Image Credit: CFJC Today

By Chad Klassen

ELECTION 2020

ELECTION ISSUES: Health Care / Seniors Care

Oct 19, 2020 | 3:25 PM

KAMLOOPS — The B.C. healthcare system is the biggest public expenditure in the province. COVID-19 has emphasized the need for great improvements in the healthcare system — and in particular long-term care.

In the third of our five-part election series, Chad Klassen talks with each party about their plan to improve seniors care in B.C.

The state of our healthcare system has been exposed by COVID-19. Long-term care was hit the hardest early in the pandemic with 176 deaths and 932 cases to date between patients and workers.

The NDP has promised the elimination of multi-bed rooms and building new care homes. The party is also pledging to hire 7,000 more long-term care workers and providing a higher wage.

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“Access to long-term care beds would be making sure we have the facilities to have those beds, ensuring that there is trained staff to take care of our elderly,” said NDP candidate in Kamloops-South Thompson Anna Thomas. “Our elderly are one of our most important community members and we need to make sure they have the best quality care.”

The BC Liberals are putting incentives forward to allow seniors to stay in their own home — a maximum $7,000 per year Seniors’ Home Care Tax Credit. The Liberals also have committed to building more care homes.

“There’s a billion-dollar commitment for a five-year plan to rebuild older, aging units that are multi-bed rooms into more modern, single-bed rooms, so that people can have that single-bed space,” said Liberal candidate in Kamloops-North Thompson Peter Milobar. “It helps greatly with infection control. We’ve seen outbreaks in a lot of multi-bed units around the province when it comes to COVID, but even things like norovirus and others that typically run through, or flu, it’s not a good situation.”

The BC Green Party would focus on shifting away from taxpayer-funded, for-profit facilities. The party feels it’s led to an erosion of seniors care. The Greens say the province is ill-prepared for an ever-aging population.

“We’re not ready. That’s basically it. There’s been some preparation, but overall we’re not ready,” said Green candidate in Kamloops-South Thompson Dan Hines. “One of the things as Greens we’re proposing is have a much more robust public system for long-term care. We look at some of the private care that’s being provided, and the pandemic again has shone a big spotlight onto the failures of providing private, for-profit long-term care. It’s become very problematic.”

BC Conservative candidate in Kamloops-North Thompson Dennis Giesbrecht is concerned about caregivers, as one example, working at multiple sites during the pandemic.

“We need to be able to keep people employed on a full-time basis in a single location,” he said. “That would limit the spread of this virus and the seasonal flu virus as well, so it would make it easier for everybody.”

Independent candidate in the Kamloops-North Thompson riding Brandon Russell promises to work on affordable care for seniors.

“A lot of these seniors cannot afford these services, so they’re at an elevated risk because they’re having to make the difficult choice of, ‘Do I live where I’ve always known, where I might be unsafe, or do I go to these assisted facilities where I know I’ll get good care and I’ll be safe, but at what cost does that come at?'”