Burdett steps down as 
Friends of Medicare chair

Gil McGowan, AFL Staff

EDMONTON – After more than five years at the helm of Friends of Medicare, Christine Burdett is stepping down.

During her tenure, Burdett led numerous campaigns in defense of public health care – including the historic and nationally recognized campaign against the Klein government’s controversial private health care law, Bill 11.

Burdett was also actively involved in 1998 when protests organized by Friends of Medicare forced the Alberta government to withdraw Bill 37, Premier Klein’s first attempt at a private hospitals law.

Another high-point for Burdett came in the summer and fall of 2000 when the Friends of Medicare gathered the names of hundreds of Albertans we had been forced to pay privately for medically necessary MRI scans.

In response to the Friends of Medicare expose, the Klein government reluctantly agreed to reimburse thousands of Albertans for the costs of private MRI scans. The government also felt obliged to purchase several new MRIs to reduce waits in the public system.

"Without the opposition provided by Christine and the other volunteers involved with Friends of Medicare, there’s no telling how far our provincial government would have gone," says Dr. Avalon Roberts, chair Friends of Medicare’s Calgary chapter.

"We would be much further down the road to commercialized health care than we are."

The Friends of Medicare board has selected Roberts to replace Burdett as provincial chairperson. Roberts, who is in the practice of community psychiatry, will assume her new responsibilities immediately.

Burdett’s resignation comes just as Friends of Medicare is wrapping up its latest campaign in the Edmonton riding of federal health minister Anne McLellan.