Talk to families across this region and healthcare comes up before almost anything else — not as an abstraction, but as arithmetic. How many minutes to the nearest open ER? How many months for a family doctor taking patients? How many friends have quietly started driving to the city for care they used to get here?
Rural Alberta built this province’s wealth. Rural Albertans should not be an afterthought in its healthcare system.
What I’ll champion
- Recruit and keep rural doctors and nurses. Training seats, incentives and housing support that actually land in communities like ours — not just in the big centres. The professionals we recruit have to want to stay.
- Protect and strengthen local care. The Grande Prairie region’s hospital and our surrounding community clinics need staffing and support that match the load this fast-growing region actually carries.
- Respect the people who deliver care. You don’t fix a shortage by disrespecting the workers you’re trying to attract. Simple as that.
- Measure what matters to patients. Wait times, distance to care, and doctor access in rural Alberta reported plainly — so nobody can bury the problem in a provincial average.
I won’t pretend an MLA waves a wand over any of this. But I can promise you a voice that raises rural health at every table, every time, without flinching — and reports back to you on what was said and what happened next. That’s the accountability piece most people never get.
If healthcare is your issue — if you have a story about what access looks like out here — tell me. I read everything, and your story is what I’ll carry into the room.
— Karen