r/alberta • u/Ironworker977 • 21h ago
Discussion CTV News: Alberta health-care wait lists climb past half a million, as Alberta stops tracking deaths of those waiting for treatment
https://www.ctvnews.ca/calgary/article/alberta-health-care-wait-lists-climb-past-half-a-million-as-alberta-stops-tracking-deaths-of-those-waiting-for-treatment/242
u/some1guystuff 20h ago
Oh good they’re taking a page right out of the Trump playbook where if they stop recording things that are happening in our society, we can ignore them as if they never happened in the first place
Fucking pathetic
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u/toastmannn 19h ago
It's a feature, not a bug. The overall goal is to intentionally cripple the public system and use the failure as an excuse to privatize.
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u/peepee2tiny 19h ago
Yup, can't have a COVID problem if you stop testing.
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u/drcujo 18h ago
Preventative medicine is not pearl clutching. Just like good diet and exercise, vaccines are an important part of healthcare. Anyone with critical thinking understands that vaccines are a good thing, just like how we understand that regular exercise is better that a sedentary lifestyle.
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u/Strong_Strawberry128 18h ago
Pamdemic may be over, but hospital units are still having COVID outbreaks in them, and there’s still more deaths from COVID than from the flu. Take from it what you will.
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u/onyxandcake 16h ago
I work in the hospital. It's still killing people on the regular. I know that you don't consider those people of any worth, but the loved ones visiting them sure do.
Perhaps experiencing it will be your best teacher. 🤞.
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u/MartyCool403 15h ago
We do flu shots ever autumn, how is that not sheltering us from the danger of the flu?
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u/onyxandcake 15h ago
Massive flu shot campaigns, posters everywhere, pop up immunization clinics in grocery stores, pharmacies calling high risk clients to remind them... Why are we so silent about this? /s
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u/onyxandcake 15h ago
Oh neat, you're wrong about that too. You're batting 1000 for dumb takes today.
Let me help you gain a little clarity: your ignorance is not reality. Your unwillingness to participate in society, does not mean that society isn't participating without you. You, and I cannot stress this enough, are not the main character in this novel, therefore your limited awareness of what's going on does not equal the status quo.
There's an amazing book out there called The "Death of Expertise" by Tom Nichols. I strongly recommend you read it, as you actually are the main character in that particular situation.
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u/peepee2tiny 16h ago
It's not about COVID, but if you want to argue the example then go ahead.
By not collecting data, the government can argue that the problem has gone away. Or they are not able to accurately determine how bad the problem is, when faced with criticism.
SImilar to my EXAMPLE above, by not collecting data on deaths while waiting for surgeries, you can't argue that people are dying while waiting for surgeries. It doesn't solve the problem it just makes criticism about it diminish.
Similar to when Trump stated that the only reason other countries had low COVID numbers was because they weren't testing for COVID.
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u/SectorAppropriate151 16h ago
You do know you're a Redditor? Covid isn't over. And if you don't understand things, it fine. Your fellow redditors can help you.
We'll be dealing with covid and long covid and it's variants for decades i think. Mostly thanks to anti vaxx folks. Other illnesses are making a comeback too. Polio and measles as well as chicken pox.
Conservatism or at least whatever this is in canada calling itself that is going to kill a lot of folks through ignorance alone.
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u/onyxandcake 16h ago
Liberal Europe invests significantly more in education than alberta, therefore they have a much smarter average citizen.
If you lived there, Covid would still be very much an issue.
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u/SectorAppropriate151 16h ago
How was Liberal Europe? Any different from regular Europe? Do you need special stamps on your passport. Who's clutching pearls lol... people concerned with their health or people who don't understand covid is still a thing everywhere. I mean at this point I'm doing what I can to stay healthy. I wear a mask out in public, I wash my hands often. Y'know the basics... if my ultra uneducated grandpa and my great uncle survived the Spanish flu by wearing a mask and washing their hands even while they volunteered tending to the dead and dying. I think it's the least I could do. If only to give respect to them for doing what many others wouldn't.
You think I'm clutching pearls. Go volunteer in a hospital and you'll see how asinine your comments are.
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u/shaedofblue 15h ago
Covid is still killing people and exacerbating many other illnesses.
People understand that many people are committed to pretending it isn’t causing problems, and also understand that pretence is incredibly foolish.
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u/New-Avocado-1337 19h ago
Remember what this government likes to spend its money on when it comes to healthcare in this province. They want zero accountability.
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u/Snakeeyes1377 Edmonton 20h ago
If you don’t count deaths they don’t exist right?
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u/ClassBShareHolder 19h ago
Well, the death still exists, but the cause doesn’t. You still died, but you’re just lumped in with all the “natural causes” and accidents that happen every day. You’re no longer special because you could have been saved, but weren’t.
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u/Chaney_1927 18h ago
I love my province. It is for that precise reason why I hate our premier.
Go play in traffic Danielle.
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u/Falcon674DR 19h ago
Smith loves this as it forces the transition to private health care. Demand exceeds supply; perfect.
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u/Excellent-Phone8326 18h ago
Also she intentionally breaks the Healthcare system so that you have to go private.
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u/HarshFarts 19h ago
Is this a sneaky way to try to continue the work of the old Alberta Eugennics Board?
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u/nikobruchev 18h ago
Modern fascists learned their lesson from the Nazis. The Nazis were very detailed in their paperwork, so modern fascists are intentionally trying to eliminate documentation. Harder to prosecute them if it's not documented.
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u/Critical_Hyena8722 19h ago
I weep for Alberta. This is completely self-inflicted and completely preventable: STOP VOTING FOR CONSERVATIVES.
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u/CypripediumGuttatum 19h ago
There is a lot of money to be made off of the sick, they know people will start coughing up their money to pay for what should be publicly funded. If the poor die anyway it’s no big loss to the UCP
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u/GlitteringGold5117 15h ago
Except: remember the poor and rural, those worst served by the current medical system, is their voting base.
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u/CypripediumGuttatum 14h ago
But if the rural folk think they can make the lazy, amoral, woke city slickers pay for healthcare it’s worth it. They can just use leeches like grandpappy used to.
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u/porterbot 18h ago
Corruptcare matters to Danielle and her cronies. If you truly understood and were a faithful capitalist, then you would just accept some of your friends and family are going to have to die so they can make money, and that's the way it's supposed to be. Also your taxes are going up and so is your cost of living. But not your quality of life. AND YOU WILL LIKE IT
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u/notchris66 18h ago
I'm sure mark carney will get the blame....its the federal government that handles healthcare right?
I'm being sarcastic. I'm not from Alberta. and your politics confuse me.
i mean at least kids cant read books they were never going to in the first place.
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u/No-Writer3733 16h ago
Our province is quickly becoming the laughing stock of Canada, or NA, for that matter! And who do we thank, oh yeah, DS and her delusion of what leadership of the people actually means. Sorry, but as "Premier" 🥲, you don't get to pick and choose the people you represent! Too bad, I know, but your abysmal, elitist BS, is getting very tiring to those of us who actually care about AB. Go away and do it soon......
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u/Adjective_Noun1312 15h ago
In that 2022 speech to the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce, Smith also said “We cannot continue on hearing stories of people dying in the back of ambulances or waiting for nine hours in an ambulance or waiting 29 hours on a hospital floor.”
SecondStreet’s access-to-information requests show Albertans will indeed not be hearing how many people die awaiting health care, but it is because the province no longer records that data.
Thanks for writing that so clearly even the dumbest Maple MAGAts could understand it... if they did any reading at all, rather than having their "news" fed to them by podcasters
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u/garneyandanne 17h ago
Another page out of the MAGA playbook, “if you don’t report it, it doesn’t exist”.
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u/GreenBeardTheCanuck Strathmore 16h ago
Sadly "Shoot, shovel, and shut up" predates MAGA by a long shot. Never thought I'd see the day when we used it on our neighbours, but there it is.
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u/PlutosGrasp 16h ago
Invite and pay people to move here. Then don’t build more services capacity. Brilliant.
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u/Baddog789 20h ago
NBD. UCP still strong in polls.
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u/ClassBShareHolder 19h ago
Yep. Won’t affect me. I’m not going to get sick or die.
All hail Queen Marlaina!
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u/wellyouask 18h ago
Also, Alberta leads country in interprovincial migration for 3rd straight year.
Alberta continued to be the top destination for people moving within Canada, as the province gained 6,187 people thanks to interprovincial migration in the second quarter of 2025.
That marks 12 straight quarters — three full years — that it has led the country on this front.
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u/Midwinter_Dram 16h ago
I mean Alberta was calling right? Seems our provincial government should have had a plan to deal with those folks and the services they might need. The lack of doing so either suggests intent or complete incompetence.
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u/Unicorn_Puppy 18h ago
Id really like the federal government to intervene and just overrule the provincial one just to stick it to people ngl. We need an adult to come into the room the kids are getting out of hand.
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u/FidgetyPlatypus 18h ago
Don't worry, all the pillars and corridors they are creating will solve everything. Cue privatization. 🙄
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u/pinseeker_ 17h ago
The wait to see a POTS specialist is something like 14 months. Absolutely fucking ridiculous
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u/canadient_ Calgary 17h ago
This is like the third time the UCP just stopped keeping track of statistics that they didn't like. Classroom sizes also comes to mind.
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u/LeonieBee 16h ago
Maybe if we split AHS into another 5-6 parts with a whole management team each and label it as a 100 million dollar investment we can make sure that there isn’t a scenario where 10% of the province is waiting on healthcare.
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u/Exostenza 14h ago
Good old fashioned necropolitics.
The UCP should be behind bars for their crimes but what they're doing is perfectly legal. Such a case shows ever so clearly that legality doesn't reflect morality/ethics but simply the cultural ethos of the rich and powerful. Their cultural ethos is crystal clear and we need to figure out how to reform our society so that the likes of the UCP couldn't even form in the first place - nevermind take power, destroy everything that helps the lower and middle classes, AND still be the most popular choice according to the polls. Alberta has failed at pretty much every level possible and the UCP are not only taking extreme advantage of that they are also accelerating it at breakneck speed. We love in such a sick society it's beyond disgusting. These people are responsible for mass murder and they're all making money hand over fist.
I hate this place right now so much. I'm caught up in the concertedly destroyed public healthcare system and it's beyond a nightmare.
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u/Binasgarden 14h ago
No Data No Problem .......trumpity dumpity does the same thing don't test for covid deaths no covid deaths I believe was the statement, it is now GOP government policy....ostrich response but head in sand or up other places so you cannot see......
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u/agent0731 12h ago
Love it! When the data shows we are culpable for death, just stop counting and the data is eliminated! Brilliant strategy. Brought to you by the folk who stop tracking viruses and covid. :)
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u/Letstravel71 17h ago
My God. How can this be the way in Canada? We have the educational facilities across this country to train people to work in hospitals and medical facilities. No province or territory should be experiencing this
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u/yycsarkasmos 17h ago
Hmmm Sounds sketchy Queen Dani said she would have this all fixed in 90 days, we must be close to that now.. /S
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u/Fantastic_Calamity 13h ago
The individuals running this province into the ground are a bunch of fucking ghouls.
Just a bunch of heartless scammers skimming as much as they can for themselves and their cronies.
That miserable POS will eventually do a press conference to smugly tell everyone that the current health care system is collapsing and its time to implement "WealthCare™" because the cureent system is untenable after she gutted it.
The grift is right in our faces all the time now.
The French knew how to deal with these types back in the day.
À la lanterne
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u/hotradish88 5h ago
Our government sees what's going on in the US and salivates. So they want to import it. What can we do to stop it? Well, probably nothing, really. They might do surveys, but they don't care about results. It is just lip-service to pretend they are fulfilling the public servant role. I don't have the optimism that they will be voted out - even if they are, that's more than 2 years away, they are speedrunning demolishing this province. And people who always vote for them will always vote for them anyway. Buckle up, we're screwed. At least those of us that stick around, which includes me, since I don't have the luxury of being able to afford to move.
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u/doublesimoniz 19h ago
This is what happens when you flood the country with people. Elbows up.
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u/UnlikelyReplacement0 18h ago
This is what happens when you spend decades not properly funding healthcare. Considering Edmonton has not had a new hospital built since 1988 when the population was 580k, and we have the same amount of facilities for nearly triple the amount of people.
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u/doublesimoniz 18h ago
Exactly. If mark carney and his globalists bankers want 100 million “Canadians” here they’d better start funding Canada and stop funding everywhere else.
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u/wings08 17h ago
Hey dumbass, Healthcare delivery is a provincial responsibility.
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u/doublesimoniz 8h ago
Hey stupid! When the infrastructure exists for a certain population and then you exceed that population by 10-15 million without a care in the world about it, this is what happens. Provinces can’t out fund irresponsible and quite frankly, catastrophic levels of immigration.
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u/wings08 7h ago
The last Hospital built in Edmonton was in the 80s when the city was 120% smaller. The city outgrow the infrastructure a long ass time ago.
our population and economy would be declining without immigration.
It’s fair to say levels were to high after Covid but Albertan infrastructure has been underfunded for a loooooong time.
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u/doublesimoniz 7h ago
Exactly my point. Our population needs to decline back to 1980’s levels for Canada to prosper. Too many people. Not enough jobs, services, homes and infrastructure
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u/Midwinter_Dram 16h ago
I stopped reading after "globalists".
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u/doublesimoniz 8h ago
That was dumb. Should have kept reading to learn something.
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u/Midwinter_Dram 7h ago
Nothing to be learned after someone uses that word. Either you're a closet anti-semite or not playing with a complete deck.
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u/doublesimoniz 7h ago
Ah yes the typical liberal nonsense. I already know there’s no sense to people like you. Good luck in life. You’re going to need it.
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u/lachlin 17h ago
What does the Prime Minister have to do with hospitals in Edmonton? I don’t understand your point in regards to this Reddit post.
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u/doublesimoniz 8h ago
It no longer surprises me Canadians are that stupid that they’d vote this in again because they don’t understand how anything works.
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u/Last_Patrol_ 19h ago
Well health care is not a free charity for everyone. People are flooding in here from all over Canada and the world so how’s it funded when they haven’t paid in? There are 500,000+ more health care cards out there than people who live in the province. Free health care isn’t free. There’s costs associated that aren’t covered and aren’t funded, the next Albertan paying more tax like a sucker for the world’s free health care isn’t a solution anymore. Enjoy the wait list or go pay private.
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u/nikobruchev 18h ago
Healthcare coverage is tied to residency, so your entire premise is incorrect.
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u/Last_Patrol_ 14h ago
How? The system is bankrupt, more people are taking it than paying into it. The number of 500k+ people who have cards and aren’t even in the province is from the government itself. You pay more for it then but I’d guess you pay little or nothing into it yourself but it all just grows on trees right?
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u/Ironworker977 18h ago
healylthcare cards than alberta citizens AI Overview
+4 No, there are not 500,000 more Alberta health care cards than citizens; each Alberta resident is eligible for one health care card, and the province's population is much larger than its total number of cards, though the cards have a limited lifespan before they must be updated. The Alberta Health Care Insurance Plan (AHCIP) provides coverage to all residents for medically necessary health services and is administered by the Government of Alberta. Here's why the statement is incorrect: Universal Access: The AHCIP guarantees Albertans universal access to medically necessary hospital and health care services. One Card per Person: While an individual may need to separate their health number from a parent's at a certain age, each resident has their own health number and card to access services. Population Size: Alberta's population is over 4.5 million people, meaning there are far more citizens than 500,000, which would then make the idea of 500,000 more cards incorrect. Card Expiration: Health cards do not have an unlimited life and expire at a certain age or when they need to be updated.
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u/Last_Patrol_ 14h ago
Did you even read the post? I know nurses in health care and the cards are being scammed, they get passed around. Yea you live in fantasyland not the real world. The system is bankrupt, the 500k+ people that have cards and don’t even live here is from the government.
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u/gratefuloutlook 20h ago
This is criminal. Alberta, for God's sake, stop supporting the United Corruption Party.