SOUND OFF: Kamloops isn’t asking to be treated differently on cancer care. We’re asking to be treated the same

I asked this question because there has been a lot of chatter to the effect that we might lose the cancer centre if our local MLAs, the hospital board, local elected officials and health professionals don’t knock it off with our ceaseless demands that Kamloops get the same quality cancer centre that they have in Kelowna, Prince George, Surrey, Nanaimo or Vancouver.

The minister’s answer to me in the legislature was unyielding. “This project is going ahead,” she said. “This project is in the final phases of the procurement process and construction will start this summer.”

The minister’s answer in the legislature mirrored the answers she gave earlier this month, when she met me and Ward Stamer, the MLA for Kamloops-North Thompson. And it’s the same answer she apparently gave to the people from the Thompson Regional Hospital Board who made the trip down to Victoria to ask her to reconsider this badly-designed cancer centre proposal.

Kamloops has a long history of distrust with NDP governments and cancer centres, beginning with the original promise that got yanked away from Kamloops by NDP Premier Mike Harcourt decades ago.

Kamloops isn’t asking to be treated differently; we’re asking to be treated the same, when it comes to cancer care, of all things.

The problem is that the Kamloops cancer centre will be the only one in the province, if not Canada and certainly North America, that is designed as a site with two different locations – the radiation clinic will be in a new building and chemotherapy will be situated across the parking lot in Royal Inland Hospital.

Now we find out we won’t have a PET-CT scanner as part of this new building either — yet again, substandard compared to any modern cancer centre being designed. More people from the Kamloops area go to Kelowna and Vancouver for PET-CT scans than for radiation treatments.

Once the NDP cancer centre project in Kamloops goes ahead, as I mentioned earlier, we will be the only community on the continent with a cancer setup like this, despite the urging of local medical professionals and cancer medical professionals.

These medical professionals – not politicians – say that this is a system and a design that is not workable. It will make it next to impossible for to attract first-rate medical talent – oncologists, nurses, technicians, lab staff. If cancer treatment is your life’s work and you can work anywhere, why would you choose to work not only in a second-rate facility, but in a facility that was actually designed to be second rate?

I pointed out to the minister that there are 15 hospital projects under construction right now in British Columbia. Cumulatively, they’re 16 years behind schedule. Fourteen of the 15 projects are over budget, to the tune of $4.3 billion.

So it seems if you’re a healthcare facility in any other part of this province, it’s okay to go $1.2 billion or $1.3 billion over budget. But if you’re the Kamloops cancer centre, you better be held to the exact dollar figure or you’re not going to be approved.

We’ve been waiting for 30 years for the NDP to keep its promise to Kamloops to deliver a cancer centre. Now they tell us that we will delay the project if we keep insisting on doing it right. Whether that’s true or not, if there is a bit of a delay, I’d rather see our new cancer centre built properly, for the next 40 or 50 years of serviceable life.

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Editor’s Note: This opinion piece reflects the views of its author, and does not necessarily represent the views of CFJC Today or Pattison Media.

by Kamloops Centre MLA Peter Milobar

SOUND OFF: Kamloops isn’t asking to be treated differently on cancer care. We’re asking to be treated the same

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