{"id":382269,"date":"2025-12-31T09:14:15","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T09:14:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/382269\/"},"modified":"2025-12-31T09:14:15","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T09:14:15","slug":"new-legal-structure-of-alberta-health-system-in-place-premier-smith-now-eyes-results","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/382269\/","title":{"rendered":"New legal structure of Alberta health system in place, Premier Smith now eyes results"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Alberta government in 2025 completed the final legal foundations of its new health-care system \u2014 and Premier Danielle Smith<\/a> says she\u2019s working in 2026 to prove it was worth it.<\/p>\n

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The massive reorganization saw Smith dismantle Alberta Health Services<\/a> as the provincial health authority and relegate it to a hospital service provider.<\/p>\n

Smith said with one major piece of legislation passed in the fall sitting, the restructuring effort \u201cis pretty much done.\u201d<\/p>\n

New health agencies now govern hospital care, continuing care, mental health and addiction, and primary health \u2014 under the direction of Smith\u2019s four health ministries.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo now it\u2019s a matter of each one of those areas optimizing,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n

The premier acknowledged the challenges.<\/p>\n

She promised a new public-facing dashboard that would show decreasing wait times for emergency rooms, ambulance rides and surgeries, along with 1,500 new spaces per year in continuing care.<\/p>\n

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\u201cPeople will start being able to watch and see \u2014 on all of those fronts \u2014 the progress that we\u2019re making.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said her government\u2019s move to allow more nurse practitioners to open practices in the province is part of why fewer Albertans are now unattached to a primary-care provider.<\/p>\n

Smith has long been critical of what she called the bureaucratic bloat of AHS, promising during her successful UCP leadership campaign to clean house.<\/p>\n

When asked if her government will take full accountability for health care once the pieces fall into place, the premier nodded.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, and we\u2019ll hold our providers to account as well,\u201d she said, noting the agency still accounts for the lion\u2019s share of the health budget.<\/p>\n

She also pushed back at the idea that she had used the organization as a scapegoat.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs it a scapegoat to say that people expect to have better service? I\u2019m not the one delivering the service at the hospital.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smith\u2019s ongoing effort to re-make, re-assemble and re-animate the pieces of the system hasn\u2019t been her only challenge this past year.<\/p>\n

It began under the cloud of tariff threats from U.S. President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

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Smith took flak for posing for photos with Trump amid a surge of Canadian patriotism, but stood by her diplomatic approach.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI think it has worked for us. We ended up with 97 per cent of our goods going across the border tariff-free,\u201d she said while acknowledging those provinces reliant on steel, aluminum, vehicle or lumber exports did not fare as well as Alberta\u2019s oil and gas industry.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tAlberta Premier Danielle Smith poses with Donald Trump and businessman Kevin O\u2019Leary during her visit with him in Florida, prior to his inauguration as the new U.S. President.\t\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tCREDIT: Danielle Smith \/ X\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

After months of making demands of Prime Minister Mark Carney, she inked a preliminary agreement with Ottawa to work toward building a new oil pipeline to the West Coast.<\/p>\n

Smith also made her mark on democratic norms.<\/p>\n

Her government invoked the Charter\u2019s notwithstanding clause four times in the fall sitting, forcing striking teachers back to work and shielding from court challenge her government\u2019s laws affecting transgender and gender-diverse Albertans.<\/p>\n

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Critics, including Alberta\u2019s Opposition NDP, have said Smith\u2019s use of the clause runs roughshod over the courts, the rule of law and democracy.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tHealth Matters: Alberta government invokes notwithstanding clause for 4th time\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

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But Smith said her government needed to act in exceptional circumstances to protect the children in Alberta.<\/p>\n

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Smith\u2019s UCP twice changed the law to help pave the way for citizen-led referendums, including a ballot question on pulling Alberta out of Confederation.<\/p>\n

Her drive for more direct democracy gave voice to another kind of discontent, as she and many in her caucus are facing recall petition campaigns that will drag well into the New Year.<\/p>\n

All the while, Smith\u2019s government has been dogged by allegations of corruption in health-care spending and Opposition NDP demands for a public inquiry.<\/p>\n

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One of Smith\u2019s own cabinet ministers, Peter Guthrie, resigned in the spring over the government\u2019s handling of the scandal.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOusted UCP MLA Peter Guthrie releases letter critical of former party\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

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Guthrie soon found himself booted out of caucus and is now organizing to build up a rival progressive conservative political party.<\/p>\n

Opposition NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi said Guthrie\u2019s exit from the UCP was the beginning of intense instability in a government that has lost sight of Albertans\u2019 priorities.<\/p>\n

He said stoking the fires of separatism only spurred more than 400,000 Albertans to sign a petition in favour of staying in Confederation.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything they try to bring back their popularity has backfired on them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t0:53
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAlberta Premier Danielle Smith faces citizen recall petition\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Nenshi said he believes the premier has a tendency to lash out at those who disagree \u2014 from what Smith calls \u201cactivist courts\u201d to citizens angry enough to try to recall government members.<\/p>\n

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On health care, Nenshi said every worker in the sector will tell you the \u201cchaos\u201d of restructuring isn\u2019t helping them do their jobs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is not an Albertan who believes the system works better now than it did six years ago. There\u2019s not one.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said despite Smith\u2019s promise to hold AHS to account, she runs AHS and has since she took office.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is all her, and she cannot any longer get away with this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\t&copy 2025 The Canadian Press\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Alberta government in 2025 completed the final legal foundations of its new health-care system \u2014 and Premier…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":382270,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[205616,205615,64,63,2065,205617,2555,137,500,44,205618,84,4967],"class_list":{"0":"post-382269","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-alberta-health-services","9":"tag-alberta-legislature","10":"tag-au","11":"tag-australia","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-danielle-smith","14":"tag-education","15":"tag-health","16":"tag-healthcare","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-notwithstanding-clause","19":"tag-politics","20":"tag-trump-tariffs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/382270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}