Year: 2010
Location: Edmonton
Profile: Christine Burdett chaired Friends of Medicare from 1999 to 2004, and led organization of a militant campaign against Ralph Klein’s Bill 11 in 2000 which proposed an expanded role for private surgical clinics. Burdett’s commitment to universal public healthcare had been reinforced in the 1980s when her husband suffered a severe bout of pneumonia that incurred half a million dollars in medical costs. Had the family been forced to pay those bills, it would have been bankrupted. In 1996, when she was living in Leduc, Burdett worked with Liberal MLA Terry Kirkland. She attended a meeting of Leduc residents who opposed plans by Hotel de Health, a private company, to lease two unused floors of Leduc Hospital to do hip and knee replacements for wealthy foreigners. Burdett became the chair of Friends of the Leduc Hospital, and in that role worked closely with FOM, the AFL, UNA, and HSAA. She joined an FOM-organized commission that held meetings across the province to ask Albertans about their healthcare experiences and recommendations. Those meetings mobilized opposition to Bill 11 and forced Klein to remove its provision to allow private surgical clinics to keep patients overnight. Burdett ran provincially for the NDP in 2001.
Keywords: Bill 11; Friends of Medicare Commission; Hip and knee replacements—private; Hotel de Health; Leduc Hospital; NDP; Surgical clinics—private; Ralph Klein.
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See also: Alberta Federation of Labour; Friends of Medicare; Health Sciences Association of Alberta; United Nurses of Alberta; Women and Work in Alberta