Rebecca Graff-McRae

The End of Canadian Medicare? Alberta Legislation Opens the Door to U.S. Health Care

When Bill 11 passed in December 2025, Alberta became the first province to legislate two-tier health care — a system that gives faster access to those who can pay and longer waits for those who can’t afford to jump the queue — for medically necessary services. This report shows how the Health Statutes Amendment Act puts Canadian medicare at risk and opens the door for American health insurance corporations to enter the Canadian market.

• health care
• privatization

Sabotaging Prevention: Alberta’s ‘Preventative Health’ Ministry Is Anything But

The Alberta government has justified its new protocols for distribution of COVID-19 vaccines by claiming they will minimize wastage, save money, and prioritize the most vulnerable. In this blog, Parkland Institute research manager Rebecca Graff-McRae reflects on her personal experiences with trying to access vaccines, and debunks the government's claims.

• health care
• health
• COVID-19

Red Flags: Smith, DynaLIFE, and the Precarious Future of Health Care in Alberta

When we as Albertans look back on what the labs rollercoaster has cost us — the hundreds of millions wasted, the generational damage to our health-care workforce, the erosion of trust in the delivery of a vital service — all of it may be dwarfed by the long-term damage being wrought to our health-care system in its name.

• health care
• privatization

The Slow Death of the Alberta Advantage

Saskatchewan just raised its minimum wage to $15, which means Alberta now officially shares with our neighbour the dubious honour of having the lowest minimum wage in Canada. As the “Alberta Advantage” dies a slow death amid low wages and public services in crisis, Albertans might need to ask themselves who is taking advantage of its demise.

• minimum wage
• Alberta Advantage

Misleading Narratives: Pay-to-play queue-jumping won’t fix surgery wait times

This blog post critically responds to a recent Calgary Herald opinion piece on surgical wait times in Alberta. It shows how spending taxpayers’ money in private surgical centers not only failed to resolve the issue but also made it worse. The post also presents evidence-based solutions to reduce wait times in the public system.

• health care
• privatization

Method in the Madness: The UCP’s plan for Alberta

So much has been happening in our politics that Albertans can be forgiven for feeling disoriented. It’s easy to focus on the latest bombshell as previous pronouncements fade. But it’s important to take a step back to see what patterns emerge. When we do, we find that the government’s flurry of activity indicates something more methodical is going on.

• Alberta government
• UCP

Mirror, Mirror: What’s Fair about the 2024 Budget?

Is the Alberta we are hoping to build made possible by Budget 2024? How will we meet the immediate and long-term needs of a rapidly growing province, in a rapidly changing political, economic, and environmental context? When we look in the mirror, what Alberta do we see?

• alberta budget

Welcome to the New ‘Alberta Advantage’: Pre-budget address promises dawn of perma-austerity era

Premier Smith’s pre-budget address announced the dawn of an era of permanent austerity and chronic underfunding for the province. Maybe someone should’ve explained to the UCP that the goal of ending the fiscal roller coaster was always to land at the middle, rather than getting stuck at a permanent bottom. This blog analyses why Smith decided to run this particular play — and why now.

• alberta budget

Right Thing, Wrong Reasons: De-privatizing community laboratory services in Alberta

AHS is ending its contract with DynaLIFE and transferring it to Alberta Precision Labs, the public provider of medical laboratory services. The move to bring community lab testing back in-house under APL is a necessary step in the right direction, one that advocates and workers have been calling for from the beginning. But it is merely delivering first aid for a hemorrhaging patient. This blog post discusses a series of critical questions that need to be answered if we want to understand what the next step for Alberta’s laboratory services should be.

Hate to Say I Told You So, But…: Laboratory Services as the Canary in the Privatization Coal Mine

From the decision to cancel the Edmonton Hub Lab to the handout of services to DynaLIFE to unacceptable wait times for routine community collections, the handling of medical lab services by the UCP government has been a litany of entirely predictable disasters. Worse still: rather than the product of mistakes, these disasters are the inevitable result of deliberate policy choices on the part of the UCP. With the days of this election campaign ticking down, the contending parties are not talking about labs. But they should—and should, for a change, listen to what lab workers have to say.