In the East Kootenay, where you live determines the care you get. That has to change.

On March 1, 2026, BC and Alberta signed a partnership allowing East Kootenay residents to access scheduled surgeries in Alberta — closer to home, without the brutal drive. Both governments acknowledged what people here have known for years: that for nearly 66,000 residents of the East Kootenay, the closest care is often across a provincial line, and that's okay.

That decision was a win. A real one. And it happened because people pushed for it.

But it's not enough.

 
You've felt it. Maybe not as a patient yet — but as a daughter who drove her mother past a closer hospital because it was on the wrong side of a provincial line. As a husband sitting in a truck on a snowy highway, watching the kilometres climb, wondering if you're going to make it. As a friend who watched someone go through the worst months of their life — sick, exhausted, and still making that drive.

You live here. You know what this costs people. Not just in money — in time, in fear, in the kind of tired that doesn't go away.

We accepted the trade-offs that come with living somewhere this beautiful and this remote.

But we didn't agree to this.

 
The surgery agreement was one step. The gap is much bigger.

Surgical access was a start — but East Kootenay residents still face the same provincial wall for specialist referrals, ongoing treatment, and diagnostic services. Cancer patients drive up to seven hours to Kelowna for radiation therapy that Calgary could provide in four. Families navigate a referral system that sends them deeper into BC when Alberta is right there.

The closest qualified care shouldn't be off limits because of a line on a map.

 
We're not starting from scratch. We're asking both governments to take the next step.

BC and Alberta have already agreed that geography matters. The framework exists. The goodwill exists. The political will clearly exists.

We are asking Josie Osborne, BC Minister of Health, Matt Jones, Alberta Minister of Hospital and Surgical Health Services, and Adriana LaGrange, Alberta Minister of Primary and Preventative Health Services to expand the March 2026 partnership into a comprehensive cross-border care agreement — one that routes East Kootenay patients to the nearest qualified facility, regardless of which side of the provincial line it sits on.

The March 2026 surgical agreement was a step forward. But surgical access is only one piece of a much larger gap

Sign today. Your neighbours are counting on you.