Paul Parks, a Medicine Hat Emergency Room physician and one of best known advocates for Alberta’s public health care system, announced his intention this afternoon to seek the NDP nomination in the Cypress-Medicine Hat Riding where he lives.
If the former president of the Alberta Medical Association gets the nomination, he will square off in the next election against United Conservative Party MLA Justin Wright, the food truck operator and former Walmart manager who is now Alberta’s minister of primary and preventative health services.
That should make for an interesting contest. In addition to various important roles with the AMA, Dr. Parks has served as director of emergency medicine at the Medicine Hat Regional Hospital for most of the past decade, is well known as an articulate national advocate for emergency medicine and family medicine over the past 25 years, is active in the Medicine Hat Musical Theatre, and until recently owned a craft brewery in the southeast Alberta city.
In other words, like Mr. Wright, his name is on the radar in the constituency, as well as in the province. Dr. Parks still works full time in the ’Hat ER. Mr. Wright won handily in the 2023 general election.
“I was the president of the AMA when this premier came in.” Dr. Parks told me. “At that time there was just one minister of health, and when they came in, I was at the table with them right at the get-go. I begged them to steal my ideas, steal my colleagues’ ideas.” (Alberta now has four ministers of health, although the utility of such a structure is not clear.)
He told the UCP: “We’re coming out of the pandemic, the health care system is going to need some serious work. Let’s work together.” After three years of trying, though, “I just came to the conclusion this government is not in any way interested in front-line expert input from any of the key sectors, not just health care. … It’s all ideology and dogma for them.”
The UCP has no interest in objective evidence if it doesn’t reinforce the party’s ideological beliefs, even if the data shows that a different approach might cost less or improve patient outcomes, he added.
Dr. Parks explained the risk of this approach in a Calgary Herald op-ed, one of many he has written on health care topics, in August 2025. “In Alberta, the drive to privatize has led to political lobbying and allegations of corruption. Yet, leaders remain unmoved, contracting out more services to for-profit facilities, defending their positions despite growing public concern, the data, and professional pushback. … If we allow ideology to drive health-care decisions without respect for data, consequences, or compassion, we risk creating a very real crisis – one where Albertans are unable to access unscheduled life-saving surgeries in a safe and timely manner.”
Instead, he said, under the cover of the massive brouhaha caused by Premier Danielle Smith’s government-drafted separation referendum, which was overwhelmingly rejected by Alberta voters on Oct. 19, “they have moved with dual billing and privatizing health care.”
“That was truly it for me,” Dr. Parks explained. “I was like, you know, I don’t necessarily want to be a politician, but I feel compelled that I have to do something to change this government.”
Describing himself as socially progressive and fiscally conservative, Dr. Parks noted that it seems as if there is no longer any place for progressive conservative voices in the UCP. “Nothing this UCP party is doing is socially progressive, and nothing they are doing at all is fiscally conservative.”
“We pay a lot in taxes, and I don’t want it going to $150 million on a referendum that no one asked for,” he said. No sooner had voters rejected a government referendum question asking Albertans if they wanted to opt out of federal programs like pharmacare and dentistry if the province couldn’t spend federal cash the way it wanted, the UCP announced it was opting out anyway. “It’s insanity to think about!”
Public health care and other public services are experiencing an existential moment in Alberta, Dr. Parks said. Democratic norms are threatened. And even people in the oil industry have complained to him that “this government’s not listening to their expertise either.”
“That’s what’s compelling me,” he concluded. “If we aren’t able to change government and the path we’re on, some of this damage done might be irreparable.”