Local doc to host public town hall on health-care changes

By ZOE MASON on November 1, 2025.

Local emergency physician and public health advocate Dr. Paul Parks and Friends of Medicare are hosting a public town hall in Medicine Hat to talk about recent changes to the health-care system and ways they will impact this region.

The event, called “Urgent Conversations on Public Health Care,” follows the annual general meeting of the Palliser Chapter of the Friends of Medicare. It will be held at St. John’s Presbyterian Church on Tuesday. The AGM begins at 7 p.m. and the town hall follows at 7:30.

“From my point of view, the broad goal is going to be trying to make everybody aware that the government really has made some very massive changes to our healthcare system,” Parks told the News this week.

As the province’s health-care restructuring is rolled out, Parks says smaller regional centres and rural areas will feel the brunt of the impact, and he wants to ensure residents of those areas are aware of the changes.

“I really want to open up an earnest dialogue and get direct feedback from the communities about what they’re experiencing, but also paint a bigger picture of what all these system changes and day-to-day government meddling with the system is doing to their health-care access, and the impact it’s going to have in the future.”

Parks says the town hall is intended as a resource for the general public to air their grievances and learn about the changes that impact them. He also encourages local health-care professionals to join. He says he hopes to facilitate a non-partisan discussion.

“There’s only one government ever in charge of the health-care system. So it seems very partisan or political to be critical of changes being made. But I actually want this to be very non-partisan. It doesn’t matter if you vote conservative or NDP, right or left. I want people in the community to come out and talk about what is it that’s important to them for health care.”

In an interview with the News on Wednesday, Cypress-Medicine Hat MLA Justin Wright defended the province’s decision to transition to a hospital-based leadership system.

Wright says the move will give a greater voice to small municipalities and rural areas. Parks however, doesn’t share Wright’s optimism about the change.

“There’s a difference between having a loud voice versus having an impactful voice,” said Parks, “What they’re creating is an environment where the regional and the rural may have the impression they’re going to have more of a voice. But it’s not going to actually have an impact, because that voice will be washed out by hundreds of voices across the province trying to fight for, for example, a limited workforce, without any systemic type of planning.”

Parks is concerned the lack of co-ordination at the provincial level will have a lasting impact on the provincial workforce by discouraging medical professionals from choosing a career in Alberta.

“We are competing with the rest of Canada to try to get health-care workers. When they’re trying to decide on a province and a city to work in after having trained for 10, 15 years, people want stability. They don’t want chaos.”

Parks’s Medicine Hat town hall is on Tuesday. There will be a previous session on Nov. 2 in Lethbridge at 3 p.m.

Both events are free to the public.

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