British Columbia’s health-care system remains in crisis due to severe understaffing, while the B.C. government prevents thousands of doctors and nurses from returning to work.

After an infant died at the Surrey Memorial Hospital, 36 medical staff signed a joint public letter denouncing the lack of nursing resources. This same understaffing caused the B.C. government to spend $34 million in tax dollars to send 4,800 B.C. cancer patients across the U.S. border to obtain chemotherapy and radiation in the state of Washington.

More than one in ten B.C. cancer patients cannot receive urgent cancer treatment within 30 days. Emergency rooms in rural communities are closing. Wait times are climbing. An estimated one in five British Columbians (nearly one million people) do not have a family doctor.

Despite serious understaffing, the B.C. government continues to prevent more than 2,000 doctors, nurses, and administrators from returning to work. Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry continues to punish these people for having made a personal medical decision, more than two years ago, not to get injected with the COVID-19 vaccine.