Alberta projected to spend least per person on health infrastructure, CIHI says

Alberta will spend $312 per person on health care infrastructure in 2026, the lowest of any province, the Canadian Institute for Health Information projects. The national average is $493.

For a household, that gap shows up in the clinics that are planned, not yet built. The province's 2026 budget commits $39 million over three years to urgent care, with nine new centres planned alongside six existing facilities. The government says the nine will raise urgent care capacity and divert emergency visits away from hospitals once they open. Minister Adriana LaGrange could not give a construction timeline, saying the furthest-out centres are three years after shovels hit the ground. The NDP says no clear timeline has been given.

Adam Rondeau, manager of health spending and operations analytics at CIHI, said: "In 2026, we're projecting Alberta will have spent the least among provinces on capital." Alberta's rank on the measure slipped from second in 2020 to seventh in 2023, ninth in 2024, and last in 2025 and 2026. Rondeau said the province's focus "may be more on service capacity and surgeries than it is on capital spending."

Alberta has the highest GDP per capita among provinces and the highest median after-tax income for families and unattached individuals, according to Statistics Canada. Its health spending is 9.9 per cent of GDP in 2026, against a Canadian average of 12.8 per cent, with Saskatchewan at 11.2, Ontario at 12.3, Quebec at 13.4 and British Columbia at 13.9.

The 2026 budget also includes $1.9 billion in new service funding for more surgical capacity, continuing care, and expanded mental health and cancer care. Some of the surgical expansion may come through private surgical centres, which could draw staff away from public hospitals, and unnamed physicians have voiced that concern.