This series is not about the people who work inside Lloydminster Hospital.
It never was.
The nurses on the maternity ward who stabilize sick newborns until transport arrives are doing extraordinary work under conditions that should embarrass the governments responsible for creating them. The paramedics loading patients onto air ambulances because there is no ICU are not failing this community. The police officers driving mental health patients to St. Paul at 2 a.m. because there is nowhere else to go are not the problem.
The problem is what two governments were told, when they were told it, and what they chose to do about it.
That is what this series is about.
I have heard from health care workers this week. Some are frustrated. Some feel the reporting paints them as incompetent. I want to be direct about that. The Lloydminster Health Service Needs Assessment does not say Lloydminster’s health care workers are inadequate. It says the system they work inside is. Those are not the same thing. If anything, the document is a testament to what this community’s health care workers are managing with what they have been given.
What they have been given is not enough. The assessment says so. The 2013 assessment said the same thing.
That is the part I cannot let go of.
Twelve years ago, two governments commissioned a health assessment for this community. It found Lloydminster underserved. It found the dual-jurisdiction system a barrier to care. It called for immediate action on mental health, surgical services, critical care, and primary care. It was released in full. And then, largely, it sat.
In 2025, two governments commissioned another one. It found the same problems. In several areas, worse. And this time, they tried to hide it.
I did not want to draw the conclusion I am being drawn toward. I have resisted it. But I have heard it now from enough people, in enough different ways, that I have to put it on the table.
Lloydminster’s Saskatchewan side has roughly 7,000 voting-age residents. The Lloydminster constituency has been held by the Saskatchewan Party since the party’s founding. The seat is, by any reasonable political analysis, safe. Some people who know this system far better than I do have suggested, carefully and privately, that safe seats do not get the same attention as competitive ones. That the calculus of government spending does not always follow need. That it sometimes follows votes.
I did not want to believe that.
The Alberta side tells the same story. Lloydminster sits in some of the safest blue territory in the country. The UCP holds this region without effort. The federal seat has not been competitive in memory.
When every elected representative you have comes from the governing party and that party knows it will win here regardless of what it does, the incentive to act is limited. When your MLA does not need to fight for your community because the ballot is already decided before it is cast, the fight does not always happen.
I am not saying that is what occurred. I am saying the evidence is consistent with it.
What I know for certain is this. Two governments paid $262,260 for a report that told them, in 261 pages, what this community needs. They received it in December 2025. They released four pages. They denied the rest to a journalist under freedom of information law on the same day they issued a press release about it.
That is not a clerical error. That is a choice.
The people inside that hospital did not make that choice. The nurses, the doctors, the support staff, the paramedics, the police officers driving hours in the middle of the night because there is no better option – they did not choose this. They are living inside it, the same as the rest of us.
This series exists because they deserve a system that matches their effort. Because the 217,000 people who depend on that hospital deserve to know what their governments were told. Because a community that has been asking for adequate health care for at least twelve years deserves an answer that is more than four pages and a press release.
I do not know if this series will change anything. I know it needs to exist.
Whatever happens next, it will not be because no one said anything.
This is the weekly opinion column by owner/founder of Border Pulse.
Read more: Lloydminster Health Needs Assessment: Investigation
Thank you for this series.
As you state, we are fortunate to have the health care workers that we do, without their dedication I shudder think what kind of healthcare, if any this area would have.
Having lived in several provinces, to move here and see how terribly dysfunctional the healthcare system is in Lloydminster has been challenging to say the least.
Both provinces need to step up to the plate and fund this hospital properly. Sadly, the Sask Party thinks throwing a rather large sum of money at ‘external enhancements’ is the equivalent of putting lipstick on a pig…that is struggling to breathe. We have 2 MLAs that supposedly represent us, my question to them is “ please provide an itemized and dated list of your efforts to improve the healthcare for your constituents”. While you’re at it, add to the list anything else you have done to improve life in this city.
I suspect it will be a very short list as they have no receipts but lots of protests about how hard they work for their constituents. I have been here 6 yrs now and I can’t think of one single thing either of them have done to improve my community.
I am going to be following this series, thanks for shining a light into those dark, concealed corners.
That’s crap 💩
I totally respect All Staff that work at the hospital and for emergency services
I’ve always had great care and I havnt had to go there much
The staff in checking in , Triage and all departments are amazing and Care their patients
Saskatchewan Health Needs to do better for the Lloydminster Hospital to support them