The Alberta Association of Nurses shares concerns raised by the Canadian Nurses Association, the Canadian Medical Association, and many frontline healthcare professionals about maintaining equitable access to care. Albertans deserve timely access to high-quality care based on need, not their ability to pay. Further, greater privatization has not been proven to improve access or overall health system performance.

The concerns being raised about Bill 11 are important and deserve careful consideration. However, we cannot lose sight of the root cause of Alberta’s growing access-to-care challenges: we are not retaining enough healthcare professionals to meet the needs of Albertans.

Lengthening wait times, emergency department congestion, delayed surgeries, and growing demand are often framed as system-design problems. At their core, they are workforce capacity problems. Operating rooms require specialized teams of nurses, physicians, anesthesiologists, and support staff. Hospital beds cannot remain open without nurses and healthcare aides. Every promise to improve access to care ultimately depends on having qualified healthcare professionals available to provide that care.

This reality is particularly important when considering Bill 11. Regardless of where care is delivered, public hospitals and private surgical facilities draw from the same finite pool of healthcare professionals. If Alberta cannot retain enough nurses, expanding private delivery will not create new capacity on its own. It risks intensifying competition for an already stretched workforce.

The conversation should not be reduced to whether Bill 11 benefits some Albertans more than others. The larger risk is that all Albertans lose if we fail to address the workforce crisis. A healthcare system, whether public or private, cannot deliver care without the skilled professionals who make care possible. Shifting resources between delivery models does not solve a staffing shortage. It simply redistributes it.

Health system reforms are disruptive, expensive, and ambitious. But no reform will deliver shorter wait times, improve access, or meet growing demand if the healthcare professionals responsible for providing care continue to leave faster than they can be recruited and retained. Without a comprehensive strategy focused on retention, recruitment alone will never keep pace.

Regulated nurses comprise approximately 70% of Alberta’s professional health workforce and work in virtually every setting where Albertans receive care. As both CEO of the AAN and a practising registered nurse, I see firsthand that access to care ultimately depends on having enough healthcare professionals available to provide that care. If Alberta truly wants shorter wait times and better access, workforce retention must become the priority. Until we address the reasons nurses and other healthcare professionals are leaving, neither public nor private delivery models will be able to meet the expectations Albertans deserve.