HSAA hoping to gain public support ahead of contract talks

By MEDICINE HAT NEWS on November 6, 2025.

newsdesk@medicinehatnews.com

The Health Sciences Association of Alberta is launching a new public campaign ahead of a return to contract negotiations Nov. 12.

HSAA represents 30,000 specialized health-care professionals, including paramedics, pharmacists, physiotherapists, diagnostic imaging technologists and 200 other professionals across the province. About 20,000 HSAA members are covered under collective agreements with Alberta Health Services and related provincial agencies and corporations.

The new campaign invites Albertans to understand the experience of frontline health-care workers. Radio, digital and social media content will highlight real stories of health-care professionals working in across the province, HSAA says.

Recent data shows more than 80,000 Albertans are waiting for surgery, while 170,000 are waiting for diagnostics and 250,000 are waiting for specialist appointments.

“When we see patients come in and they’ve been waiting 12 months, 18 months to get in for a diagnostic test, the patients are understandably upset, and our frontline health-care professionals take that on. We are the ones that face that anger. It weighs heavy on our members,” said vice-president Leanne Alfaro.

HSAA is also asking Albertans to share on the HSAA webpage their own stories of short staffing or long waits affecting their care.

“We are asking Albertans to get behind this, and bring that awareness to the government. It can’t just be on the professionals to bring this forward.”

Bargaining between HSAA and the province resumes next week. Alfaro says the union will bring testimony shared as part of the campaign directly to the bargaining table.

Nursing care staff represented by the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees voted 98 per cent in favour of a strike Wednesday. A Friends of Medicare town hall drew a crowd of more than a hundred in Medicine Hat on Tuesday night. Alfaro said these concurrent actions illustrate a system in crisis.

Alfaro says HSAA supports the nurses, and that her union is prepared to vote for a strike as well if negotiations are unsuccessful.

“We all know strikes are very serious, especially in health care. We understand the issues. But we’re prepared in the same way,” she said. “Our members have waited 18 long months for a new contract. We can’t wait forever.”

Alfaro says HSAA opposes the government’s use of the notwithstanding clause to legislate teachers back to work on Oct. 28.

“We are ready to use our constitutionally protected rights. And if they choose to do the same to us, that’s up to the government to do, and Albertans will have to decide if that’s something we accept here in Alberta.”

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