Peter Milobar and Todd Stone (image credit - CFJC Today)

By Michael Reeve

KAMLOOPS CANCER CENTRE

‘Not good enough’: Kamloops MLAs respond to cancer centre announcement

May 25, 2023 | 4:23 PM

KAMLOOPS — The cancer care centre announcement from Health Minister Adrian Dix Thursday (May 25) was less than impressive, according to his B.C. legislature colleagues from across the aisle.

No signage, no shovels, no mock-ups. That was the first impression from Kamloops-South Thompson MLA Todd Stone, even before he heard the announcement from the minister.

“In 2020, we were promised that a full fledged cancer centre would be up and running with people receiving the care that they need by October of 2024. Today, it was confirmed that that isn’t going to happen. In fact it will be 2027, 2028 when patients actually receive care here on this site,” said Stone.

Stone stated that approximately 14,000 patients currently travel from the Kamloops region to Kelowna for care every year.

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Fellow Kamloops MLA and Finance Critic Peter Milobar questioned the minister’s statement that the project had been funded.

“I think the mixed messages we heard today just further complicate things,” said Milobar. “When the minister has said repeatedly, ‘It’s in the budget,’ it is not in the ‘Projects Over $50 million’ list like it’s supposed to be. It may have been approved by cabinet in the last day or two. We will see in the quarterly update. If there is not the Kamloops cancer centre in the identified quarterly update of the fiscal, it’s simply not in the budget.”

When asked about that criticism, the minster responded that the funding is currently in the 10-year capital plan.

“By the time we see it in the budget next year it will be there, because the plan will be approved and the budget will be in the budget in the plan. And they know this because we have answered that question on about 15 other projects. But I appreciate that the role is to hold us to account and that is fair enough,” stated Minister Dix.

Overall, Stone believed the announcement was years late, leaving many in the community the heartache of travel for the next three or four years.

“We should be standing in a great big hole right now where a cancer center is actually rising up and being built based on the NDP promise to put a cancer center in Kamloops open and serving patients by October 2024. It’s May of 2023 and we have an announcement today about plan to do a plan about a centre that may or may not be open in 2027 or 2028. That is not good enough,” said Stone.