“The last conservative government in B.C. under former Premier Gordon Campbell accelerated the privatization of health care services faster and deeper than any other Canadian province”
FOLLOWING its review of the BC Conservative platform, the Hospital Employees’ Union is raising the alarm about budgeting decisions that will result in funding shortfalls and the diversion of public funds to private health providers.
“British Columbians need a government that invests in public health care and the workers who deliver that care,” says Hospital Employees Union (HEU) spokesperson Lynn Bueckert. “The BC Conservatives’ platform opens the door to privatization, while cutting the budget flexibility needed to be responsive to arising public health care pressures and emergencies.”
In the party’s fully-costed platform – released just six days before voters go to the polls – the BC Conservatives announced plans to cut $2 billion in contingency reserves which amounts to a two per cent reduction in overall government spending. Normally, a significant portion of contingency funding is put towards health care caseload pressures, and without additional funding available much-needed surgeries, clinic hours, and staffing for patient care are in jeopardy.
“The BC Conservative plan to cut budget contingencies will result in cuts to health care,” says Bueckert. “And this is hardly surprising, as BC Conservative MLA Tony Luck let it slip earlier this year that health care would have to ‘bear the brunt’ of cuts to bring the deficit down.”
Even more worrying, the BC Conservative platform proposes a hybrid healthcare model that includes expanding the use of publicly funded, privately delivered care. Expanding private delivery has been found to pull doctors and other health care workers away from the public system, worsening wait times for the majority of patients who remain in public care.
“The BC Conservative’s plan to divert funding away from provincial hospitals will throw the door wide open to public dollars being used in the private system,” says Bueckert. “The last conservative government in B.C. under former Premier Gordon Campbell accelerated the privatization of health care services faster and deeper than any other Canadian province.”
In addition to ramping up private health care from 2001-2017, BC Conservative leader Lorne Doerkson’s former party also closed, cutback or downgraded 71 hospitals, allowed 90 per cent of long-term care homes to fail staffing level guidelines and doubled medical service premiums.
“It’s taken 10 years to try to repair the damage of the province’s last conservative government, because once public health care gets broken, it’s hard to fix,” says Bueckert. “B.C. can’t afford to go backwards on health care, with a renewed round of conservative cuts and privatization.”
The HEU represents more than 60,000 health care workers across British Columbia, including tens of thousands of workers in long-term care.
