Friends of Medicare joins push for improvement of Alberta’s home care

By ANNA SMITH Local Journalism Initiative on April 22, 2025.

asmith@medicinehatnews.com

Friends of Medicare is joining with activists within the disability community and calling on the UCP government to improve home care.

“In the past year, Albertans have received little information from the provincial government as to the future of our home-care system,” says FoM. “Instead, we have seen the unveiling of an entirely new agency, Assisted Living Alberta, as part of the government’s drastic restructuring of our health-care system, which has done nothing but amplify confusion and uncertainty for health-care workers and Albertans in need of continuing care.”

They continued to say that funding for home care has not kept up with population growth, inflation, or support a growing demand for services.

“Promises to expand community care are effectively meaningless without a plan to fund and staff it,” said Chris Gallaway, executive director of Friends of Medicare. “But rather than investing in home care, the government’s priority appears to be restructuring our health-care system and contracting out care services to private, for-profit providers, which is only worsening care standards and working conditions in home care, and leaving the care needs of seniors and people with disabilities unmet.”

Roughly 127,000 people in Alberta depend on temporary or permanent home care each year, says FoM. They added that a lack of funding has resulted in unmet care needs and reliance on unpaid family caretakers.

“Family caregivers make up nearly $12 billion in unpaid labour in Alberta alone – that’s $12 billion this government is underspending on staffing every year,” said Daniel Ennett, Edmonton disability activist. “Disabled people in this province are faced with the reality that if we run out of friends or family to exploit, we will have to be institutionalized. We deserve to live in our communities without being punished for needing care.”

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