The BC Conservatives and BC NDP traded criticism over policing, safe supply and health-care funding in downtown Vancouver this week.
The Story
BC Conservative leader Lorne Doerkson was in downtown Vancouver on Tuesday to outline the party’s plans to address street disorder, crime and addiction.
Doerkson said, “The time is now to act; the law must be respected again and human dignity must be restored.”
He said that, if elected, the BC Conservatives would hire up to 1,000 new police officers, crown prosecutors and trial judges, end safe supply, amend and enforce the Mental Health Act and improve access to mental health care.
The BC NDP questioned how the Conservatives could afford those promises while also allowing a tax freeze.
BC NDP leader David Eby said the plan is not realistic, adding, “Unless he has a magic wand, this is just not something that is real.”
Eby also argued, “The only possible outcome of his plan is to slash health-care spending.”
In Coquitlam, Eby announced his party’s health-care plan to reduce surgical wait times across the province.
Eby’s plan would use money from tax hikes on the top four per cent of wage earners and include eight new MRI machines and 10 new CT scanners, with regional wait-lists and recruiting more specialists from the United States.
The Conservatives argued Eby is trying to fix problems he helped create.
Jason Sutherland, who is affiliated with UBC Health Sciences and policy research, said, “This presents the common problem for health care in British Columbia and in Canada is that you can throw a lot of money at it, including a billion dollars, and it’s really hard to assess what value you get for that money.”
The BC Greens also announced a plan to reform health care, saying government health-care spending is high while people are getting sicker and workers’ conditions are deteriorating.
BC Green Party leader Emily Lowan said, “One in every eleven dollars spent in this province is government healthcare spending,” and argued that millions of dollars are flowing to private health-care providers.
Lowan said the Greens would end what she called the “creeping privatization of healthcare” by keeping public dollars focused on public care through community health centres, cutting down “bloated bureaucracy,” and delivering an integrated community health centre in every riding, among other changes including nurse funding and a single-entry model for certain surgical referrals.
← More stories