{"id":587837,"date":"2026-09-02T10:16:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T10:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/587837\/"},"modified":"2026-09-02T10:16:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T10:16:13","slug":"islanders-rally-against-growing-health-care-privatization-under-albertas-bill-11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/587837\/","title":{"rendered":"Islanders rally against growing health-care privatization under Alberta’s Bill 11"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Islanders rallied Tuesday against what they say is the growing threat of a two-tier health-care system, and called on the federal government to take action against Alberta’s Bill 11.<\/p>\n

Bill 11 came into effect Tuesday in Alberta. It allows doctors to apply to practise in both the public and private health-care sectors.<\/p>\n

“Instead of investing those dollars in a public system or their public workers \u2026 I would like to see more money invested in the public system,” said Karen Jackson, president of the P.E.I. Union of Public Sector Employees, one of those gathered outside MP Health MacDonald’s office in Cornwall Tuesday to protest and bring awareness. <\/p>\n

Jackson pointed to recent developments on P.E.I. including MRIs being conducted in private clinics <\/a>as evidence of growing privatization. She said she fears Bill 11 could open the door to greater health privatization across Canada.<\/p>\n

“I just don’t like to see the provincial government offloading public services into for-profit companies, and I don’t want Canadians to not have access to public health care because they don’t have the ability to pay. Your access to health care should never be based on your ability to pay.”<\/p>\n

\"AOn Sept. 1, Alberta’s Bill 11 came into effect. It allows doctors to apply to practise in both the public and private health-care sectors. (Connor Lamont\/CBC)<\/p>\n

Similar rallies were planned by health coalitions for 26 communities across Canada.<\/p>\n

Chad McNeill, president of International Union of Operating Engineers Local 942, said P.E.I. is beginning to see the “creep of privatization,” noting that if health-care workers move from the public sector into the private sector, it could make wait times for care longer.<\/p>\n

“It’s just a matter of the ultra rich and the ultra wealthy being able to afford to jump the queue,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Right now, there are people who are profiting off of the backs of health-care workers and off of the backs of sick Canadians and sick Islanders.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 2 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":587838,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[134,527,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-587837","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\/587837","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=587837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/587838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=587837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=587837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=587837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}