More doctors and nurses, fast-tracking international graduates

To meet the growing demand for healthcare across B.C., we're expanding our medical training capacity, opening more primary care clinics, and breaking down barriers for qualified healthcare professionals trained internationally. Fast-tracking credentials and expanding same-day appointments will get skilled doctors and nurses onto the front lines and provide faster care for British Columbians.

We have a plan to

• Get you an appointment in 24 hours: Expand same-day appointments and evening and weekend care through targeted incentives so people get care when they need it.
• Open more clinics: Build 20 additional team-based primary care clinics to provide timely, in-person care and ease pressure on hospitals.
• Fast-track for international graduates living in B.C.: Launch an accelerated "bridging to practice" training program for qualified international medical graduates already living in B.C. but unable to practice family medicine because of a lack of residency seats.
• Connect you to a primary care provider: Continue attaching record numbers of British Columbians to family doctors and nurse practitioners.
• Train more health care workers here at home: Add 1,000 training seats for nurses, nurse practitioners, allied health workers and care aides, a 20% increase in nursing seats.
• Support rural communities and emergency departments: Offer discounted tuition, loan forgiveness, and paying for moving expenses to attract health care professionals to underserved rural areas facing staffing shortages.

Shorter waits, more diagnostic equipment

Waiting for a scan or surgery can mean living with pain and wondering every day when you'll finally get the call. With B.C.'s population growing and aging, demand for surgical procedures and diagnostic imaging is at an all-time high. We need to do more to reduce wait times in B.C., and expand capacity so patients get care faster.

We have a plan to

• Shorten wait times for surgical care: Bring in coordinated regional waitlists that let people access services anywhere in their region, ensuring faster care and getting people critical procedures within clinical benchmarks.
• Recent research found that coordinating waitlists could cut surgery wait times in half for most patients across all regions.
• Provide faster diagnosis close to home: Expanding MRI and CT scanning capacity in growing areas and rural communities to reduce travel burdens and accelerate treatment.
• Deliver advanced surgical care: New investment in robotic-assisted surgery enables less invasive procedures, smaller incisions, shorter hospital stays, and faster recoveries.
• Introduce real-time referral tracking: A new BC Health Passport app will let patients track referrals, view expected wait times, and access health records directly from their phones so they're not left in the dark, not knowing when a referral will come through.
• Hire more specialists for better care: The U.S. recruitment campaign will build on the BC NDP government's work to attract specialists by targeting professions facing staff shortages, like surgeons, medical lab technicians, and medical imaging technologists who run the MRIs and other diagnostics so critical to timely care and treatment.

Asking the wealthiest to pitch in a bit more to strengthen healthcare for you

In uncertain times, we have a plan to protect what matters most, like healthcare that's there when you need it and good schools for your kids. Unlike the Conservatives, we won't cut healthcare, and so we need to be honest about how we pay for it. BC maintains the lowest net middle-income tax rates in the country. As we face an unprecedented attack on our economy and rising costs for working families, we will fund stronger healthcare for everyone by asking top income earners to contribute a little more, while 96% of people in B.C. pay nothing more. That's how we'll build B.C. strong for all of us.

We have a plan to

• Ask top income earners to contribute their fair share, ensuring over 96% of residents pay no tax increase.
• Increase income tax rates on the top two brackets by 2 percentage points for income earned above $190,405 per year - this is just $200 for someone earning $200K.
• Create a new tax bracket at 24.5% for individuals earning over $1,000,000 per year.
• Raise $1 billion annually starting in the 2028/29 tax year (with $225M in 2026/27 and $925M in 2027/28) to directly fund improvements in healthcare and lower costs for British Columbians.
• Maintain B.C. as Canada's lowest-taxed province for middle-income earners (up to $149,500) and the second-lowest for incomes of $250,000.
• Keep working to strengthen healthcare in BC, recruiting thousands of doctors and nurses, building the hospitals and clinics people need, and connecting 1 million people to a family doctor.

Strengthening health care for seniors

The people who built our province deserve dignity and peace of mind as they age. That means support to stay in the home you love, getting help when you need it, and knowing there will be a place for you when you need more care.

We have a plan to

• Expand home care support: Add 500 home care workers to give seniors faster, hands-on support, scrap user fees, and expand virtual Long-term Care at Home monitoring to help roughly 5,600 more seniors stay safely in their homes longer.
• Provide free shingles vaccines: Cover the full cost of the two-dose shingles vaccine for all adults aged 50+ and all immunocompromised adults to prevent unnecessary hospital visits.
• Deliver better care for long-term care residents: Bring more nurse practitioners, pharmacy services, and virtual specialist consultations into long-term care homes to help avoid unnecessary hospitalizations, and set up teams to support patients returning to community-based care.
• Build more long-term care beds faster and for less: Move ahead with long-term care projects using new designs that lower per-bed costs and shorten construction timelines.
• Ensure fair wages for care workers: Bring 5,000 care-home workers back into the public health employer system to ensure stable staffing and better continuity of care.

Improving access to health care for women

Too many women face systemic barriers and delays when trying to access maternal, reproductive, menopausal and perimenopausal health care. Around the world, and here in B.C., women’s health remains understudied, leaving many without timely diagnoses or proper support for basic care.

We have a plan to

• Fund the First-in-Canada perinatal mental health unit at B.C. Women’s Hospital to ensure mothers in a mental health crisis can heal with their babies by their side instead of being separated or going without inpatient care.
• Expand access to menopause care by giving breast cancer survivors and women with medical conditions affordable PharmaCare coverage for alternative treatments.
• Make it faster and easier for postmenopausal women to get local vaginal estrogen through pharmacists for recurrent UTIs and physical discomfort.
• Deliver a province-wide women's health strategy: Engage B.C. women’s health experts to expand access to menopause care, reduce diagnostic and treatment delays, strengthen community reproductive, sexual, and menstrual health services, and improve maternal and perinatal mental health care across B.C.

Tripling U.S. health care worker recruitment

A global shortage of health care workers and rising demand mean we must recruit, retain, and train more staff. Bringing doctors, nurses, and health care professionals to B.C. improves care for everyone and lightens the workload for healthcare workers. We're tripling down on the success of the targeted U.S. health care recruitment campaign that has already brought over 800 U.S. doctors, nurses and health care workers to work in B.C. communities.

We have a plan to

• Triple the targeted U.S. health care recruitment campaign, expanding outreach into “red states” where doctors and nurses are facing laws that restrict their ability to provide life-saving reproductive care.
• Highlight a clear alternative for US health care professionals: a publicly funded health-care system where professionals can focus on caring for patients, not fighting with insurance companies in a private, for-profit system that can leave people facing catastrophic debt.
• Target B.C.-trained health care professionals living and working in the U.S. with incentives such as loan forgiveness and moving expense support to bring them home.
• Provide enhanced, day-to-day relational support for U.S. healthcare workers and their families, offering one-on-one navigation through Health Match BC to ease their transition, licensing, and integration into local B.C. communities.
• Highlight job opportunities in high-need areas like cancer care, emergency departments, and rural communities.

Protecting public health care from U.S.-style privatization

Universal public health care is part of who we are as Canadians—a promise that we take care of each other, no matter who you are or how big your bank account is. As Conservative politicians push toward two-tiered systems and private pay-for-care models that drain doctors and nurses from public care, we are taking action to defend Medicare and ensure care is always delivered based on need, not ability to pay.

We have a plan to

• Defend Public Health Care: Every BC NDP candidate has signed on to the Public Health Care Guarantee pledge to protect B.C. from American-style, for-profit, pay-your-way health care by opposing out-of-pocket charges for medically necessary care, queue-jumping by those who can pay, and changes that pull staff and resources away from our public system.
• Make sure you can always access care with your health card, not your credit card: Close legal loopholes, strengthen rules, and bring nurse practitioners under the Medicare Protection Act to stop clinics from charging user fees.
• Phase out expensive private agency nurses: Over the next three years, eliminate hospital reliance on costly private temp agencies by capping fees and hours and preventing people from working as agency nurses in the same hospital where they were recently employed. Redirect savings to rural travel nurse programs.
• Protect science and public health: Investing in evidence-based health promotion and public awareness campaigns to counter misinformation on vaccines.