Federal funding needed to solve primary care crisis, says premier

Almost a million British Columbians are without a family doctor and walk-in clinic wait-times are longer than any other province in Canada. 

In the Capital Regional District on southern Vancouver Island, only 80 per cent of residents have a family doctor compared to 84 per cent provincewide and walk-in clinic wait-times are longer than two-and-a half-hours on average, compared to the provincial average of 58 minutes. 

Gregor Craigie, the host of CBC's On The Island, interviewed Premier John Horgan about the province's primary care crisis. They also discussed old growth logging and the upcoming public union contract negotiations. 

The following transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

Is there a strategy to address the urgent lack of access to primary care providers in the Victoria region in the short term? 

This is a phenomenon not just in B.C., but across the country. That's why I've been focusing on making the case aggressively to the federal government that we have to return to the 50/50 funding formula we had when Medicare started in the 60s. We're at about 80/20 now and we can't sustain that. We have a crisis in health care, it's not just in the primary care setting.

The proportion of health funding within your overall budget has declined from about 40 per cent to 38 per cent since you were first elected. Why does it look to be a lower priority for your government? 

The last Liberal budget had $17.5 billion for health care and this budget in 2022 had $23.5 billion. There's more money now than there was before. What listeners are concerned about is where they're going to get their care. And that means making sure the dollars are there to recruit and train new health-care providers. 

It's been four years since the government announced its strategy for Urgent and Primary Care Centres (UPCCs). What would you say to people with sick kids or chronic illness who have no choice but to wait outside a UPCC and might even be turned away?

I know in our own community this is a critical issue. About 100,000 new people came to B.C. last year and none of them brought a doctor with them, all of them are going to require care. 

Again, this is a national challenge that requires national co-operation. What got heated in our exchange this week was the notion that I'm blaming anybody for this. There's no blame. It's my problem, it's your problem, and we all have to figure out a way to fix this. Pointing fingers and yelling and screaming will not solve the problem. 

What do you say to the critics who are calling on your government to implement an immediate ban on old- growth logging? 

We could flip up the tables today to chaos and confusion but instead we're choosing to roll up our sleeves, collaborate, and work with people. If a handful of people believe that offending commuters or threatening people with citizen arrests is the way to win the hearts and minds of British Columbians, I think they're sadly mistaken. 

We know that climate change is real. We need to manage our land differently than we have in the past. We can't just say tomorrow we're going to stop everything. We have to do it in a way that's managed and focused so that we don't have capital strikes and workers thrown out on their ear. 

What's your estimate of how long this consultation will take? Are we talking months or years?

It's going to take what it takes. There are areas where immediate action can be taken, but there are Nations that don't have that capacity, and that's what slows down much of the discussion. We are saying let's sit down and talk, and many Indigenous communities are saying we've got to figure out ourselves internally before we sit down with you. I can't predict how fast that capacity will be built. 

You have 180 public sector union contract negotiations covering nearly 400,000 workers coming up. How difficult is it going to be to reach agreements with all the public sector unions this year? 

I'm a supporter of collective bargaining. It's going to take some time and I think the public should brace themselves for what will be costly negotiations. 

During the pandemic, we realized, as a community, the importance of public services and how vital they were to social cohesion. That's a powerful message to bring to the table if you're bargaining from the union side.