This is the Alberta chapter of Bambi's guide to starting a non-emergency medical transportation business, and it opens with the same warning every Canadian chapter does. There is no Medicaid here, and there is no transportation broker.
Alberta is the one province with a genuine exception: AHCIP does cover inter-facility transfers in Alberta by ambulance. Everything else follows the national pattern. Provincial health insurance does not cover it. Getting a patient to a medical appointment in a wheelchair van or a stretcher van is not an insured service, and no province has ever tendered a transportation brokerage contract. Modivcare, MTM and Verida have no Canadian operations. Alberta also has the largest single contracted inter-facility volume in the country.
So the question is not "how do I credential with the broker." It is "who actually pays, and how do I get in front of them." That is what this guide covers.
Part 1: Who Actually Pays
Part 2: Licensing and Regulation
Part 3: Registering the Business
Part 4: Vehicles, Drivers and Insurance
Part 5: Who Buys, and the Market
Part 6: Technology
This is the Alberta chapter of Bambi's complete guide to starting a NEMT business. For the national picture, start with our guides to the NIHB Medical Transportation Benefit and winning health authority transport contracts.
In This Guide
- Part 1: Who Actually Pays
- Part 2: Licensing and Regulation
- Part 3: Registering the Business
- Part 4: Vehicles, Drivers and Insurance
- Part 5: Who Buys, and the Market
- Part 6: Technology
Part 1: Who Actually Pays
- Alberta Health Services contracts roughly 125,000 inter-facility transports a year. Historically these went to Associated Ambulance and Guardian Ambulance, transitioning to ALTA Paramedic Health as of May 15, 2026. That is the biggest single block of contracted non-emergency volume in Canada, and it is ambulance-classified work.
- The ambulance co-pay tells you where private demand sits. Alberta charges $250 if not transported and $385 if transported, plus $200 for non-residents. Inter-facility is $0 to the patient. Exempt: those 65 and over, First Nations members where NIHB pays, and Income Support recipients. The gap between a $385 ambulance bill and a private wheelchair van fare is your market.
- WCB Alberta already direct-bills named taxi companies and pays either the worker or the service provider. That is an existing, working vendor relationship model you can ask to join.
- NIHB spent $69.5M in Alberta in FY2023-24.
- Alberta has no provincial medical travel grant at all. None. Patients in rural Alberta travelling for care are on their own or on charity, which is both a social problem and an unserved private market.
Part 2: Licensing and Regulation
There is no separate non-emergency licence. Everything is an ambulance.
Alberta captures patient transport as a Class 4 ambulance under the Ground Ambulance Regulation, AR 110/2020. The consequential requirement: stretcher crews require a Primary Care Paramedic.
That single rule shapes the whole Alberta market. Stretcher work carries a paramedic wage, so the economics are closer to ambulance operations than to van service. If you want a lighter-weight business, build ambulatory and wheelchair service, which does not attract the Class 4 ambulance regime, and be careful never to drift into stretcher work informally.
Municipal licensing matters here. Calgary's livery transport regime is Bylaw 20M2021, consolidated through 10M2025, which supersedes the older 6M2007 you will still find cited in stale articles. Check your municipality's livery bylaw, because Alberta pushes a lot of for-hire regulation down to cities.
Part 3: Registering the Business
- Incorporation: $291.75 plus a service agent fee. Alberta requires a registered agent.
- Trade name registration: $10.61.
- No provincial payroll tax and no PST. Alberta is the cheapest province in this series on both counts.
- WCB Alberta: register within 15 days.
- GST only at 5%, with the standard $30,000 small supplier threshold.
Part 4: Vehicles, Drivers and Insurance
- Driver licence: Class 4 for a wheelchair-accessible van for hire.
- Criminal record checks are municipal, not provincially mandated. Your customers will require them regardless.
- Inspections: annual for vehicles under 11 seats.
- CSA D409 is not mandated in Alberta.
- Insurance: $400,000 / $1,000,000 for for-hire passenger work, or $1,000,000 / $1,000,000 if operating as a taxi. Confirm which category your municipality places you in, because it changes the number.
Part 5: Who Buys, and the Market
How to get in. Alberta Health Services is the dominant institutional buyer and it buys at scale, which cuts both ways: the volume is real but the contracts favour operators who can field paramedic crews. Watch the Alberta Purchasing Connection, and consider whether subcontracting to an existing AHS contractor is a faster path than bidding directly.
Alberta's renal programmes are Alberta Kidney Care North and Alberta Kidney Care South. Those are the right names to use when you approach them.
Market size. About 2,193 in-centre haemodialysis patients, and the youngest population in this comparison at 15.5% aged 65 and over. Alberta's demand is driven less by age than by geography and by the total absence of a provincial travel programme.
Part 6: Technology
Get started with Bambi
Our aiNEMT software handles scheduling, dispatching, care coordination and real-time tracking. In a market with no broker feeding you trips, the admin all lands on you, which is exactly where software earns its keep. Get in touch for a demo.
