B.C. election comes at pivotal moment for health care: workers

All three B.C. political parties are pledging to expand health care, while workers on the front lines say whoever forms the next government must match funding and staffing to what they are proposing.

Polls going into the last week of the campaign show that health care is the second most important issue for voters behind the cost of living and ahead of housing affordability and availability.

Health-care workers say they don't want the next government to lose any momentum over solutions.

"We've … seen really divergent views on what the future of health care in our province should look like," said Devon Mitchell, a Vancouver emergency room physician who also advocates for the public health-care system through Canadian Doctors for Medicare.

"That's also why I think it's also a very consequential election for B.C."

Many British Columbians struggle to find a family doctor or get timely care for a life-threatening illness.

"Really, it's about shortages and the challenges that are existing in hiring, retaining and recruiting the staff that run these operations," said Kane Tse, the president of the Health Sciences Association.

The organization represents 23,000 workers, such as pharmacists and technologists, in many areas of health care, from prevention, diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation.

Organizations representing the province's 50,000 nurses or 16,000 physicians, residents, and medical students say much the same — years of underfunding and poor recruitment have led to hundreds of thousands of British Columbians without a family doctor or waiting too long for critical care.

"When family doctors are not properly resourced or supported, it impacts the quality care that the patients receive," said Maryam Zeineddin, the president of B.C. Family Doctors.

"Decisions made in the early 2000s in terms of not investing in nurses, not investing in nursing schools, and not investing in health care has really contributed to why we're in this situation right now," said Adriane Gear, the president of the BCNU.

All political parties looking to form the next government have pages of plans in their platforms to connect residents with doctors or nurse practitioners, hire more health-care workers, and build health-care centres.

And all are promising hundreds of millions more above the nearly $33 billion for health care in the province's current $89 billion budget — a budget with a forecast deficit of $9 billion.

Despite increased spending on health, statistics from the Canadian Institute for Health Information show B.C. has struggled to reduce some wait times despite increasing funding in the sector.