Why is the federal government allowing Alberta to flagrantly violate the Canada Health Act?
By Andrew Longhurst and Dr. Paul Parks
Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
June 26, 2026
As Alberta moves to implement its two-tier health care system with Bill 11, policymakers and commentators are increasingly debating whether Canadian provinces should pursue more private-pay medicine in response to the long wait times, and other challenges, that patients currently face. This is not the best way forward.
Alberta’s experiment with two-tier health care—access to surgery based on wealth, not need—will worsen wait times and undermine the principles of Canadian Medicare.
And while our health care system is failing many Canadians, the solution is not to make it better for those who can pay while making it considerably worse for everyone else.
In Canada, access to health care is supposed to be based on need, not on ability to pay. Yet Alberta’s newly passed Bill 11, which takes effect on September 1, moves the province toward U.S.-style, for-profit health care.
For the first time in Canada, surgeons will be allowed to work in both the public system and a private-pay market for medically necessary surgeries. Before Bill 11, physicians could leave the public system and work privately, but they had to choose. Under Alberta’s new model, surgeons can participate in both systems simultaneously. Even Quebec, which has a more developed private sector, does not allow physicians to bill the public insurance plan while also charging other patients privately for the same medically necessary services.
Read more at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
