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The mayor of Lethbridge, Alta., says he is “ecstatic” that the provincial government has decided to halt its new procurement strategy for integrated fire and EMS operators. However, the decision is also prompting questions about the government’s planning process.
Earlier this year, the province told the city it would need to spent more money to keep the current service, which has been operating for 114 years, or allow Emergency Health Services to come up with a cost-saving plan that could lead to splitting the fire department from ground ambulance services and handing ambulatory care over to the province.
The plan was met with fierce opposition in several affected communities, including Lethbridge, Red Deer, St. Albert and Strathcona County.
However, in a social media post on Monday, Alberta’s minister of hospital and surgical health services, Adriana LaGrange, announced she was putting the strategy on pause while the government works with the seven communities affected, “to design a strategy that supports them and brings costs in line with provincially delivered EHS services by 2028-29.”
“We’re grateful that the province has taken a second look at EMS contracts for integrated fire and EMS,” said Mayor Blaine Hyggen at a press conference in Lethbridge on Tuesday.
“We said throughout the process that we believe in our system, and of course, we support our men and women that operate the fire and emergency services. We also know integrated service is more expensive and we need to find a way, of course, to make it sustainable without putting tax burden on the residents,” Hyggen said.
Asked in Calgary on Tuesday why the government is putting the plan on pause, LaGrange said after hearing from the mayors and concerned citizens, the government realized it’s going to take more time to come up with a solution.
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“I really want to work with those communities because the one-size-fits-all approach is not going to work,” added LaGrange, “and so I just felt very strongly that we have an opportunity to ease into it a little more.
“But it will be important for us to finally get to the benchmark pricing, perhaps not just as quickly as was anticipated through the original rollout.”
It’s the second time in two weeks that LaGrange has backtracked on an earlier government decision.
On June 10, Alberta’s minister of hospitals put an end to a contentious rebranding of the province’s paramedic service provider, which would have seen ambulances outfitted with new logos and paramedics wearing new uniforms.
Critics, including the union representing about 3,500 paramedics across Alberta, called the rebrand a waste of resources that should be put toward addressing working conditions and staff shortages.
In early June the Alberta government was forced to backtrack on a decision to rebrand ambulances across the province and outfit paramedics with new uniforms.
Government of Alberta
“It is unusual. We don’t typically see this government acknowledging there has been a problem and backing away from a particular policy,” said Mount Royal political science professor, Lori Williams.
“The fact that it has happened twice in such a short period of time starts to raise questions about how effective the planning was in the first place, and that leads to another criticism that we see on a number of files, particularly in health care, with this government, that the planning is lacking and the implementation of those plans.
“It’s not a great look, particularly in an area that concerns Albertans — it’s amongst the top priorities that they have. Many people in health care were warning that these were problems long ago and the government is just now appearing to come to that realization itself.”
LaGrange explains the backtracking by claiming the provincial government is “listening to the public.”
© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
