By Grant Warkentin
The entire North Island region is being punished for not re-electing an NDP MLA last time, at least one councillor believes.
“We went Conservative in this riding and they’re making us pay for it,” said Campbell River Coun. Doug Chapman during a discussion last week about Campbell River’s delayed long-term care home for seniors, which has been in the works since 2020.
On Tuesday May 26, Mayor Kermit Dahl, along with the chair and vice-chair of the Comox Strathcona Regional Hospital District Board, travelled to Victoria to meet with Bowinn Ma, provincial infrastructure minister in the provincial NDP government. The goal of the long-awaited meeting was to discuss why the care home was dropped from this year’s budget, despite being identified by the province as a top priority only a few years ago.
In his report to council at the May 28 meeting, Dahl said the meeting was unproductive, with Ma blaming a lack of funding for the decision to pull Campbell River’s care home project from the budget priority list, while going ahead with other care homes that were only added to the list this year.
Ma repeated Finance Minister Brenda Bailey’s justifications from February, when she claimed the cost per long-term care bed was “unsustainable” at up to $1.8 million per bed.
Dahl said Ma promised to reconsider Campbell River’s project in next year’s budget, if the provincial economy improves.
“The chair of the Comox Strathcona Hospital Board and the vice-chair said that we didn’t really learn anything. I said we did – we’re hooped,” Dahl said. “The chance of our economy in BC improving in the next 12 months, to having the money to fund the cheapest long-term care facility on the Island, is probably non-existent.”
Provincial numbers don’t add up
Dahl was skeptical of Ma’s reasons for delaying the Campbell River care home.
“She told me it was because our costs were too high,” he said.
Dahl broke down the funding numbers for the local care home, pointing out the hospital board had already committed to covering 40% of the capital costs, nearly $54 million of a project originally estimated to cost a total of $134 million.
“Knowing the others [care homes in Lantzville and Colwood approved this year] are estimated at $286 million and at $224 million, I’m not sure exactly how that math works, but that was the explanation I was given,” he said.
Dahl pointed out the need is higher in Campbell River than anywhere else, partly because it serves seniors all the way north to Port Hardy.
“We have 56.4 beds per 1,000 people in Campbell River, and the rest of the Island is significantly higher than that. It somewhat explains why our waitlists are so long,” he said.
Chapman agreed, pointing out that when Adrian Dix was in charge of the health ministry, he had to explain to Dix how the care home will benefit the entire North Island, because Campbell River is the service hub for everything north.
“He had no idea. That was news to him,” Chapman said. “Of course he’s moved on, and that knowledge base has left.”
Dix has been in BC politics since the late 1990s, when he was implicated in the “Casinogate” scandal that helped bring down the Glen Clark government.
Dahl didn’t directly accuse Ma of playing politics with Campbell River’s care home, but said it’s hard not to draw that conclusion after seeing what was approved this spring. The Lantzville and Colwood projects are both in NDP ridings, which were created specifically for the 2024 provincial election by shrinking the boundaries for neighbouring ridings.
The Campbell River care home was the only home under consideration in a Conservative riding, the mayor said.
In 2024 the North Island elected Anna Kindy, Conservative, to the seat formerly occupied by the NDP’s Michele Babchuk. Kindy, an addictions doctor, serves as the Official Opposition’s health critic and has sparred with Eby and the current Health Minister Josie Osborne in the Legislature numerous times during her time in the role.
Featured image: Premier David Eby (left) and Minister Bowinn Ma at a press conference in 2023. From Province of BC / Flickr
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