Premier Danielle Smith's $8.6 billion announcement to modernize and build new schools to deal with Alberta's exponential population growth shone a spotlight on other funding shortfalls.
Dr. Paul Parks, president of the Alberta Medical Association, said addressing the province's difficulties in education is definitely positive, but family doctors are still waiting for a new funding model that was approved in April so more Albertans can access primary care.
"Health care experiences those exact same population challenges. We've been pleading and begging with them for over a year. Unfortunately, that was absent from yesterday's announcement," Parks said.
"All those kids and their parents, they all can get sick. They all need family physicians."
When it comes to building new health care infrastructure, the $1.8 billion expansion and redevelopment project for Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre is a good first step, but that project was long overdue and not nearly enough, he added.
Public Interest Alberta said the UCP government's new School Construction Accelerator Program completely ignored the shortage of teachers, educational assistants, custodians and other staff.
A third of school divisions reported that they would be cutting teaching positions at the end of the last school year due to funding shortfalls. More than 250 teaching positions were being eliminated.
Meanwhile, the province's new construction plan will also include funding for 12,500 new charter school student spaces over the next four years to address the increased demand for publicly funded charter programming.
“We needed a complete plan for education — for schools and for educators. What we got was a plan for more privatized spaces and no new teachers," said Bradley Lafortune, Public Interest Alberta executive director, in a statement.
The Alberta Teachers' Association said funding for school construction will not fix today's untenable classroom conditions. Brick and mortar solutions will not solve the ongoing problems of class size and composition, teacher retention and recruitment, and inadequate support for students, particularly those with special learning needs.
“Students and teachers are still facing conditions that are not fair or sustainable. New buildings are welcomed, but what good are schools without teachers?" said Jason Schilling, Alberta Teachers' Association (ATA) president, in a statement.
The decision to funnel public money to charter and private schools that are not accessible to all families takes away from the majority of Alberta’s students, the ATA added.
Chris Gallaway, executive director of Friends of Medicare, said government inaction is to blame for public infrastructure struggles, not immigration, as the premier claimed during her "blatantly racist televised rant" on Tuesday.
“Fueling xenophobia and racism to deflect from her own government’s record on public services is completely unacceptable from an elected official. The premier should apologize and take responsibility for her own government’s decisions and lack of infrastructure planning," said Gallaway in a statement.
He said bed shortages in health care have long been an issue across the province, even before the most recent population boom.
“You can’t say ‘Alberta is calling’ for years, and brag about record population growth, then act surprised when that same population growth increases the demand on our public services."
