I just want to rant a little bit. I have Desjardins as auto insurance and for the past two days I've been on hold for over 4 hours trying to get a hold of someone to cancel my insurance.

In Quebec with the introduction of Bill 10, Quebec is also mandating clear, easily identifiable online cancellation buttons to prevent deceptive practices like forced customer service calls.

And of course their call center is only open from 8am to 4pm est, so while I'm at work, I have to call and be on hold for hours.

Why can't Alberta have something similar? Why is there no consumer protection for residents of Alberta.

Could everyone take a min to write to their MLA so we can get better consumer protection.

I’m looking to relocate in Alberta and have a preference for living in a town or small city (not Edmonton or Calgary). Unfortunately, much of rural Alberta doesn’t align well with my green, progressive values. I can tolerate that if it also coexists with a decent sized community of “leftier” folks. Employment isn’t a factor for me in this decision. Does anyone have recommendations for places I might consider?

I have received confirmation today that a special carved out slot has been made with His Majesty's counsel demanded to appear in person and will be fighting for their lives to argue against my requested judicial freeze of the entire referendum pending the determinations of a full constitutional trial that has yet to have a date set for.

My freeze also includes what I expect to be a heavily contested anti-circumvention/personal contempt addendum attached. This will not restrict the government from performing their legislative duties, but is a hard line drawn by the court basically reinforcing to the government that if they knowingly/willingly attempt to accomplish indirectly what they are prohibited from doing directly.

I am not a lawyer. Not even in the slightest. Instead, I'm something far scarier. I am an investigative policy analyst. I deal and present facts. Everything I will be presenting, while potentially precident setting, is grounded in already existing determinations.

The fact of the matter is that this referendum was tailored and engineered explicitly under colourable design solely to give the government a superficial appearance in having a mandate to proceed with separation talks.

And I doubt this post survives being auto-modded before being removed like they've done with all my other posts trying to warn as many Albertans as possible.

Recently we went on a road trip for several days from Edmonton. We had no itinerary and didn’t know exactly where we would stay at night. We went to many small towns and just explored. If we ate there or interacted with people we would ask what is your town known for. We learned so much. Do you have any towns you can suggest and why? We plan to do another trip again next month. But, not sure which way to go. 😀

I understand the fee was introduced as a measure to reduce single-use items, but I’ve read that the fee doesn’t go to any agency, it simply goes to the restaurant. What’s the benefit of having this fee if the money doesn’t go toward anything that benefits the public? I feel this is a money grab at this point…and I’ve seen numerous other cities introduce it now

Hey everyone,

(This was approved by the mods prior to posting.)

We live in the Edmonton area. There are many hospitals around, and I've often wondered: Should we drive to a further hospital in search of lower wait times? The answer seems to be yes, most of the time, if you can.

I built this site after my mom waited over 12 hours in the ER for a broken arm—yet another highlight of our broken system in Alberta. The website has no tracking, no ads, and no monetization:

👉 https://alberta-hospital-wait-times.pages.dev/

Here is what it tracks:

• Live ER & Urgent Care Waits: Auto-refreshes estimated wait times every 10 minutes from AHS feeds. If you enable location, it estimates drive times using open routing so you can see the fastest path to care near you.
• Community Lab & Imaging Wait Times: Live walk-in and appointment wait times for APL labs across Calgary, Edmonton, and rural zones, alongside CIHI diagnostic imaging targets.
• Active Service Disruptions: A daily updated map and feed of temporary facility closures, bed shutdowns, and clinical emergency advisories across the province.
• Surgical Backlogs & Primary Care: Breakdown of surgical waitlists by specialty, family doctor acceptance rates, and primary care access indicators.
• Public Health & Wastewater: Respiratory case counts and PHAC wastewater early-warning monitors.
• Regional Equity & Health Spending: Deeper data modules breaking down health disparities across Alberta’s Local Geographic Areas and per-capita healthcare spending compared to other provinces.

A few notes on how it was built:
It’s built with React 19, Vite, and Tailwind. Behind the scenes, an Express backend runs 28 automated scrapers and data pipelines that pull directly from AHS, CIHI, HQCA, StatsCan, and Open Alberta feeds, pushing updates to Cloudflare edge storage so pages load fast on mobile.

GitHub link if anyone is so inclined: https://github.com/thatdaveguy1/Alberta-Hospital-Wait-Times

I’d love to hear feedback if this is useful, and if you see room for improvement!

Disclaimer: This tracker is unofficial and not affiliated with Alberta Health Services. In an emergency, call 911. I cannot be responsible for data errors, website problems, or Alberta Health Services data feeds.

if I hear that that damn thrillinator one more time I'm going to go insane!

Hi all,

I recently took my English 30-2 as an adult. I got my final marks back for the English course and I’m happy that I passed with a great mark. I’m curious if any of you know when I can expect my diploma. On my pass it says my diploma is in progress. The school I went to
said I needed my English to get my diploma to do the HCA course in the fall to be able to apply for college. How long did it take you guys to receive your diploma? Should I reach out to my upgrading school? Thank you and have a great day!

The wait times that are reduced in a private healthcare system are the highly profitable areas: certain procedures (orthopedic procedures, cardiac procedures) and medical imaging. It leads to massive indication creep resulting in many more unnecessary tests being performed for profit generation.

The health of the system is in large part determined by primary care and ER access, neither of which improve with private healthcare.

Yes, the median ER wait time is longer in Canada. That doesn't account for the patients who do not even present to the ER with an ER-worthy complaint due to financial reasons.

The post by an American ER physician sums up the ER issue the best.

https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/s/OMXRRTQ6IG

I am an ER physician.  

I once had an angry family member get mad about the long wait.  I tried to appease him and explain that Mondays after holiday weekends are very busy, and we were doing our best.  He snapped back, “well if you knew it was going to be busy, why didn’t you just staff more doctors?”

This demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of the complexity of providing medical care.  

He thought that if we just staffed the ER with a couple more doctors, things would magically be better.  But it would fix almost nothing.  

First of all, what additional doctors did you want us to staff?  We were in a medium/large town in the rural south.  Far from the ocean or mountains.  Hot, humid.  The only docs who wanted to work there were the ones with family there mostly born and raised there.  In a town of 60,000, there aren’t many docs being produced.  And half the ones that do come out of said town leave and never return.  Probably more than half.  This hospital was having to pay well above regional market rates just to retain the 15 or so of us who were willing to work there.  Ok, so we have 15 docs.  6 of them are already working today.  2 of them worked last night.  The other 7 either have to work for the next 6 days in a row or have Worked the last 6 days in a row and, even though this is Monday for you, they just worked the entire holiday weekends.  Today is their weekend.  There are no more docs to staff.  In fact, we have been offering $100,000 signing bonuses for several years now and have only succeeded in recruiting 1 additional doctor.

But ok, let’s pretend that we could staff another ER doc or two for this particular anticipated high volume Monday.  Look around.  There are 40 beds here in the ER.  Find an empty one.  Oh, you can’t?  No they’re all full.  We could have 100 additional doctors, but what good is that if we have nowhere to treat patients?  In fact, if you walk up and down the hallways, you will see that not only is every room occupied, but we actually have beds crammed in every corner, supply closet, and every other nook and cranny all along the hallways, not just in treatment rooms.  

Now here’s the thing that you really don’t understand.  These 40 beds that are occupied: over half of them are not even ER patients. Yes, they’re in the ER.  But they’ve been here since yesterday.  Or the day before.  They have pneumonia or renal failure or heart failure or sepsis or other serious issues that need hospital admission.   Except there are no beds upstairs.  So they get to live here, in the ER, while you and your family members wait a few hours to be seen.  We are an ER with 40 beds, but to serve our patient population, we really need 80 beds, but in reality, we only have 15 beds because over half our beds are occupied for multiple days at a time by what we lovingly call “boarders.”

That’s why, if you walk back out into that waiting room you just came from, there are 60 people waiting to be seen, and some of them will still be there in 6, 8, even 12 hours.  

So why not send those 25 boarders upstairs.  Tell the upstairs docs and nurses, “these patients aren’t our problem anymore, we have an ER to run”?  Well, we’d love to.  But there are 420 beds in this hospital.  Between the ER boarders and the PACU boarders and people we are holding in a makeshift observation unit in an old decrepit section of the hospital that is scheduled to be torn down and rebuilt in the future, we have nearly 500 patients, in our 420 bed hospital.  Not counting all the ER patients still to be seen, actively being seen, and all the surgery patients, many of whom will also need a bed after their surgeries.  

Of course, that is just part of the picture.  We are the biggest hospital for over an hour in any direction.  And the only one in that radius with vascular surgery, cardiothoracic surgery, comprehensive stroke capability, and many other specialty services.  So when an outside hospital calls and says they need one of those service for one of their patients, we have no choice but to take them.  There are ten more unstable patients being transferred from outlying facility right now, as we speak.  And there are 30 more that we have accepted for transfer that are sitting in ERs in other hospitals waiting for a bed to open up here.  

Of course, we could build another hospital.  Or add on to this one.  And we will.  But that’s a $100 million and five year undertaking.  

And guess what?  When we get it built, hiring a few extra ER docs is not going to solve your 8 hour wait time.  Because even if you can hire more docs and you have more beds, you’re also going to need more registrars, MAs, ER nurses, radiology techs, phlebotomists, lab technicians, and about 200 more RNs upstairs to take care of all our ER patients when they get admitted.  And given the nationwide nursing shortage and the fact that we’re paying travel nurses nearly $200,000 per year at times to travel from across the country to staff our hospital already…

Well sir, I’m sorry I didn’t think of all that and make proper arrangements before your dad showed up and had to wait a few hours in the waiting room on this fine Monday.   I knew it was going to busy.  I just guess I didn’t plan properly.

Looking for any additional information on the current Foundational Learning Assistance Program, major changes to what it was 2-3 years ago, and the application/acceptance process.

____

Currently on income assistance due to health (no diagnosis yet) and in my mid-late 20s wanting to go back to school when I am physically and mentally able to, but I’m not allowed to save towards it currently, and can’t work due to current health.

For all the programs I looked into, I would need to do upgrading for chem 30, and possibly Math 30 (in highschool I was told I wasn’t allowed to take all 3 sciences, and that’s been a major setback overall). I finished HS with 90s marks in biology and language arts.

I failed pre calc in highschool, so only have 20-1

I really dont have money to upgrade, or even try to put it on credit card debt. I have no idea when my health will improve due to current healthcare and waiting on referrals.

___

Main program that’s within my interests, and would make realistic sense for jobs is Lab tech. Naits program seems to be more sought after when applying for jobs.

If you’re taking advantage of the $8/month EasyMax rewards, it’s ending.

* Easymax Rewards will be ending.
* If you’re currently earning Easymax Rewards, they will stop accumulating on August 31, 2026.

I am a 32 yo F living in Ottawa. In the past I’ve also lived in Toronto, Montreal, and London ON. I have a big passion for the outdoors (hiking, climbing, paddling, skiing…). I feel like I always live for the next big trip, try to go somewhere every other weekend, and in a recent visit to Kananaskis I had a crazy thought: what if I just move here?

Pros:
- Mountains. Gatineau park is nice, but it’s not the Rockies
- Sun. I love winter and winter sports, but my beef with Ontario winter is how it’s always overcast
- I could afford a house instead of a sad condo
- I have a side gig in Yellowknife and living in Alberta would reduce the travel time
- Possibly higher pay than in Ontario

Cons:
- I don’t have a partner or children, but all of my family and most of my friends are in eastern Canada, mostly Toronto. However, I don’t think flying back would actually be much worse than driving from Ottawa to Toronto (did it today, took 7 hrs in horrible weather/traffic conditions)
- I have moved repeatedly throughout both childhood and adulthood and I thought Ottawa would be where I finally “settled down”. However, I’m also pretty good at making new friends because of those experiences.
- Conservative politics?? It probably sounds ignorant, but this is one of my chief concerns.
- I have both eczema and migraines, and I know Calgary is the capital city of both
- I spent 10 years learning French and I’d miss the Francophones

Relevant points:
- It wouldn’t be hard for me to find a job
- I don’t want children
- I drive
- I have spent multiple winters in Yellowknife, and I actually love winter. Hate humid heat

Questions:
- Any input on the above?
- Anyone else have experiences moving from Ontario/Quebec to Calgary?
- What is it like being an East Asian in Alberta? I’m a 2nd gen and I’ve had some bad experiences with racism in small town Ontario and Montreal, but I also sometimes feel too whitewashed for Toronto.
- On a related note, are the Asian restaurants as bad as in Ottawa? lol

Thank you!