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Some rural municipalities want the province to know ambulance response times and basic care in their communities are not meeting the mark.<\/p>\n
Hundreds of members of the Rural Municipalities of Alberta gathered at the Edmonton Convention Centre on Tuesday to discuss advocacy and get an audience with Premier Danielle Smith.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While rural infrastructure<\/a> and unpaid oil and gas property taxes<\/a> continue to be areas of focus for the smaller municipalities, Smith was hit with a number of questions about rural healthcare.<\/p>\n Jason Stelmaschuk, a councillor for the County of Vermilion River, said his parents moved from their farm as they started to age.<\/p>\n They chose the closest town, Vermillion, Alta., for its access to a hospital and ambulances.\u00a0<\/p>\n But Stelmaschuk said when his mother experienced signs of a stroke a couple of weeks ago, the nearest ambulance would have taken hours to arrive and the hospital didn\u2019t have the facilities to deal with a potential stroke patient.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you’re dealing with emergency situations such as a stroke, every second counts and it could be too late,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a real eye opener to me. Our healthcare system is really going downhill.\u201d<\/p>\n Stelmaschuk said the provincial government needs to hear stories like this to know that it is not doing a good job at providing basic care in rural areas.\u00a0<\/p>\n Premier Danielle Smith told the convention that it\u2019s situations like this that pushed the government to dismantle Alberta Health Services.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the things I would say about how AHS was running the system was it seemed like their attitude was: \u2018Well, just go to Calgary or Edmonton to get your treatment,\u2019\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n She said AHS is going to be focused on hospital delivery, and emergency medical services will be dispatched by a separate division \u2014 which could hire municipalities or private contractors to do the work. \u00a0<\/p>\n Last week, the province announced it would put forward a request for proposal for most ground ambulance services across Alberta this summer. <\/p>\n The government said it will be extending all current contracts until the RFP process wraps up in April 2027. <\/p>\n Smith said that is one part of the government\u2019s effort to tailor healthcare services to local contexts.\u00a0<\/p>\n Stelmaschuk said that could be a good thing, but rural municipalities need to know more about the parameters.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat gives me fear is: will this request for proposal be successful to the person who’s the lowest bidder? Anyone can give a lowball \u2026 which also comes with low service,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Justin Stevens, a councillor for Stettler County told the premier his municipality was interested in making a bid, but haven\u2019t received clear communication from the province.<\/p>\n \u201cWe may or may not be able to bid on this tender. We have no idea what level of service will be a part of that \u2014 and it draws way more questions,\u201d Stevens said. <\/p>\n Jones told reporters there\u2019s lots of time for his office to meet with municipalities and answer questions.<\/p>\n \u201cWe of course want the best combination of service, while also being respectful to taxpayer dollars,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n Jones said the government is also working to buy more ambulances and hire more paramedics to address capacity issues.<\/p>\n He said his ministry is also looking into interfacility transfers, which he says are taking up EMS capacity and negatively impacting rural hospitals in particular.<\/p>\n David Shepherd, the NDP critic for emergency services, said the government isn\u2019t getting to the root of the problem, but instead creating more bureaucracy with constant reorganizing of the system.<\/p>\n \u201cNobody believes that this government tendering new contracts are suddenly going to improve ambulance services when they’ve utterly failed to do so in the last four years.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 4 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":335091,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[134,527,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-335090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335090\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/335091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Man](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1773806291_403_default.jpg\")
Jason Stelmaschuk, a councillor for the County of Vermilion River, told Premier Danielle Smith about his mother’s experience with rural healthcare in Alberta. He said the lack of basic care and ambulances available was eye-opening for him. (Emmanuel Prince-Thauvette\/Radio-Canada)<\/p>\n