Vaughn Palmer: Despite the NDP’s 80 per cent boost to the health-care budget, the Opposition has recorded 1,407 closures in the past two years
VICTORIA — The B.C. Conservatives used question period Thursday to dramatize the repeated closures of emergency rooms at provincial hospitals, in a way that was as simple as it was effective.
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Opposition MLAs, 20 of them in all, each asked a single question about ER closures in communities across the province: Burns Lake, Merritt, Keremeos, Lillooet, Mackenzie, Clearwater, Fort St James, Arrow Lakes.
All in, they cited a staggering 1,407 closures, of various lengths in days, at 20 hospitals over the past two years of Premier David Eby’s government.
Each question was capped with a challenge to Premier David Eby to explain why that is acceptable health care for B.C.?
Eby didn’t rise to the bait, not even once.
Instead, he left the responses to Health Minister Josie Osborne. After all, what are cabinet ministers for, if not to take the heat for the government’s record?
The handoff meant Osborne had to fall back on an increasingly weary set of deflections and excuses.
She tried sympathy: “Any time an emergency room is temporarily closed, where people need to be diverted to the closest place, is a very serious issue. I know that people want to have confidence in the system to know that the emergency services are there for them when they need it.”
She drew on personal experience: “I understand, as a member of a small community myself. I live in Tofino. We are so fortunate to have a hospital there, and I can imagine what it would feel like for my community members to know that they cannot go to the emergency room in Tofino, that they would have to drive all the way to Port Alberni.”
She tried outreach: “When the emergency room closed in Delta last week, it was really hard for people to take. I spoke to the mayor myself and he certainly reflected the concerns that he is hearing from his constituents.”
She blamed forces national and international: “We are experiencing a lot of strain in the health care system right now. We have a global shortage of health-care workers, and that’s why it’s incumbent on us to do everything possible to train and recruit new doctors to our province, to hire more nurses and more health care workers.”
She cited NDP steps to fix the problem — fast tracking the recruitment of foreign doctors, establishing community health centres, building a new medical school — some of which will take months, some years.
She claimed the government is making progress: “We do know that the number of emergency room closures has come down 40 per cent over the last six months. She did not provide the data, unlike the Conservatives, whose research department released a comprehensive record of all the closures.
She suggested the Conservatives were not helping one bit: “We have canvassed many different communities across B.C. in today’s question period. I didn’t hear any ideas from the Opposition.”
This from a government that boosted health-care funding by $16 billion, almost 80 per cent, over seven years in office. The NDP also claims to have added 45,000 health care workers, all the while blaming every closure on lack of resources, staff shortages and problems it inherited from the previous government.
Sometimes Osborne dropped the ball, as when she said “if you live in Elkford, you need to know that the emergency room is there for you and that our health care system is here for you.”
Not really: the ER in Elkford has been closed for two years.
She stumbled a second time when she said, when closures happen, “it’s so important to work closely with the B.C. Emergency Health Services, of course, in ensuring that paramedics in ambulances know when a diversion is there because we want, of course, to ensure that people get to care as quickly as possible when they need it.”
Bad example. When the ER at Delta hospital closed last weekend, the ambulance paramedics complained that they weren’t given any notice.
Instead they learned about the closure from a posting on X, the social media platform, just as the service was going into a shift change.
The Delta closure came at a time of transition for the parent Fraser Health Authority, the board of the health region having just pushed CEO Dr. Victoria Lee out the door.
The government news release tried to frame it as a mutual decision. But it also said Dr. Lee departed “effective immediately.” I gather negotiations are underway for a severance package of more than $500,000, which scarcely suggests that the departure was her idea.
The changeover prompted a rare public statement this week by Jim Sinclair, the longtime labour leader who chairs the board at Fraser Health. He’s held the post since the NDP took office in 2017, establishing a reputation as a hands-on overseer.
“There are some issues that have to be dealt with,” Sinclair conceded to reporters Wednesday. “We are looking at the future to fix these issues and move forward.”
“I don’t point fingers at anybody,” he said, having done just that by presiding over the board’s ouster of Lee.