BC Rural Health Network slams BC Conservatives for false claim

BC Conservative Leader John Rustad on Tuesday slammed the BC NDP government and Premier David Eby for their “gross mismanagement” of the province’s healthcare system, which has led to repeated emergency room closures across the Interior. Over the Labour Day long weekend, five emergency rooms in Merritt, Williams Lake, 100 Mile House, Lillooet, and Oliver were forced to shut their doors due to ongoing staffing shortages, leaving communities stranded without access to critical emergency care.

“This is a complete and utter failure of leadership by Premier David Eby and the BC NDP,” said Rustad. “While Eby and his bureaucrats sit comfortably in Victoria, British Columbians in the Interior are being left to fend for themselves without even the most basic access to emergency healthcare. This is not just mismanagement; it’s negligence, and it’s putting lives at risk.”

However, the BC Conservatives claim in their press release that “adding to Rustad’s criticism, the BC Rural Health Network, a health advocacy group, called for an independent review of Interior Health following these closures, emphasizing that the current system is failing,” was denied by Paul Adams, Executive Director of the BC Rural Health Network.

Adams, in an email to The VOICE on Tuesday, wrote: “We have never called for an independent review and that was a comment made by a group representing emergency room personnel.”

Adams added: “We are also apolitical and non-partisan and putting us up alongside Mr. Rustad is a misleading piece at best. In addition, as an organization we have yet to see anything in the platform of the BC Conservatives that will help rural BC health systems.” 

Adams said that the BC Conservatives’ claim regarding his organization was “damaging to us and our reputation as a solution-based charity.”

According to the BC Conservatives’ press statement: “Rustad pointed to these closures as symptomatic of a healthcare system on the brink of collapse due to years of NDP mismanagement, band-aid solutions, and a lack of genuine leadership.”

Rustad added: “The NDP’s approach to healthcare has been nothing short of a disaster. Instead of fixing the root causes of these staffing shortages, they’ve allowed the problem to spiral out of control. British Columbians are paying the price, and the situation is getting worse every day.”

The BC Conservatives said that their Patients First Healthcare Plan aims to address these systemic issues head-on by increasing healthcare staffing, improving rural and remote healthcare services, and cutting through the bureaucratic red tape that has hamstrung the province’s healthcare system. “Our plan will put patients back at the center of healthcare, not the faceless bureaucracy that the NDP prioritizes,” Rustad said. “We will ensure that emergency rooms remain open, that healthcare professionals are supported, and that British Columbians can trust they will receive timely and effective care when they need it most.”

He said: “Premier Eby and his NDP government have failed to protect the health and safety of British Columbians. The repeated closures of emergency rooms are not just an inconvenience; they are a dangerous abdication of responsibility. The Conservative Party will not stand by while communities are left without care. We need real, common sense change—not more excuses, empty promises, and political grandstanding from the NDP.”