Desjardins’ analysis of provincial budget documents shows Alberta and Ontario each planned to spend upwards of $8 billion more on health in 2026 than 2025. Ontario budgeted $91.5 billion<\/a> for health last year while Alberta budgeted $24 billion<\/a>.<\/p>\n Without that hiring, Canada’s employment picture “would have been broadly flat,”\u00a0the report’s\u00a0 author, Desjardins deputy chief economist Randall Bartlett, told CBC News \u2014 which he said means claims of a robust Canadian economy are “a little misguided.”<\/p>\n Labour Force Survey data<\/a> shows that since March 2025, there were nearly 133,000 jobs added nationwide in the health-care and social assistance sector \u2014 with hiring “most pronounced in hospitals and services for the elderly,” the report notes \u2014 more than the 118,000 jobs added in all other sectors combined.<\/p>\n That concentrated hiring shows Alberta and Ontario following through on policies to increase spending “in the hope of expanding and supporting public health care,” Bartlett said, with the end goal ideally playing out as tangible improvements to the system.\u00a0<\/p>\n Whether that happens is another matter, however, with economists and health policy experts noting that more spending and job growth in health care don’t automatically lead to better services for patients.<\/p>\n “It’s really important to remember that just because a job is in the health-care sector, it does not mean that it’s a job that’s touching patients,” said Fiona Clement, director of the Centre for Health Policy at the University of Calgary’s Cummings School of Medicine.<\/p>\n In Alberta, where the government restructured its previous health authority into four separate agencies<\/a>, “the entire support infrastructure of a ministry has to be replicated three more times,” Clement said. <\/p>\n “Thinking about it at that level, it makes a lot of sense to me that there has been growth in that workforce.”<\/p>\n There’s less evidence that the new jobs have been in front-line patient care, Clement said, noting that College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta data<\/a> shows “there has not been meaningful growth in the number of physicians in the province.”<\/p>\n WATCH | Alberta launches dual-practice system: Alberta premier insists dual practice health care won’t threaten public system<\/p>\n Alberta’s new dual practice health-care model, which allows doctors to work in both the public and private systems, officially launched Tuesday. Premier Danielle Smith says it will relieve strain and reduce wait times, but critics say it will create unequal access to health care.<\/p>\n Some of the increased labour spending in Alberta and Ontario could merely be making up for slower hiring in the past, Bartlett noted \u2014 and some of the money will be going to wage increases for existing workers. <\/p>\n The provinces may also be preparing for demographic shifts on the horizon<\/a>, said Livio Di Matteo, a professor of economics at Lakehead University who specializes in health economics and public policy.\u00a0<\/p>\n “Large numbers of physicians are expected to retire over the next five years, as well as nurses and other types of health professionals,” he said. “That’s probably already starting up, which explains why there might be additional hiring or higher amounts of hiring.”<\/p>\n Spending ‘tends to go up’<\/p>\n Spending growth on its own, furthermore, is unremarkable, the experts said. <\/p>\n Government spending on health care generally increases over time because demand increases as populations grow, said Sara Allin, an associate professor of health policy at the University of Toronto and the director of the North American Observatory on Health Systems and Policies.\u00a0<\/p>\n “We rarely see a real decline in spending. It tends to go up, often at a higher rate than economic growth,” she said. <\/p>\n “Given that, we’re going to expect more people to be hired.”<\/p>\n How that plays out in province-wide networks can be quite complex, Allin noted, with regional populations evolving, services sometimes varying along rural-urban divides and some hospitals expanding while others face cuts<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n “All these things can be true,” she said. “It depends on where people are being hired, which hospitals facing deficits may be laying off, while others experiencing growth are hiring. It depends on the region and the capacity of the hospital to weather these financial pressures.”<\/p>\n The population growth factor also means the health-care spending boom may not be as significant as it seems, said Di Matteo. <\/p>\n Data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information in 2025 shows that, with population growth and inflation factored in, spending growth per person in Alberta was around 0.3 per cent. In Ontario, it hovered around zero \u2014 “basically flat,” he said.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1788548195_821_default.jpg\")
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Governments\u2019 spending on health care generally increases over time because demand increases as populations grow, said Sara Allin, an associate professor of health policy at the University of Toronto. (Alessio Donnini\/CBC)’No reason to think this will reverse’<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1788548197_389_default.jpg\")
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