The BC Conservative Party unveiled its health-care platform on Thursday, a plan built on hiring back unvaccinated workers and using private providers to cut down on wait times.
The announcement comes with just three months to go before British Columbia’s provincial election.
Calling it a “patients-first” model, BC Conservative Leader John Rustad said the plan would maintain a publicly-funded system that provides care through private, out-of-province and public facilities.
“We need to fix things, and that new model will be taxpayer-funded but delivered by both government and non-government facilities,” Rustad said.
He said the plan would cut health-care administration, offer direct funding through a “patient-based” funding model, and hire more nurses and doctors.
The plan did not address how the province would address ongoing recruitment and retention problems with health-care workers, save to promise to hire back those who refused to get the COVID-19 vaccine and offer new incentives to work in rural centres.
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The party also promised a “wait times guarantee,” with those left too long being sent out of province for care.
Rustad could not provide an estimate on how much the plan would cost but acknowledged there would be an “initial spike” in spending.
“I don’t have the precise numbers,” he said. “There are a lot of complexities that have to be put in place as we do the transition.”
“We will be working with the health care system, what we are seeing with cancer right now is horrendous,” he added.
The plan drew swift critiques from public health-care advocates.
“When you fold private health care into a universal system there are no more hours, no more services being provided,” said Ayendri Riddell with the British Columbia Health Coalition.
“Services just shift to most profitable patients.”
With jurisdictions across Canada facing the same struggles to recruit health-care workers, critics also said the plan would pull staff from the public system to private facilities, potentially lengthening wait times.
The BC NDP was also quick to attack the plan, saying it would amount to massive cuts.
“What is very clear in these documents is they want remove $4 billion and promote privatization,” Langford-Juan de Fuca MLA Ravi Parmar said.
BC United, meanwhile, claimed that the Conservatives had borrowed numerous ideas from their own recently-announced health-care plan.
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