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When Alberta Health Services executives have time to check out the view from their headquarters on 107 Street, they could be forgiven for failing to notice a narrow, featureless building directly across the back alley.

With its flat, brownish-grey façade and pedestrian architecture, the Centre West Building tends to repel long gazes.

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Yet if the executives were ever to focus long enough on the building’s cramped 12th-floor offices, they might catch staff of the Alberta Health Advocates looking back.

Observers with an eye for allegory will perceive something symbolic in those respective vantage points, especially for staff of the advocates’ office — the tiny agency supposedly created, in part, to act as a check on the massive health authority.

More than two years after opening its doors, the agency that was touted to give patients a bigger voice in the health system remains largely invisible, struggling to define its place and build a profile among the public.