EDMONTON — The Alberta NDP called out the UCP government on Tuesday for increased wait times for cancer surgeries and for simultaneously cutting millions of dollars in funding for research, screening and prevention services, but the UCP dispute the claims. "Once again, Danielle Smith and the UCP government are failing Albertans," said Sarah Hoffman, Shadow Minister for Hospitals and Surgical Facilities. "This time it's Albertans of cancer.""Cancer patients are waiting significantly longer for surgeries than medically recognized. This is dangerous. Everyone knows that with cancer, time is of the essence. Things get significantly worse when you wait." .When a patient is deemed to need surgery, they are assigned a clinically recommended wait time based on the diagnosis and urgency of the procedure. In January 2023, roughly three months after Danielle Smith became premier, 53% of Albertans needing surgery for bladder, breast, colorectal, lung, or prostate cancer received it within the recommended wait time. By January 2026, the number had fallen to 40%, according to the Government of Alberta data."What I want to be really clear about is that these numbers are people," Hoffman said. "These numbers are about life and death, people who are fighting for their lives, and the UCP made their likelihood of being successful worse." According to data, breast cancer surgeries decreased 27 percentage points over that time span, falling to 43% being completed within the recommended time in January 2026. Likewise, lung cancer procedures fell 12 percentage points to 24%, and bladder surgeries tumbled 7 percentage points to 37%. The number of prostate and colorectal cancer surgeries completed within the recommended window improved over the timespan, though. Prostate cancer procedure completion rose 7 percentage points to 30%, and colorectal surgeries jumped 2 percentage points to 55% in that time. All of these cancers saw longer average wait times than the national average from April to September 2024, with the largest difference being 17 days for prostate cancer procedures. "It's clear from the government's own data that cancer patients are waiting too long for surgery," said Sharif Haji, Shadow Minister of Primary and Preventative Health Services. "The key to fixing surgical wait times for cancer patients is early detection and treatment, instead of working to fix the problem that has gotten significantly worse." Minister of Primary and Preventative Health Services Adriana LaGrange claimed the UCP have been doing exactly that, by doing more cancer screenings and increasing early detection. "We are seeing record numbers of people getting their screening, whether it's breast cancer screening, prostate cancer screening, cervical cancer screening, colorectal cancer screening, and lung cancer screening," said LaGrange in an interview with the Western Standard. "These are all programs that we are looking to expand throughout the province. So, I would just say that we are making headway in the right direction."Data from the Ministry of Primary and Preventative Health Services said breast cancer screening rates for women age 50-79 were up 0.88% to 65.8% in 2024-2025, and colorectal and cervical cancer screening tests increased to 56.7% and 63.1% respectively. LaGrange claimed Alberta has seen a 104% increase in the number of women who received mammogram testing since 2020, pointed to the UCP's decision to lower the age for self-referral breast cancer screening to 45 years old, and said they are planning to lower it again soon. .The NDP claim the UCP has been unsuccessful in doing these things since taking office, and Budget 2026 only increases their chances of failure through mass budget cuts in areas that could help solve the problems. Budget 2026 commits $34.4 billion for what the UCP claim will strengthen Alberta's health care system. As part of this, $1.7 million has been cut from "cancer research, screening, and prevention" spending, and $526.8 million was taken from "diagnostic and therapeutic services." "This government just tabled a $9.4 billion deficit,” Haji said. “Where did the money go? Not to cancer surgeries, screening, or research. Never before has a government spent so much for Albertans to get so little.” LaGrange addametly disputes the narrative that the UCP is cutting money from these resources. Rather, she said the funds have been partially reallocated to different budget lines within Cancer Care Alberta, which is part of Acute Care Alberta, along with additional funding. She said reallocation was nescisary as part of the reorganization of Alberta's health care system."So, the money is still there," LaGrange said. "They're just allocated in different line items in the budget, and this is a very simple accounting situation that the NDP is misrepresenting." The Canadian Cancer Society estimates there were 24,600 cancer cases in Alberta in 2025, 7,700 of which led to deaths. .A 2023 study found in the National Institute of Health projects there will be 33,773 cancer cases in Alberta by 2040, with breast and lung cancer expected to see the largest increases. "This is the time you invest in prevention, research, innovation and screening, it's not the time to cut," Haji said. "Despite all of this is government is cutting money to cancer prevention and screening."The NDP called on Alberta's Minister of Primary and Preventative Health Services, Adriana LaGrange, to provide an update on what the UCP are going to do to reverse the upward trend and decrease wait times for cancer surgeries. "There's lives at stake," Hoffman said. As for what the NDP would do to solve the problem, Hoffman said the immediate solution is to properly invest in health care rather than spend money on private surgical centres, and to make use of the hospital spaces available. "People who are getting their surgeries at these private centers, Alberta Surgical Group and others, those are needed surgeries," Hoffman said. "They aren't life-saving surgeries.""So if something is going to kill you, you can't have surgery there. So like, if you need to have open heart surgery, if you need to have cancer surgery, those aren't the things that are happening there. Those only happen in a hospital."She also said the government needs to make better use of the Calgary Cancer Centre, where she claimed there is open space that is not getting used because the government will not fund it. "It's a combination between that and actually opening the operating rooms in our existing hospitals, because that's how you save lives, is getting cancer out of patients within the right amount of time so that they have the best shot at survival," Hoffman said.
