Airdrie’s urgent care system, stalled infrastructure, and a proposed new healthcare facility came under renewed scrutiny at a town hall meeting on June 19, attended by local residents, provincial MLAs, and healthcare advocates.
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The event, hosted by the Alberta NDP constituency associations for Airdrie-East and Airdrie-Cochrane, featured MLAs Dr. Luanne Metz (Calgary-Varsity) and Sarah Hoffman (Edmonton-Glenora), Friends of Medicare executive director Chris Gallaway, Airdrie Health Foundation executive director Michelle Bates, and podcast host and paramedic Nate Pike. Sarah Zagoda, who had most recently been the NDP’s candidate running in the federal election, was also present.
Panelists addressed system-wide gaps in Alberta’s healthcare system, including doctor shortages, long ambulance response times, and access issues in fast-growing communities like Airdrie.
The event took place as debate intensifies over the One Health proposal, which aims to combine a primary care clinic operated by One Health Associate Medical with publicly funded urgent care delivered by a provider selected through a provincial competition.
Airdrie urgent care infrastructure under strain
Michelle Bates, executive director of the Airdrie Health Foundation, impressed upon the crowd that Airdrie is Alberta’s largest municipality without a hospital. She emphasized that Airdrie’s population is nearing 90,000 residents and that current provincial investments don’t reflect Airdrie’s growth or the pressure on local services.
The Airdrie Community Health Centre operates 24/7 urgent care but lacks emergency services, maternity care, and inpatient beds. The building was originally a food bank and community centre. It was donated by the City for $1 in the early 2000s.
Bates said residents still lack access to critical services, including dialysis, diabetes care, hospice, a women’s shelter, a teen shelter, and co-located mental health care. One of two rural mental health clinics, she said, remains in a provincial building the government has asked to reclaim.
“There’s so many things that stop us from getting [care] because we’re told go to Calgary — [and we’re told] it’s really close,” Bates said. “But many patients then don’t go to their appointments because they have to miss work or they have no way of getting there.”
“Even though we’re close to Calgary… that care does not come back to Airdrie.”
She cited recent urgent care data showing that Category 1 triage patients — the most critical — are now regularly appearing at the clinic.
“When we were advocating for 24-hour care, we were told maybe one person a night would come in. The night it opened, 19 people showed up,” she said. “Seventy-five CTAS 1 patients in six months is not an urgent care — that’s an emergency department.”
An $8.4 million renovation to the centre, previously approved by the province, was paused in early 2024 after Alberta Health received a joint submission from One Health Associate Medical and Qualico Communities. The ministry later confirmed it paused the project to conduct a full review of the proposed model.
Renovations have since resumed and are scheduled to continue into fall 2025. The upgrades will expand treatment space, consolidate services, and add a trauma room.
Physician criticism meets One Health defence
Concerns about transparency and physician consultation around the One Health initiative surfaced repeatedly during the town hall. Several speakers questioned how decisions were made, who was consulted, and whether the model reflects the needs of Airdrie’s medical community.
Dr. Fozia Alvi, a family physician and chair of the Airdrie Community Physician Association, delivered some of the strongest criticism. Speaking from the audience, she said the planning process was closed and warned of parallels to previous failed efforts.
“I’ve been here 18 years. I think I have the largest practice in Airdrie,” she said.
Alvi told the audience her group was formed in response to an earlier attempt to centralize care under a private development called the HealthPark.
“Private investors came to Airdrie and they took money from the City of Airdrie,” she said. “And they wanted all of us doctors to go into one building — the HealthPark. They said if you don’t work with us, you can leave Airdrie. Go to B.C.”
She said the project later collapsed and questioned the city’s financial involvement.
“It was your tax money that was paid to them,” she said. “They rented a building on Main Street. During COVID they closed it and left. At that time, I was told it was half a million, now someone said maybe it was more than a million.”
“I wish you all would ask the mayor. Ask the council: where did that money go? What happened to that?”
Alvi also said she and other physicians tried to raise concerns about the One Health model earlier this year but received no response from the provincial government or from Chris Gallaway.
“We sent a letter to the Health Minister, to Chris Gallaway, on behalf of Airdrie doctors,” she said. “We said this is a private urgent care and there’s no transparency. We don’t know what’s going on. It’s behind closed doors.”
“I’m speaking on behalf of 80 doctors. And they’re not happy with this model.”
DiscoverAirdrie has not independently verified Dr. Alvi’s statements regarding the HealthPark project, City of Airdrie financial decisions, or the views of other local physicians. Her comments are presented as delivered during the public town hall.
The City of Airdrie has previously stated it was not involved in developing the One Health proposal, but helped facilitate meetings between proponents and the province — a role it described as typical for large infrastructure proposals.
Dr. Julian Kyne, the physician leading the One Health proposal, rebutted Dr. Fozia Alvi’s claims and challenged her assertion that she spoke for the majority of local doctors.
“Dr. Alvi — you do not represent all the doctors,” he said. “This represents my fourth initiative to try and get the appropriate health care that Airdrie has always needed.”
He did not specify what the previous initiatives were. Kyne pushed back against criticisms of financial motive and conflict of interest.
“I do not own my own building,” he said. “Most of the other physicians that are objecting to this have a lot of self-interest… they own their own buildings and they have much more business interests.”
He told the audience he had no financial stake in the project and was not seeking profit.
“I’m 70 years old. I got my RRSPs. My mortgage is paid. I have no interest in making any significant profit on this,” he said. “Myself and Doug Smith are the two people that have been working on this project. We volunteer all of our time. We’ve worked thousands of hours.”
Tensions also flared when Bates, who had spoken earlier in the evening, disputed Kyne’s suggestion that she had been involved in the facility’s planning.
“I was not part of the planning,” she said. “It wasn’t transparent to me. I had no knowledge of that going forward. I’m hearing this at the same time the public is. That’s a problem.”
Kyne, responding from the audience, said the earlier renovation plan had not received support from the frontline team.
“The urgent care renovation was not endorsed by any of the staff — that includes the doctors and nurses in urgent care,” he said.
Bates immediately countered: “Yes it was.”
Kyne repeated: “No it wasn’t.”
The moderator intervened and asked speakers not to address each other directly.
In a separate interview with DiscoverAirdrie conducted before the town hall, Kyne rejected the idea that the One Health model constituted privatization.
“This is private delivery of publicly funded health care,” he said. “When you see your family doctor, he is a private practitioner delivering publicly funded health care… Same with your radiology, X-rays and all the like.”’
Confusion over care model fuels tension
Although Kyne had described the nuance between private delivery and privatization in his interview with DiscoverAirdrie, the town hall revealed ongoing confusion over what the proposed facility would — and would not — include. Several panelists and advocates expressed uncertainty about its clinical scope.
One exchange centred on diagnostic services. Bates said she was concerned that the facility might not include lab testing, which she described as essential to urgent care.
“From what I’ve been told, it does not have a lab,” she said. “And that’s essential for urgent care.”
Pike responded sharply.
“That’s bonkers.”
Kyne, seated in the audience, interrupted to clarify.
“There will be collection and processing,” he said. “We will be doing troponins and other point-of-care tests.”
Troponin tests check for heart muscle damage and are commonly used to assess whether someone is having a heart attack.
No firm hospital commitment from panelists
While urgent care delivery and transparency dominated much of the evening, one question remained unresolved: would any official or party commit to planning a full-service hospital for Airdrie?
Michelle Bates said that without immediate planning, the city could face another decade or more without acute care.
“Everybody needs a hospital. I truly believe that,” she said. “Yes, it’ll take time to build, but if we don’t have a plan, we won’t get it.”
“If we plan it in two years, it’s 12 years out. If we wait five, it’s 15 years out. So we need to plan it now.”
“I’m not saying we don’t want urgent care. We’ve worked hard to get it, and I will continue to work hard to get more. We need better diagnostics, we need more treatment space, we need to have good follow-up care, we need good mental health supports. But this is a band-aid. It’s not a hospital.”
Sarah Hoffman, former Alberta health minister, was asked whether she would commit to planning a hospital if her party formed government.
“There’s so much more we need to do to make sure that the people in Airdrie and the area are getting the care they need,” Hoffman said. “If we don’t move forward, we fall back.”
She said any hospital project would take years to complete and called instead for broader regional planning.
“I didn’t design the Calgary Cancer Centre — that’s not my expertise,” Hoffman said. “But it was clear Calgary needed it. So we made the case to Treasury Board. We got it approved. And eight years later, it opened.”
Dr. Luanne Metz said Alberta’s hospital gap reflects a broader shift in how health infrastructure is allocated.
“We have more hospitals per capita than anywhere else in Canada,” Metz said. “That’s because we used to invest in people — not just Edmonton and Calgary.”
Chris Gallaway said Airdrie had once been held up as a model for community-led healthcare planning in the province.
“The municipality got involved. The community organized. The government listened,” Gallaway said. “That’s how it should look.”
Planning funds carried forward, but no new construction dollars
Alberta’s 2025 provincial budget does not include new capital funding for healthcare construction in Airdrie. However, $3 million in planning funds from Budget 2024 — earmarked for a future North Calgary/Airdrie Regional Health Centre — has been carried forward.
Of that amount, $750,000 is allocated for 2025–26. Another $2 million is forecast for 2026–27.
In a written statement to DiscoverAirdrie on February 28, a government spokesperson said:
“Planning is essential to ensure Albertans receive value for every dollar spent. Budget 2024 included $3 million over three years to explore healthcare options for the north Calgary and Airdrie areas. These funds are carried over into Budget 2025 to support continued planning work.”
While healthcare remains a top concern in Airdrie, recent survey data suggest shifting public focus. According to the 2025 YStation community satisfaction survey, 38 per cent of residents identified “not enough hospitals, doctors, clinics” as a top concern — down from 47 per cent in 2023.
As the event wrapped up, Hoffman urged residents to stay engaged.
“If we don’t move forward, then things move backward,” she said.
No construction timeline has been released for the One Health facility.
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