As Canadians we pride ourselves on our public healthcare but in B.C., alarm bells have been going off. 

We’ve seen emergency rooms closing – wait times for specialists hit all-time highs – and rural communities get left out to dry, all while more than a fifth of British Columbians don’t have a primary care provider. 

These issues, among others, are why polling by the Angus Reid Institute found healthcare is the number one issue for voters in the provincial election. 

So which party’s platform is best suited to triage the situation?

Here’s how they stack up: David Eby’s BC NDP has promised not to make any cuts to health care – alongside pledges to build 20 new primary care clinics across the province, and a third hospital in Surrey. Increase B.C.’s capacity to train new professionals, offer incentives like loan forgiveness to coax doctors and nurses to rural areas, triple recruitment efforts in the U.S., purchase eight new MRI machines and 10 CT scanners, enshrine minimum nurse-to-patient ratios in law, expand the Kelowna General Hospital and move ahead with the second phase of the Burnaby Hospital expansion.

The BC Conservatives, under Lorne Doerkson, have promised to “fully fund” public health care, build 11 primary care clinics – as well as a women’s and children’s hospital in Surrey, train and recruit more doctors and nurses, create a $50 million fund to keep rural ERs open, improve access to rural medical transport, conduct an independent review of the Mental Health Act and fund private treatments for surgeries when benchmarks for wait times are exceeded.

Andrew Longhurst is a researcher and political economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. He says neither party’s plan addresses the systemic issues behind many of the problems B.C.’s medical system is facing but he has serious concerns about the Conservatives’ proposal to pay for private procedures.

“This risks really undermining the public hospital system. It risks reducing equitable access to surgical care, and it’s going to be very costly,” says Longhurst

Longhurst adds that he hasn’t been satisfied with the Conservatives’ explanations for how they’re going to pay for their campaign promises.

“How are you going to make good on these commitments? How is the party going to not engage in cuts to public healthcare and education and other critical parts of B.C.’s economy, when it’s very unlikely that they’re going to see the growth that they assume to be the case.”

Longhurst says the platform he sees the most practical and evidence-based solutions in belongs to the BC Greens – whose plan to build a Community Health Centre in every riding in the province he thinks would attract more family doctors and lead to better health outcomes. The Greens are also pledging to create a consolidated provincial health authority, reduce bureaucracy, and legislate mandatory nurse-to-patient ratios.

CentreBC says it will get everyone a family doctor by 2031 and slash bureaucratic bloat while streamlining administration, and OneBC says it will allow private healthcare into the province and update vaccine protocols.

The province’s doctors say they’re glad the system is getting attention – but they hope their expertise is taken into account when fixes are being made.

“It is essential, again, that frontline physicians and other health-care professionals working in emergency rooms, are at decision-making tables to help develop the tangible solutions that they know from the frontline are available to whatever government forms,” says Dr. Adam Thompson, president of Doctor’s of BC.

But whoever ends up leading this province – it’s clear they’re going to have a lot of work ahead of them to get our health care system off life support.