Candidates answer The Wren’s questions on healthcare

To ensure Kamloops has a voice in the federal election conversation, The Wren surveyed readers to identify their top questions and concerns for candidates in the lead-up to the April 28 election.

The Wren took the most-asked questions on the survey and reached out to all of the candidates. Healthcare was often included as a top issue by survey respondents.

The Wren requested responses from all candidates for the Kamloops-Thompson-Nicola and Kamloops-Shuswap-Central Rockies ridings. As of April 22, candidates Jenna Lindley for the Green Party of Canada, Frank Caputo and Mel Arnold for the Conservative Party of Canada did not respond. We will update the story if responses are provided. To request that additional information be included, send us an email.

These responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Most residents of Kamloops do not have access to a primary care physician, and most virtual doctors refuse to make referrals (i.e. IHCAN, CT scans, allergy testing, etc.) because they are not the patient’s primary care physician. How will your party help alleviate the impacts of a doctor shortage?

Candidates for Kamloops-Thompson-Nicola riding

Iain Currie, LPC: Health is a provincial jurisdiction. We have limited tools at our disposal other than the transfer of payments, which are going to continue, and the increases are going to continue. But there is a reasonable amount of physician recruitment. My wife is the chair of the Interior Health Medical Advisory Committee and we have personally been involved in recruiting doctors.

The federal government doesn’t have the same role as the province in terms of organizing the hospital and organizing the health system to recruit doctors. I think an important part of an MP’s job in this region is to facilitate that process and work closely with those things that we can do to improve this community, explicitly to attract not just doctors, but also all sorts of healthcare issues with health care involving recruitment and retention.

There is also a specific Liberal program that’s been announced to facilitate training and retention of people in one of those key industries which is super important here is healthcare. A mid-career grant of I believe it’s $15,000 is proposed for retention and retraining. I propose to work with for example TRU [Thompson Rivers University] programs. There’s a care aid program at NVIT which I would like to see some consideration to expanding the care aid program into other areas and federal funding can absolutely help with that.

Miguel Godau, NDP: Approximately one third of Kamloops and region residents do not have a primary care physician. Across Canada an estimated 6.5 million Canadians don’t have access to that level of care — and those that do are saying it’s harder and harder to get an appointment. Canada will be short nearly 20,000 doctors by 2031, on top of the existing nursing shortage of about 43,000 today.

Protecting public health in general means having the guts to defend it and coming up with solutions that will ensure that health care is there for you when and where you need it with your health card, not your credit card. The shortage of primary care medical practitioners will be addressed by New Democrats in Ottawa by strengthening the Canada Health Act by increasing federal health transfer payments to the provinces (payments significantly reduced by successive Liberal and Conservative governments). The result of those previous reductions has been the expansion of for-profit health care. Private health care does not meet the needs of British Columbians and has taken many primary care practitioners out of working the public system. [We will also be]working with provinces and territories to recruit, retrain, and retain more doctors and nurses to work across Canada, improving the working conditions for health care professionals, which will both improve patient outcomes and reduce burnout among doctors and nurses and making it easier for primary care practitioners (and all health care workers) to work in Canada by streamlining the licenses of workers from other countries and pan-Canadian licensing to work in Canada.

Chris Enns, People’s Party of Canada (PPC): Our healthcare practitioner shortage derives mainly from provincial licensing bodies’ (‘colleges’) refusal to approve practitioners who were trained in another province or country. This is one of many internal/external trade barriers that the People’s Party have advocated to abolish since we were founded in 2018. The human body is the same regardless of the jurisdiction one is trained in, and almost all medical schools globally follow similar standards now. It is time to remove artificial barriers to practicing healthcare in Canada, and to incentivize quality practitioners to come here.

Candidates for Kamloops-Shuswap-Central Rockies riding

Ken Robertson, LPC: We plan to add thousands of new doctors to Canada’s health care system by working with the provinces, territories and Indigenous Peoples to increase medical school and residency spaces, and build new medical schools and expand residency positions, especially for family medicine.

We’ll also make it easier for internationally trained doctors and health professionals to practice in Canada. We will work with provincial and territorial partners to streamline credential recognition for internationally trained doctors and nurses so that qualified health care professionals already living here can contribute to our health care system.

We will also make it easier to set up clinics in new communities through a new-practice fund to help family doctors with the costs of opening a practice, such as new clinic space and medical equipment and technologies.

Phaedra Idzan, NDP: We need to rebuild a public healthcare system that guarantees care with your health card, not your credit card.

That starts with investing in recruiting and retaining doctors, nurses and allied health professionals. We will work with provinces to streamline the credentialing process for internationally trained professionals and expand training seats here in B.C. and across the Country.

Virtual care is not a substitute for a family doctor. The NDP is committed to funding more community health clinics and stopping the creep of privatized, pay-to-access care.

Owen Madden, GPC: We will reform the Canada Health Transfer to guarantee fair funding for rural and remote healthcare services, ensuring staffing levels, facility funding and service access are equitable across all regions.

We would pass a new Primary Care Health Act to ensure that every Canadian can access a family doctor, nurse practitioner and community-based primary care team.

We would link new federal health transfers to measurable targets, requiring provinces and territories to demonstrate that no one goes without a primary care provider.

John Michael Henry, PPC: The People’s Party of Canada recognizes that Canada’s healthcare system is broken — not because of a lack of funding, but because of a top-heavy bureaucracy and government monopoly that blocks innovation and access. We will end the federal stranglehold on health care by empowering provinces to experiment with private and mixed-delivery systems, while maintaining universal access, cut immigration numbers temporarily to reduce pressure on an already overwhelmed system — so Canadians don’t wait months for basic care, prioritize Canadian-trained and internationally trained doctors and nurses for fast-track licensing — ending the bureaucratic roadblocks that keep qualified professionals on the sidelines and encourage provinces to open community-based clinics and allow more freedom for doctors to operate independently or virtually — with full referral privileges.

You deserve access to real care — not a digital dead end. The PPC will fight to bring efficiency, choice, and dignity back to Canadian health care.