Higher fees and budget cuts don't mean better care for you. We're investing in healthcare for people, so it's there when you need it.
We're training and hiring more doctors, nurses, and healthcare workers than ever before
We want BC to be a place where healthcare is always there when you need it. We know we’re facing some big challenges – we’re still feeling fallout from the pandemic, communities are growing, our family members are getting older, and many doctors and nurses are retiring.
That’s why we’re taking action to strengthen health care. And we’re making progress – training and hiring more doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers than ever before:
- We’ve hired over 800 new family doctors in the last year alone – connected over 400,000 people to family doctors and nurse practitioners. And we're training hundreds more at UBC medical school and the brand new SFU medical school opening in Surrey.
- We've hired 6,300 new nurses just in the last year, and we’re taking action to retain them with better pay and working conditions – BC’s nursing workforce is now growing faster than any other province.
- We've licensed over 2,000 new nurses and 900 doctors with international credentials to work in BC.
- We're giving people faster access to the care they need by allowing pharmacists to prescribe free birth control and treatment for minor ailments.
- We're building new hospitals at a record rate — 29 new and expanded hospitals across BC, plus cancer centres and long-term care homes closer to home. Plus we've opened 38 new Urgent and Primary Care Centres to ensure faster access to the care patients need.
- And through it all, we're continuing to cut wait times: BC has the second-shortest wait times in Canada for hip and knee replacements and MRIs (CIHI, 2023).
Healthcare should always be there when you need it – and David Eby won’t stop until the job is done.
John Rustad has other ideas. His BC Conservatives are planning tax breaks for those at the top and will make the rest of us pay for it with cuts in healthcare. He already has a plan to cut $4.1 billion from BC’s health budget, which means firing doctors and nurses and driving wait times sky-high.
Rustad has a 20-year track record of backing healthcare cuts. When he was in government, he fired health care workers, and caused a reduction of thousands of MRIs and surgeries people needed. Fewer and fewer British Columbians had a family doctor almost every year under John Rustad.
We can’t afford to let Rustad slash healthcare like he did before. Find out more about how David Eby will keep hiring doctors and nurses, not cut them, so you and your family get the care you need, when you need it, close to home.