David Eby’s NDP claims there is a $3.2 billion hole in John Rustad’s health-care spending plan. The claim needs context
The current planned health spending cited by the Conservatives showed a figure of $30.6 billion in 2025-26.
The NDP jumped on that figure, saying the current spending plan is actually $33.8 billion in 2025-26.
The NDP claimed this meant there is a $3.2 billion hole in Rustad’s spending plan.
Postmedia News asked the Tories this week to explain the discrepancy in the figures, but received no response.
Does that mean there is a more than $3 billion hole in Rustad’s health plan?
Unlikely.
The NDP’s claim needs context.
That’s an awkward paper mistake, not a $3.2 billion cut to health-care spending.
Rustad said this week: “The Conservative party’s patients first health-care plan focuses on increasing front-line health care service delivery and making the system more efficient, while increasing funding.”
The plan includes ending long waiting times, including sending patients outside of B.C. for care if needed, expanding education and other measures to produce more health workers and physicians, increasing access to family doctors for hundreds of thousands of British Columbians and stopping emergency room closures.
Rustad hasn’t said how much spending will increase, another Postmedia question asked this week and unanswered by the Conservatives.
Rustad has also not laid out a detailed plan on how the increased spending will be funded.
But one truth that is inescapable is that provincial government health-care spending has increased every year since 2001, according to a Postmedia examination of B.C.’s public accounts.
That has taken place under the previous 17 years of B.C. Liberal party rule and under the NDP for the last seven years.
In 2023-24, health-care spending had risen to $34.9 billion, 41 per cent of total spending.
In the past two decades, health care has accounted for 38 to 41 per cent of provincial government spending. Under the Liberals, that percentage also hit 41 per cent.