Earlier this week, the Alberta Labour Relations Board published their final new applications report for May 2026. In it was an application for union certification.
The United Nurses of Alberta filed the application on 22 May 2026 on behalf of workers employed at one of AgeCare’s facilities in southeast Calgary.
Based in Calgary, AgeCare manages over 50 aging-in-place facilities in Alberta, British Columbia, and Ontario.
Technically, these workers are employed by Aster Joint Venture Limited Partnership, which is a partnership between AgeCare and Axium Infrastructure, a Montreal-based portfolio investment firm.
This partnership, formed in 2021, shares ownership of 5 of AgeCare’s facilities: Sagewood, Seton, Skypointe, Sunrise Gardens, and Walden Heights.
That second one—Seton—employs 18 workers in direct nursing or nursing instruction positions, and it is these workers that UNA is trying to unionize.
UNA already has collective agreements with AgeCare for workers employed at their Midnapore, Skypoint, and Valleyview facilities.
The Midnapore agreement expired in August 2024, 8 months after it was ratified. The Skypoint one expired less than 2 months after being ratified in September 2024. The Valleyview workers have been waiting since August 2021, when their last collective agreement expired, and that was not ratified until nearly 4 months later.
The UNA managed to unionze the Walden Heights workers last November, although they still do not have a collective agreement.
To file for certification in Alberta, a union must demonstrate that they have support from at least 40% of the workers who would belong to the proposed bargaining unit. In this case, that would be 8 workers.
The ALRB has scheduled a hearing date for next Friday (5 June) regarding this application, during which time, representatives from Aster Joint Venture can present arguments, if they have any, as to why these workers should be unable to unionize with UNA.
Listed in the application as a representative of Aster Joint Venture was David Garratt, which LinkedIn has listed as director of labour relations for AgeCare.
If the ALRB approves the application, they will hold a certification vote, and all 18 workers will have a chance to democratically indicate whether they want to unionize.
Assuming the 8 workers I mentioned earlier all follow through and vote in favour, they would need to convince only 2 workers to join them for a majority.
Should a majority of these workers vote in favour of unionizing and the ALRB approves their certification, one of the first orders of business will be to form a bargaining committee and begin negotiating a new collective agreement.
Because the ALRB does not archive their new applications reports, I have included a copy of this week’s report below for your convenience.
