall is one of 15 stops on the Friends of Medicare tour around Alberta, which follows a letter from frontline physicians to the Alberta government that described emergency department hallways and waiting rooms as “death zones.”
It cited six cases in which patients died waiting for care, echoing the widely publicized death of 44‑year‑old Edmonton resident Prashant Sreekumar, who waited nearly eight hours in an ER with chest pain before dying on Dec. 22.
Despite this call, along with ones from the provincial NDP and the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), which represents 40,000 Alberta workers and is one of the province’s largest unions, the United Conservative government said it will not declare a health-care emergency nor reopen the legislature for an urgent debate.
Meanwhile, the executive director of Friends of Medicare, Chris Galloway, says public concerns stem from a variety of issues.
“Whether it’s not having a family doctor, whether it’s ambulances or emergency room waits, cancer care, or waitlist for surgery. They’re increasingly worried that they cannot get the help they need when they need it, and theyre worried that the changes that are happening are making that worse,” he said.
One of those changes is the province allowing people to request and pay for their own screening procedures, like MRIs, and if the screening found something, the province would reimburse them.
Parks says this could result in many doctors abandoning the public system.
“As soon as the premier opens the flood gates to let anyone buy an ultrasound or an MRI whenever they feel like it, all of our technologists, all of our ultrasound people who would do those studies or the MRIs are all going to go Monday to Friday in the private side, and we’ll have nobody left in our acute care system,” he said.
Parks adds that he believes Alberta has one of the best medicare systems in the world; however, he says gaining access to it needs major work.
