Hansard — Monday, March 2, 2026 Morning, Issue No. 128

Abbotsford Traditional School grade 8 boys basketball just won the provincial championship. It gets even better, because this is the first time that the grade 8 boys have won. It’s also the first time that this school has won a championship in anything.

A special shout-out has to go to Charlie Nyvall, who is the MVP; and Jayden Duhra, who’s the first team all-star.

So a round of applause, and may this House make these guys celebrate their championship. You only get to be first once, you only get to be first in your school once, and they will go down in history forever. Congratulations to them.

[10:05 a.m.]

Orders of the Day

Private Members’ Statements

Health Care Services for Seniors

Lorne Doerkson: I’m always proud to bring greetings to this chamber from Cariboo-Chilcotin.

[Mable Elmore in the chair.]

I’m happy to share some thoughts this morning on long-term care in the province. The challenges, of course, for long-term care…. Many residents have become significantly worse because of recent budget decisions, and I’m going to get to that in a moment. I do want to explain that there are more challenges than just shortages of spaces for our parents and grandparents to move to.

Many times our parents are asked to move hours away, not just because a riding might be big like Cariboo-Chilcotin but because there is no availability of space. They may end up hours from their family, which is devastating.

Part of the crisis in long-term care actually happens upstream of long-term care. What I mean by that is that it’s the broader health care system itself. Many of our residents are having very serious challenges accessing primary care. Very often the 100 Mile Hospital, for instance, is closed. We have had closures throughout the province. That’s no surprise to anyone. But care itself can sometimes be very, very far away. That comes with not only frustration and anger, but it comes with huge cost to people that are having to traverse this system.

Home support has become unreliable. It’s not that the support isn’t great when it’s there, but it has become unreliable. I’ll explain that a little bit further as well. The system is failing very many of our seniors. Our seniors in hospitals right now…. Some of them are being told to return home. They’re being told that they haven’t used all of the resources at their fingertips. The problem is that in many cases, they have. They’ve booked that information. They’ve booked home care, and then it doesn’t show up. That’s a very serious issue.

I hear regularly from families that are trying to support their loved ones and their parents, and the reality is they’re exhausted. They are absolutely overwhelmed trying to navigate a system that is, frankly, not working very well in very many cases. Many of our seniors want nothing more than to stay at home, but with new rules to property tax deferral and other things, it has become more challenging.

The reality is that when reliable support is not available at home, staying there actually becomes unsafe. I have a couple of examples.

Judy Launchbury. I’ve spoken about Judy in this room before. Judy fell in her driveway. This is absolutely someone that wants to live in her home and is trying. I also know her situation is pretty serious when it comes to her finances as well. Last year she fell in her driveway. She waited for hours for an ambulance that never did come. Her neighbours covered her with a tarp to protect her from a rainstorm. They ultimately ended up driving her to the hospital because the ambulance didn’t come.

We’ve been advocating for the last number of weeks — months, in fact — for support for a woman who was sent home because she wasn’t able to stay in the hospital anymore, and it was suggested that she wasn’t using all the resources. Despite repeated efforts to get her support at home, that has absolutely not been consistent. It has created an issue where she’s had to move in and secure lodging in town because she cannot — cannot — stay at home.

Imagine being told that your parents are being shipped four or five hours away from your current home. And that is happening all the time. That is happening all the time. No more dropping by at lunchtime, no more support from the family, because it’s simply too far away.

I don’t think anybody would argue this. My mom has paid her debt to British Columbia. I think we would all think that of our parents in this room. The reality is that she owes us nothing. It’s backwards.

We are putting so much pressure on our seniors, and it is sad to see what is happening, because this could be addressed immediately.

[10:10 a.m.]

Search and Rescue Memorial Day

Darlene Rotchford: I’d like to begin by acknowledging that we’re gathered on the traditional and unceded territories of the lək̓ʷəŋən-speaking People, known as the Songhees and xʷsepsəm First Nations.

Today, March 2, marks Search and Rescue Memorial Day here in British Columbia. It is a day that’s set aside to honour the extraordinary volunteers who dedicate their lives, and in some cases have given them, and to other services. It is also a day to reflect on the quiet, steadfast courage that exists in communities right here across our province, whether you’re in an urban setting here on south Vancouver Island or to our more rural settings in the North.

British Columbia’s landscape is breathtaking, from rugged coastlines and dense forests to vast mountain ranges and remote wilderness. These natural wonders draw people from across Canada and around the world, but they also present significant risk. When the unexpected happens, when someone is lost, injured, stranded or in distress, search and rescue volunteers are the ones who answer the call.

Our province is fortunate to be served by some of the most highly trained and dedicated volunteers anywhere in the world. Through the work of the British Columbia Search and Rescue Association, Royal Canadian Marine Search and Rescue and Provincial Emergency Program Air, thousands of lives have been saved. These organizations coordinate ground search teams, swiftwater rescue crews, rope rescue specialists, marine units and volunteer pilots who take to the skies when every moment counts.

Search and rescue volunteers are on call 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. They leave family dinners, workplaces, warm beds and important life moments when their pagers sound. They respond in the middle of the night, in severe weather and the most challenging, terrible terrain. They do so not for the recognition or reward but because they believe deeply in helping others.

In my constituency of Esquimalt-Colwood, we understand the importance of this work. Surrounded by oceans, trails and rugged coastline, our communities rely on marine and ground search and rescue teams, who train tirelessly to be ready at a moment’s notice. Whether responding to boaters in distress, to hikers who have lost their way or to individuals facing medical emergencies in remote areas, these volunteers embody the very best of our public services.

While much of their work happens out of sight, the impact is profound. For a family waiting anxiously for news, search and rescue teams represent hope. For someone injured on a mountainside or stranded at sea, they represent survival. Their presence brings calm to chaos and light to moments of fear.

However, today is a solemn day. Since 1967, 70 search and rescue volunteers in B.C. have lost their lives on duty. These individuals stepped forward to help others and, unfortunately, paid the ultimate sacrifice. Their loss is felt deeply by their families, their teammates and the communities they serve.

On March 2, 2017, the Search and Rescue Volunteer Memorial was unveiled, to honour those who have made the ultimate sacrifice and to recognize the enduring service of volunteers across our province. The memorial commemorates members of the British Columbia Search and Rescue Association, Royal Canadian Marine Search and Rescue and Provincial Emergency Program Air. Each organization is represented, acknowledging the risk undertaken and the dedication demonstrated by past and present volunteers alike.

The memorial stands on the ground of the legislative precinct, along a pathway dedicated to honouring B.C.’s fallen first responders. It’s a place of reflection and a reminder that behind every rescue are individuals who are trained and prepared and who sometimes put themselves in harm’s way for complete strangers.

Search and rescue volunteers exemplify courage, teamwork and selflessness. They commit hundreds of hours to rigorous training, maintain equipment, coordinate with local authorities and constantly sharpen their skills, all while balancing careers, families and personal responsibilities. Their service strengthens the resilience of our province.

On this Search and Rescue Memorial Day, I ask all members of the House and all British Columbians to pause and to reflect, not only on the lives that were tragically lost but also on the thousands of lives that have been saved. Let us honour the families who support these volunteers, knowing that when the call comes, their loved ones will answer, and let us recommit ourselves to ensuring these organizations continue to receive the recognition and support they deserve.

To every search and rescue volunteer across British Columbia, thank you. Your courage does not go unnoticed, your service does not go unappreciated, and your sacrifices will never be forgotten.

I hope everyone in the House joins us today as we commemorate it at noon out in the backyard of the Legislature.

[10:15 a.m.]

Debt-Servicing Costs and
Budget Allocation for
Long-Term-Care Facilities

Bruce Banman: Today I want to talk about something that affects us all: the care of our seniors, the stewardship of our public finances and the real human impact when those two priorities are forced to conflict.

Right now British Columbia is carrying a significant public debt. Servicing that debt, paying interest on what we owe each year, takes $9 billion out of our provincial budget. Every dollar spent on interest is a dollar that cannot be spent on essential services like health care, infrastructure, schools, affordable housing and, yes, the long-term-care homes that our aging population urgently needs.

As the member for Fraser-Nicola said, health care and education are facing the brunt of this budget and mismanagement. As interest payments rise with this growing debt, capital spending on public infrastructure is being re-scoped or delayed. That’s not an abstract budget line. Real projects for real people are being pushed back because the government is trying to balance essential services with long-term financial sustainability.

The percentage on the debt is now the third-highest expenditure in this budget. One of the most concerning examples of this is the decision in the 2026 B.C. budget to delay or re-pace seven approved long-term-care facility projects across the province. These facilities were meant to address undercapacity in long-term care.

In Abbotsford, a new facility designed to provide 200 long-term-care beds, replacing aging infrastructure and expanding capacity, is now delayed, with no completion date listed. In Campbell River, a planned long-term-care facility with 153 beds, including hospice and convalescent spaces, has been postponed indefinitely.

In Chilliwack, a five-storey facility that would have replaced older beds and added 200 new rooms is on hold. In Delta, plans for a 200-bed long-term-care home, intended to modernize and increase capacity, are delayed.

In Fort St. John, an expansion of Peace Villa that would have brought 84 new beds is likewise paused, with no timeline for completion. Kelowna and Squamish long-term-care projects are also in limbo under new capital plans, meaning hundreds more beds in those communities are deferred.

Those are potentially over 1,200 long-term-care beds and counting, and rising, now delayed at a time when B.C.’s population of seniors is growing rapidly. Demand for care is now outstripping supply.

Think about what that means for families. Seniors are spending months in overcrowded hospitals because there’s no long-term-care bed to move into. Family members are leaving the workforce or taking on unpaid caregiving roles because there’s nowhere else for their loved ones to go. Emergency departments are clogged with patients who no longer need acute care but cannot be discharged safely because long-term-care options are not available.

Our hospitals are filled with acute beds with seniors who should be in long-term-care facilities. It’s not just about construction timelines; it’s about quality of life. It’s about dignity and planning for the future of this province.

What’s driving these delays? One of the central pressures is the cost of servicing B.C.’s rising debt. As interest rate costs increase, the government is forced to make tough choices about how to allocate limited capital dollars. Interest payments create a competing demand on the budget, which in turn squeezes spending on infrastructure projects that we urgently need. That’s what we meant when we said our debt isn’t just numbers on a page; it’s human consequences. Humans are facing the brunt of this budget.

We can and we must have robust, financially sustainable public services, but sustainability doesn’t mean kicking a can down the road on essential services, on essential health care infrastructure. It means finding ways to manage debt wisely and to prioritize long-term-care expansions now so that we don’t have to pay even greater social and economic costs later.

In closing, remember this. Our seniors helped build this province. They deserve more than to wait, in hospitals, living rooms and under tarps, for the care that was promised. They deserve beds, dignity and a system that plans ahead. By addressing how we manage debt and fund our care home construction now, we can ensure that every British Columbian has a place in our future with respect, compassion and security. Health care is facing the brunt of this budgetary fiasco.

[10:20 a.m.]

Conduct of MLAs
and Decorum in House

Steve Morissette: I rise today to speak about decorum in this House.

I’m incredibly thankful and deeply honoured to have been chosen by the people of Kootenay-Monashee to represent them, just as I know every member here feels honoured to represent the people who placed their trust in them.

Over the past 16 months, as a rookie, like many of us in this role, I have listened, I have learned, and I have participated, both in this House and on multiple committees. In that time, I have come to appreciate the dedication and hard work of members from all sides. I am happy to say that in my short experience, nearly all MLAs conduct themselves respectfully outside of this chamber.

I have had wonderful experience with opposition members on the Finance Committee, as well as on the Lobbyists Transparency Act Review Committee. This happens nearly all the time, except during question period.

Let me be clear. I respect hard questions. I respect the right, indeed the responsibility, of the opposition to ask those hard questions. Accountability is essential in a democracy. I equally respect the right and responsibility of government to answer those questions, to defend its decisions and to explain its policies. That is not the issue. The issue is how we conduct ourselves while doing so.

I do not believe it is naive to expect better from all of us. We can disagree on policy respectfully. We can debate respectfully. We can question and answer respectfully. Passion and respect are not mutually exclusive. Conviction does not require contempt.

Before coming here, I spent ten years in local government. In that time, I never once participated in or witnessed the level of disrespect that we sometimes see in this chamber. Disagreements? Of course. Strong opinions? Absolutely. But not the jeering, the shouting, the dismissiveness that can too often define our most visible proceedings in this chamber.

We can do better. In my time speaking with people from all walks of life, people of all political stripes, I know this. It is what they want. They expect spirited debate. They expect accountability. But they also expect maturity. They expect leadership. They expect us to model the behaviour we would like to see in our communities.

I understand that question period is, in many ways, performative. It is theatre as well as scrutiny.

I do not underestimate how challenging it is for you, hon. Speaker, to maintain order and decorum in a moment designed for intensity.

But I ask this. Does anyone else feel a sense of embarrassment when we have guests in the gallery? When classrooms full of students sit above us watching closely? When young people, future leaders, observe the behaviour we are modelling as provincial leaders?

What are we teaching them? Are we showing them that disagreement requires disrespect? That volume equals strength? That wit must come at the expense of civility? Or could we show them something better? I know we can do better.

I know this is a long-seated culture, but culture can also change, one person at a time. It changes when each of us decides that we will do our part; when we will choose not to rise to a taunt; when we ask and answer questions firmly, fairly and directly without a taunt; when we remember that the people who sent us here are watching, not for our cleverest line but for our character.

Decorum is not about dulling debate; it’s about elevating it. It’s not about silencing opposition; it is about strengthening democracy. It is not about removing passion; it is about anchoring that passion in respect.

Every one of us was sent here because our constituents believed we would represent them with integrity. I don’t believe they sent us here to perform outrage. They sent us here to do serious work on their behalf. We owe it to them and to this institution to conduct ourselves accordingly. We can do better.

It begins not with a rule changed, not with a standing order….

[10:25 a.m.]

Deputy Speaker: Thank you, Member.

Seniors Care Needs and
Wait-Lists for Long-Term Care

Linda Hepner: I want to talk about one of my constituents. I want you to imagine this. She’s a grandmother. She has spent her whole life building our community in Surrey, raising her family here, contributing to society. She now finds herself in her twilight years, frail and in need of care.

Her son has moved to Alberta looking for work. Her daughter has been doing her very best, but she admits to me that the level of care needed and the around-the-clock requirement are just not possible. Instead of a safe, dignified place in a long-term-care home, her mom is stuck on a wait-list, her health deteriorating by the day.

I wish this were a hypothetical story, but it is the harsh reality of thousands right here in B.C. I can’t offer this resident or her daughter any immediate relief. This crisis is alarming and has been brewing for years, and it is happening at a time when the demand is skyrocketing.

My message to my constituent and her mom has not been a positive one. Frankly, in all my years in public service, I don’t like that. I don’t like delivering that kind of a message. The number of people waiting for publicly funded long-term care has tripled since 2016, ballooning from around 2,400 to now over 7,400 seniors. That is a lot of seniors suffering unnecessary hardship because no plan has been developed.

Our seniors advocate has called this a full-blown crisis, and certainly, the data backs that up. Projections show that we will need an additional 16,000 beds over the next decade to keep pace with demand.

The absence of a plan is not merely a gap. For my constituent, who has contributed, who has volunteered, who has paid decades of taxes, it is not a gap. It is a chasm at exactly the time that she reaches out, and she needs help.

Why is this happening? It should be of no surprise that our population is aging rapidly. The boomers are not a surprise generation. B.C. seniors, 65 and older — count me in — are projected to grow by 26 percent in this next decade.

What will happen when there’s no long-term bed for my resident? I think it’s devastating and far-reaching. She will possibly end up in a hospital, occupying acute care beds that should be for emergencies. We have all heard the reports of patients literally lining the hallways that should be left there, turning our hospitals instead into makeshift warehouses for the elderly.

Who is currently bearing the brunt of her mom’s care? The daughter, who is juggling her own family, stretched to a breaking point. Her mom has early-stage dementia that exacerbates the stressors. This whole scenario is a human tragedy. Those who built this province deserve better than to be forgotten now.

As this case and others come to us…. On both sides of the House, I know we have people who are waiting for care — both sides of the House. We need to have better answers than “wait.” That’s not an answer; that’s a failure.

Human Rights

George Anderson: There are moments in this House when the question before us is not about policy, process or politics. In those moments, the question is: who are we, and what kind of province will we choose to be?

[10:30 a.m.]

Over the past few days, British Columbians have been watching to find out where we stand. When human rights become the subject of debate, even indirectly, the question before us is not technical. It is this: are there some things in British Columbia that must stand above politics? I believe human rights and dignity must always stand above politics.

In 1969, British Columbia’s human rights code was introduced during a time when exclusion was routine — when a sign could say, “No Blacks,” when women were told certain doors would never open, when a person was refused housing because of who they loved, when a disability meant isolation instead of opportunity. The human rights code was our collective promise that dignity should not depend on power, status or background. It was, and forever will be, a promise that must be fulfilled.

The promise matters because discrimination rarely announces itself loudly. Discrimination often happens quietly — a rental application ignored because of a surname, a workplace that becomes hostile after a religious accommodation is requested. For British Columbians, the human rights code is the difference between being dismissed and being heard.

For British Columbians of South Asian descent, that protection matters, as we will remember from the Komagata Maru. For members of the Jewish community, the human rights code matters at a time when antisemitism is rising globally. The code matters when hateful speech or symbols create a hostile environment. The code makes it clear that religious identity must never be a reason for exclusion, intimidation or unequal treatment.

From my previous work with the Canadian Bar Association’s access to justice committee, I know that if people cannot realistically enforce their rights, those rights only exist on paper. However, human rights are not only about legal protections. Human rights are the freedoms that generations of veterans fought for overseas and here at home. Our veterans served for a Canada where people could live with dignity, free of discrimination and fear. By protecting human rights, we honour their service.

Around the world today, we see what happens when human rights become political — protections questioned, institutions weakened, communities singled out because division appears easier than leadership. We see this polarization unfolding in the United States.

History teaches us something important and something that those in labour know well: rights are rarely lost all at once. They are narrowed a little at a time and questioned a little at a time. That is why, in moments like this that involve human rights, we must be unshaken in our spirit and resolve. Human rights are the common ground that allows a diverse community to live together even when we disagree.

Tonight, somewhere in British Columbia, a parent will tuck their child into bed, and that child will ask: “Will I be safe? Will I be treated fairly?” That question is not political. It is human, and every parent across British Columbia wants to answer that question with confidence. Our human rights code is the answer. It says: “Yes, you belong here, and if you are treated unfairly, your province will stand with you.”

The arc of the moral universe is strong, but it bends towards justice. It bends because people choose principle over convenience, because they choose courage over silence, because when these moments of injustice occur, they stand firm to protect justice. That moment comes for every generation, and this is ours. In time, the debates of our Legislature will be forgotten, but the choices we make about human dignity will remain.

The question history will ask is: when British Columbians felt vulnerable and needed their government to stand with them, did we as legislators make their world smaller, or did we make it safer? In British Columbia, our answer must always remain unshaken in our commitment to human rights and dignity. In British Columbia, dignity is not partisan. Dignity is part of who we are, and the human rights of all British Columbians are not negotiable, now or ever.

[10:35 a.m.]

Second Reading of Bills

Bill M231 — Veterans and
First Responders Month Act
(continued)

Deputy Speaker: Hon. Members, according to the order paper, the House will continue second reading of Bill M231, Veterans and First Responders Month Act, recognizing members to participate in the debate.

Lorne Doerkson: As always, it’s an extreme honour to bring greetings to you from Cariboo-Chilcotin and this morning to rise and speak in favour of M231, the Veterans and First Responders Month Act. I can’t think of a bill that would more strongly conjure up the support of all of us, and I certainly hope that it will.

Certainly, in light of the tragic events that we witnessed in Tumbler Ridge, we have once again been reminded of our heroes in this province — first responders, like RCMP members that drew fire away from educators, drew fire away from students and saved lives, ultimately. All of the front-line responders that have responded to that tragedy are amazing, and their bravery is extraordinary, to say the least.

We constantly see our firefighters in this province running towards danger while many of us are running away, whether they’re responding to structure fires or devastating wildfires, which I have seen with my own eyes. It is shocking, their courage.

Recently the Williams Lake fire department spent the evening on top of Canadian Tire in very frigid temperatures. They’re volunteer firefighters, and they spent their time there raising money for multiple sclerosis. I’m pleased to say they raised $15,000.

Each year I have the opportunity to join with the boys and girls club in a water fight that usually ends up against the RCMP. But search and rescue, the fire department, B.C. Ambulance — they are all there for this cause. The RCMP do take a fairly good soaking, but it’s moments like this that remind us, certainly remind me, that these are not just uniforms. These are our mentors. They’re community leaders. They’re neighbours. They’re coaches.

B.C. Ambulance paramedics and our nurses are absolutely overwhelmed. Their jobs are unbelievably challenging, but they show up, day in and day out, to protect us from harm. They carry enormous stress with them in carrying out their duties.

I wanted to mention the staff in this building, the staff that protect us every single day. We’re surrounded by greatness. Many of them are decorated. Many are recipients of prestigious honours, and I am proud to work with this group of men and women who support us daily in this chamber and protect us on this precinct. They are an amazing group of people.

Two weeks ago I had the opportunity to have lunch with a friend of mine. During our conversation, he mentioned the fact that he had to go for an operation to remove a piece of metal from his arm. While he continued to explain that, I was curious about the metal. He said it had been in his arm for a long time and that it had moved inside his arm and had to come out. He mentioned that it had gone in, originally, hot and that it didn’t cause any infection at the time.

I couldn’t understand what that could have been. While he continued to explain, it dawned on me that maybe this was a bullet. As I asked him, he got quite emotional. He was shot three times.

He explained to me that he held no ill will against the people that were shooting at him, and the reason he had no ill will was because he was shooting at them. He was a pilot in an airplane that was shot, I think, around 20 times in that exchange, and three bullets directly hit his body. One of them stayed in his arm.

[10:40 a.m.]

The stress, the emotion that he showed at that moment, after recalling those moments that were five or six decades ago, was shocking to me — the burden that this man has carried his entire life.

We, of course, recognize our legions every single year. We take the opportunity to remember. Cariboo-Chilcotin has unbelievable legions in Williams Lake, Clinton, Forest Grove, 100 Mile and Ashcroft, and we support them in an amazing way. This act will give us an opportunity to spend another month not only remembering but also educating on this topic.

This bill really matters. It matters to the RCMP officers who shield children and educators from danger. It matters to the firefighter that’s on top of a roof in sub-zero temperatures, raising money. It matters to the nurses and our paramedics, firefighters, everyone on this front line.

I’m proud to support this bill. I’m proud of the member for Prince George–Valemount for bringing it forward, and I hope that we can all agree to support this bill today.

Garry Begg: Thank you to the member for Prince George–Valemount for the thoughtfulness of this bill.

I think it’s important, as we recognize this group of individuals, that we understand that we’re talking, for the purposes of her bill, about first responders; police officers; firefighters; paramedics; search and rescue personnel; emergency dispatchers; and, at the end, all other emergency service workers.

I’m thinking today, as I stand here, of Tumbler Ridge short weeks ago — the humanity, the courage of those first responders who put their lives in front of others to protect children. There can be no better example in this province, in this time and this place, for those people.

There is a need. I acknowledge the same need that the member acknowledges for honouring these people in a very special way. I spent the majority of my life in emergency services, so I know what it feels like to be that person, that individual, only that person who stands in the way of harm to protect others.

I don’t accept nor do I acknowledge that that makes me any different. But I do accept and I do commend the member for pointing out those people who, every day, make that a fact of life.

I’m reminded of my young life, growing up in Ontario. One of the big things in the community was Remembrance Day, where veterans, many of whom had participated in the war and were struggling from age…. They were representing, to me, what was the best of our country, which is veterans who dedicated their lives, who went overseas and, in many cases, suffered tragic impacts on their body. Now, years later, we’re lining up in the cold and the rain to honour those people who, before them, lost their lives in the service of our country.

They were always the people, those veteran members, who were manning a poppy booth. They had many other things to do with their lives. They had already dedicated their lives, but they wanted us — me — to remember the sacrifice that they had made. That, too, is commendable.

As we talk about Tumbler Ridge, I’m reminded of the great forest fire in Salmon Arm about ten years ago. The heroes there were community members. The heroes there were community members who manned booths, helping people find places to live as a forest fire raged in that community.

[10:45 a.m.]

That is heroism. That is stepping up when the time is great and you need some friend who will offer something for you.

The group, in my view, who is largely ignored and, by virtue of this bill, perhaps, will be recognized is our search and rescue people throughout British Columbia.

British Columbia has tremendous terrain, and we all like to take advantage of it. Many of us do not think of the danger that we place ourselves and others in sometimes.

To the member opposite, my commendation for pointing that out.

The people who work in search and rescue here in this province are some of the finest people in the province. One of the things that they have going for us, amongst many, is that they, too, value the outdoors. They have traversed many of the areas that now are danger areas because of geographic change. They’re the people that I want coming for me when I’m trapped on a mountaintop, because I know that they know what they can do in their jobs.

The B.C. health services, EHS. We don’t often think of them as volunteers, but in many cases, in their real lives, they do what they do in their professional lives in the community. They’re first-aid instructors. They’re people that show up when things are difficult.

I wish to mention, as well, the B.C. wildfire firefighters. This province is replete now every year with dangers in communities. If you’re in northern B.C. and have to evacuate, where do you go? Who arranges where you go? In B.C., we have the B.C. Red Cross, who have a catalogue for every city in the province. They are people who go in — they’re not paid; they’re volunteers for the Red Cross — and they match up people with homes. That’s important. That’s a vital community need.

The other thing that I think it’s important we acknowledge is that as part of our government, we are providing those people who respond to those calls for service with human needs. It hurts sometimes to deal with people who are hurting.

We have throughout the province now a series of workshops, a series of training that concentrates on our first responders, whether they’re paid or whether they’re free. We offer services to them so that they can cope in their daily lives with the calls that they’ve attended to.

To the member for Prince George–Valemount: thank you for this thoughtfulness in presenting this bill. It’s an important bill, and I support it entirely.

Linda Hepner: I stand today thankful for the opportunity to speak on a matter close to my heart and, I believe, close to the hearts of most British Columbians: the Veterans and First Responders Month Act, which extends its embrace to include all public safety agencies.

I expect there is not one of us who has not had either the help of or knows of a person serving in police, fire, ambulance, paramedic, search and rescue or the Armed Forces.

In light of the Tumbler Ridge events, the tragic events that we have spoken of often in the House these last couple of bad weeks, it is both poignant and relevant today to talk about this bill. It’s not just about honouring the past. It’s about affirming our values as a society that cherishes those who stand today on the front lines to protect us.

I am the daughter of a World War II veteran, and I reflect on those brave men and women from the forces who have served in conflicts and continue to serve in peacekeeping missions all over the world. In today’s uncertain times, that has become even more particularly relevant just over this past weekend.

[10:50 a.m.]

My own dad served overseas and was recognized as one of Canada’s best sharpshooters. I spent the summers of my youth patching targets for the cadets that Dad was mentoring and doing volunteer work in his continued service, which so many of those in public safety agencies continue to do even after their formal service has concluded.

A dedicated month of recognition allows us the kind of time frame for communities to host events, share stories and ensure these everyday heroes feel seen and certainly know how much they’re valued.

I think this day meets the moment to recognize the police officers who patrol our streets every day, facing uncertainty with unwavering resolve; the firefighters who rush into infernos to save lives and property, often at untold personal risk; the paramedics, emergency personnel and technicians who arrive in moments of crisis, providing life-saving care under immense pressure; and search and rescue teams helping us in the most dire of circumstances but with the sole goal of assisting us out of a terrifying incident.

What greater calling can there be than to be at someone’s side in a time of great need? “Thank you” doesn’t seem like it’s enough. But an entire month of recognizing and honouring them — it’s a small measure of the respect that we hold.

These individuals are the unsung guardians of our communities. They have responded to wildfires that have ravaged our landscapes, floods that have tested our resilience, and everyday emergencies that could strike any one of us.

To me, it’s important to say this is not about diluting the enormous honour that we pay on Remembrance Day to military veterans. This is complementary to that honoured day. This is really about expanding a circle of recognition that reflects the full spectrum of agencies and sacrifice.

This is about allowing for a full month of reflection, deeper engagement, workshops on mental health supports, fundraising for first-responder charities, and policy discussions, right here in this Legislature, to improve the benefits and the resources available to these agencies. It’s a proactive step toward addressing issues like PTSD, which affects 20 percent of our public service personnel, ensuring they have the support they need.

Supporting this bill is a non-partisan imperative. It’s a chance to lead by example, showing the public that British Columbians value service above all. Let’s support this bill, not as a mere formality but instead as a heartfelt commitment.

George Anderson: I’d first like to start by thanking the member for Prince George–Valemount for bringing forward this bill, which recognizes individuals who serve a cause that is larger than their own.

Imagine walking into some of the experiences that our first responders have had to — whether it’s war, fire, moments where there is no safety at all. We thank them, and I’m glad to see the collaboration and moments of bipartisanship in this House.

[10:55 a.m.]

When I think of my local community in Nanaimo, I think of Harewood Legion Branch 10, Seaview-Lantzville Legion 257, Mount Benson Legion 256, Nanaimo Professional Firefighters Local 905, the Lantzville fire department, the Nanaimo RCMP and our search and rescue.

These individuals serve with no thought of recognition or of wanting to be recognized. They serve because they believe in the purpose of doing something and serving people in a much larger capacity, one that brings knowledge and also creates a platform in which young people look to these individuals as role models, the best of what British Columbia ought to be. So looking at moving forward with the Veterans and First Responders Month Act is a good step forward.

This past Friday I attended Wounded Warriors, and what I saw amongst those individuals was a pride of place — a pride in our cities, a pride in our province and a pride in our country, one that says we must always serve. How do we end up getting to a place that is better for everyone unless we are looking at serving causes that are greater than ourselves?

At the end of the day, we look at this as just one month, but I hope that all of us in this House will remember that the honour and respect for veterans and first responders must not just end in a month, that we ought to respect and lift them up every single day. It is the responsibility of every British Columbian and every Canadian to remember the work and the sacrifice that they do for our communities.

With that, I thank the member for bringing forward this important bill, and I hope that all members will work towards ensuring its successful passage later today.

Deputy Speaker: We’ve got two minutes remaining if there’s another speaker who would like to be recognized.

Bryan Tepper: I invite all members to support Bill M231, which proclaims veterans and first responders month, a recognition that is long overdue.

This holds special significance; 2026 marks the 100th anniversary of the Royal Canadian Legion. For a century, the legion has provided essential services to veterans, their families and communities across Canada. To celebrate this milestone, the legion is offering free memberships throughout 2026. They’re also introducing special limited-edition commemorative coins, merchandise, branding and member contests, including the chance for members to win one of three trucks.

The legion has always held a special place in my heart. I remember my grandparents, aunts and uncles gathering in a small Saskatchewan town as proud legion members. Back then, membership required a direct family connection to a veteran. My grandfather qualified because he had served, having joined the military in 1918.

Every November 11, we come together to remember, and every year it is the legion that organizes those solemn Remembrance Day events. Today the Royal Canadian Legion has opened its doors to all Canadians, welcoming everyone to join. Once again this year, in honour of its centennial, they are extending free membership to the broader community.

I will end there.

Deputy Speaker: Now the member for Prince George–Valemount closes debate.

Rosalyn Bird: I appreciate the opportunity to rise and close debate on Bill M231, Veterans and First Responders Month Act. I want to begin by thanking all the members who have spoken so beautifully to this bill with such respect and admiration. Whatever our political differences are in this chamber, I believe there is a common ground on this principle that service to community and country deserves recognition.

This legislation is intentionally simple. It does not create a program. It does not establish a new office. It does not impose a financial burden on taxpayers. It does one thing. It designates the month of November as veterans and first responders month here in British Columbia. And sometimes clarity of purpose is a strength.

November already calls us to remember. We gather in communities large and small to honour those who choose to wear the uniform of our country. We teach the next generation about sacrifice. We pause in silence. This bill broadens that moment not to diminish Remembrance Day but to strengthen the spirit behind it.

[11:00 a.m.]

It acknowledges that veterans continue to contribute long after their formal service ends. They build businesses, they raise families, they volunteer, and they lead. They carry forward a culture of discipline, responsibility and commitment that strengthens this province every day.

It also acknowledges the men and women who serve on the front lines here at home. Across British Columbia, and especially in rural and northern communities, first responders carry extraordinary responsibilities. They respond to emergencies in remote terrain, in severe weather and high-risk environments, often with very limited backup. They are asked to absorb crises after crises with professionalism and composure.

As we have seen in recent weeks with the tragic events in Tumbler Ridge, their work can place them in profoundly difficult and distressing circumstances. Behind every uniform is a human being, someone with a family, someone who carries the weight of what they witness, someone who steps forward when others step back.

Today as this debate concludes, participants in the Wounded Warrior Run on Vancouver Island have also reached the end of their journey. Over eight days, they ran over 800 kilometres across communities on this island. They raised awareness and funds for mental health supports for veterans and first responders. I’m pleased to say that this year Wounded Warrior runners represented police, ambulance attendants, search and rescue, fire, 911 dispatchers and, of course, veterans serving and have served.

Their example underscores why formal recognition matters. Honouring service must also mean acknowledging sacrifice, including the invisible burdens that so often accompany it. This bill does not claim to solve the challenges they face. It does not suggest that recognition alone is enough, but recognition does matter.

Public institutions shape what we value. When this Legislature formally designates a month of recognition, it sends a signal to veterans, to first responders, to their families and to young people watching that service is not taken for granted.

In northern British Columbia, we understand this deeply. In Prince George and surrounding communities across the region, the line between neighbour and first responder is often very thin. Volunteer firefighters, search and rescue members and emergency personnel are the people we see every day at grocery stores, at the arena and at school events. Their service is woven directly into daily life.

At a time when many institutions face skepticism, affirming respect for those who safeguard our freedoms and our safety every day is both timely and appropriate. It reminds us that, despite disagreement in this House, there are shared foundations that hold us together: service, duty, sacrifice and community. Those principles are not partisan. This bill offers the Legislature an opportunity to stand united in recognizing them.

I ask all members of this assembly to support Bill M231, Veterans and First Responders Month Act, and to send a clear and respectful message to those who serve, that their contribution is seen, valued and remembered.

Deputy Speaker: Members, the question is second reading, Bill M231, Veterans and First Responders Month Act.

Motion approved.

Deputy Speaker: Pursuant to Standing Order 84A(1), the bill stands committed to the Select Standing Committee on Private Bills and Private Members’ Bills.

Hon. Members, according to the order paper, we will look to the member for Courtenay-Comox to move second reading of Bill M232, Long Term Care Access and Transparency Act.

Bill M232 — Long Term Care Access
and Transparency Act

Brennan Day: I stand today humbled to introduce Bill M232, the Long Term Care Access and Transparency Act.

Budgets tell you what government says it values, but data tell you what government is actually doing.

Deputy Speaker: Member, can you first move second reading?

[11:05 a.m.]

Brennan Day: I move second reading for the Bill M232.

Budgets tell you what government says it values, but data tells you what government is actually doing. Right now, when it comes to long-term care in British Columbia, the most alarming thing is not simply the wait-lists. It is the silence. Families do not know how long they will wait. Hospitals do not know when beds will free up.

The Legislature does not receive consistent, comparable monthly reporting on the true scope of the long-term-care crisis. What we receive instead are occasional snapshots, press releases, fragmented reports and numbers buried in appendices. That is not transparency. That is diffusion. That is what this bill addresses, because you cannot fix what you refuse to measure.

I want to be very clear about what I expect to hear from the other side after I sit down. We will hear that this creates an undue administrative burden. We will hear that health authorities lack the capacity. We will hear that staff are already too stretched in this province to compile and publish this information monthly. So let’s deal with that right off the top, head-on.

This is the largest health care bureaucracy in British Columbian history. Nearly 10 percent of the costs at Island Health and Fraser Health are now taken up by administration, 21 percent at the Provincial Health Services Authority.

Every single hospital in this province holds bed flow meetings Monday to Friday, every week. Managers track occupancy daily. Executives review patient flow metrics weekly. Health authorities have entire divisions devoted to analytics and reporting. We have layers of vice-presidents across multiple health authorities. In fact, we have more vice-presidents in the health authorities in this province than the entire country of Germany. We have layers and layers of administration, and that administrative growth has significantly outpaced growth in front-line capacity over the past decade, nearly double.

This government has tacitly acknowledged this fact over the past year. This past budget showed us, in no unclear terms, the sheer scope of this blow. We are supposed to believe that this system cannot compile and publish numbers it already reviews internally. We are supposed to believe that the machinery capable of producing glossy budget backgrounders, health authority annual reports that stretch for hundreds of pages but say very little, and multi-page communications packages cannot generate a standard spreadsheet and share it publicly with British Columbians.

This is not a capacity issue. It’s straight-up obfuscation. It is particularly striking when placed alongside Bill 9, legislation that would allow government to reject freedom-of-information requests altogether if, in its opinion, responding would interfere with the operations of government. Truly unconscionable, but entirely on brand for this government. On one hand, government seeks broader discretion to refuse transparency. On the other hand, it claims that publishing basic long-term-care metrics is just too hard. That is not coincidence; it is a pattern.

Let’s ground this discussion in reality. According to the office of the seniors advocate, British Columbia is already short approximately 3,000 publicly funded long-term-care beds relative to assessed need. By next year, due to the cuts in this budget, that number will grow towards 5,000. More than 7,000 seniors in B.C. are currently on wait-lists for publicly funded long-term care. The median wait time across the province has hovered around 145 days. In some communities, maximum waits stretch well beyond 300. Almost 35 percent of seniors in this province are waiting more than 180 days for a bed.

One in three seniors is placed somewhere other than their preferred facility, in facilities far from their homes, families and support networks, sometimes even from their spouses. Many remain on transfer lists for months or even years after initial placement, and each of those numbers represents a senior in this province.

The latest budget failed to address this issue. This is not progress. It is a family in limbo, a caregiver at a breaking point, a senior who is already assessed and approved needing a higher level of care, stuck. The seniors advocate also documented the number of individuals removed from wait-lists because they died while waiting. That is not a statistic that any civilized system should accept.

[11:10 a.m.]

At the same time, nearly one-quarter of hospital beds in British Columbia are occupied by alternative level of care patients, individuals who no longer require acute care but cannot be discharged because there is no appropriate long-term-care placement available. In some hospitals, that figure approaches one in three beds. In Prince George, an elderly woman waited 18 months in hospital before being discharged.

The cost of doing things badly is far more than doing them right. Every one of those blocked beds has consequences. It delays surgery. It increases emergency department congestion. It contributes to ambulance off-load delays. It increases hallway and broom closet medicine. Long-term-care capacity shouldn’t be a niche policy issue.

In many regions of British Columbia, hospice beds operate above 95 percent capacity. Wait-lists now exist for hospice placement. Families are forced to navigate end-of-life care at home.

The seniors advocate has repeatedly highlighted regional variations in hours approved, in service availability and in wait times for home support. Yet there is no standardized, monthly public reporting that allows British Columbians to see clearly, consistently, whether the situation is improving or deteriorating.

We do not require the monthly publication of the total number of people on long-term-care wait-lists; median or maximum wait times; the number removed from wait-lists due to death; the number placed outside of their preferred facility; the size and duration of transfer lists; hospice bed capacity, occupancy and deaths while waiting; or how many beds and hospitals are tied up by patients that should be elsewhere.

This bill aims to change that. These are not exotic metrics. These are basic operational indicators. They are the dashboard of the system. They are the EKG of our seniors health capacity. Is our seniors health care system alive, or is it dead?

Any properly managed system should be able to produce them consistently, monthly and in comparable formats across health authorities. This bill requires that, not selected snapshots, not curated highlights, not flashy press releases but comparable, consistent reporting. Because when data is visible, performance matters. When performance is visible, priorities shift. When trends are undeniable, action accelerates.

This bill also requires an annual report assessing long-term-care capacity relative to demographic need. Are we keeping pace with our aging population? Are we reducing hospital backlogs? Are new beds coming online fast enough to offset growth? All of the snapshots we’ve received so far indicate no.

This is not just aspirational language. This isn’t recycled announcements. It’s a plan tied to data. If billions are flowing into health care while wait-lists grow, the public deserves to see where that money is improving outcomes and where it is not.

What this bill does not do is build a single bed. It does not hire a single nurse. But it does something essential. It removes the ability to obscure failure behind aggregate spending increases. It removes the ability to hide stagnation behind bureaucratic complexity. It creates sustained public visibility tied to measurable outcomes.

If government believes it is making progress, this bill will prove it. If the government believes its expanding administrative structure is improving care, this bill will demonstrate that. If every member who rises after me claims the largest bureaucracy in provincial history lacks the capacity to operate a simple pivot table on data already tracked internally, then British Columbians will truly see what the real issue is. It’s not accountability. It is not capacity. It is making sure that seniors have full eyes on what the data shows.

Without measurement, there is no requirement for management. Without transparency, there is no requirement for urgency, and without urgency, managed decline becomes normalized. We should not normalize it. We should expose it. We should fix it. This bill focuses on one simple truth: you cannot fix what you do not measure.

I urge all members of this House to unanimously vote yes to this bill on second reading and vote yes to supporting British Columbian seniors.

Darlene Rotchford: I seek leave to make an introduction.

Leave granted.

Introductions by Members

Darlene Rotchford: I’d like to introduce the school joining us here today, Colquitz Middle School.

On behalf of Minister Popham and all of us in the House, we’d like to welcome you and your teacher, Jessica Bambrough, joining us here today.

[11:15 a.m.]

Debate Continued

Susie Chant: Thank you for the opportunity to rise and speak to Bill M232, Long Term Care Access and Transparency Act.

As I begin, I want to acknowledge that I’m speaking on the territories of the lək̓ʷəŋən People, specifically the Songhees and xʷsepsəm.

When I am at home, I live and work on the lands of the səlilwətaɬ and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Nations.

I am ever grateful for their ongoing stewardship of the land, water and air around us and for the opportunity to learn about the ways of First Nations in managing the environment.

In reviewing Bill M232, the underlying principle appears sound and, in many ways, reflects practices that are already in place. Both the Ministry of Health and seniors advocate currently review and publish much of the data being proposed, and this information is readily accessible to the public.

This bill recommends collecting more than 16 data points across seven health authorities and publishing them monthly. This would require drawing information from numerous internal sources within each authority, demanding a significant number of staff hours to ensure the data is both complete and accurate.

I do not dispute that applicants and their families would benefit from clear, accessible information as they navigate the process of securing appropriate care. However, I believe there may be more effective ways to achieve that goal. The seniors advocate already provides an annual report that includes this information, and whether such data is released monthly or annually, it is not clear how this change would meaningfully improve the experience of those waiting for a higher level of care.

With more than 40 years as a registered nurse and more than 20 years of that time working in the community, my focus has always been to support individuals in remaining safely and comfortably in their own homes for as long as possible. A wide range of services already exists and has grown significantly over the past seven years to help achieve this goal.

Also, recently more options have become available. Today enhanced technology provides an increasingly important role in supporting clients at home. These tools can monitor key health indicators and daily activities, alerting clinicians when concerns arise, whether it’s detecting a fall, identifying missed medications, flagging abnormal blood sugar levels or recognizing unstable cardiac rhythms. Early interventions made possible through technology can help prevent unnecessary hospital visits and delay or even avoid the need for long-term-care placement.

Community-based services offer essential support to both clients and their families through several key mechanisms. One of the most significant is home support, where community health workers provide personal care directly in the clients’ homes. At one point, most of our home support was contracted out to private companies and cost our health authorities a great lot of money. Now we’re bringing the home support back in as well, and our health authorities have home support workers or community health workers that work within the health authority.

These people provide personal care directly in the client’s home. This care may include helping clients get out of bed, preparing simple meals, assisting with medication administration, supporting with bathing or showering and offering other forms of daily assistance that allows individuals to remain safely at home, even when they can no longer manage these tasks independently.

Community health workers also provide in-home respite care, staying with clients for extended periods so that family caregivers can take time away from the home while knowing that their loved one remains safe and supported.

Many communities also offer adult day programs, or ADPs, where clients can attend for part of the day, typically four to five hours, to receive supervision and support from a clinical team in a setting that encourages socialization and meaningful activity. Most clients attend two to three times per week, depending on their needs and the available program capacity.

In addition, some communities provide facility-based respite, allowing clients to stay in a care environment for up to 30 days per year. This option gives caregivers the opportunity to rest or attend important events, such as family weddings, while ensuring the client receives appropriate care.

[11:20 a.m.]

Another important component of the support involves assistance with what are called instrumental activities of daily living, also known as IADLs. These include tasks such as managing finances, shopping, meal preparation, transportation, attending medical appointments and maintaining the home environment. Housekeeping and yardwork services are available through organizations such as United Way, which has recently received funding to expand more support programs for seniors.

People can be supported to live in their own homes for a long time with the right services in place, helping them to stay as safe and independent as possible. There does come a point, however, when some individuals require more care than can be realistically provided at home. This shift may follow a sudden health event or emerge gradually as changes accumulate and become too difficult for family, caregivers or community supports to manage.

In my experience, the tipping point often involves a combination of significantly reduced cognitive ability, loss of mobility and bowel or bladder incontinence. When these needs arise, a person typically requires access to a clinical team around the clock. This level of support can be arranged at home, if private resources allow for continuous day and night care, or it can be provided in a long-term-care facility.

The concerns raised in the seniors advocate report point to gaps in both access to long-term care and clarity around the process of placement. Steps are indeed needed to improve transparency and support for families. However, the measures proposed in Bill M232 do not appear to address the core issues in a way that would meaningfully help the people affected.

Monthly public reports that present only aggregate data will not assist individuals who are struggling to understand their own situation — whether they’re trying to remain safely at home, seeking a higher level of care or waiting for hospice.

What families consistently need is timely, person-specific information that helps them navigate the system in real time. A more effective approach would focus on ensuring that clients, caregivers and clinicians have a clear understanding of the resources available in their own communities and a transparent, accessible process for obtaining those services. As people move through the system, they should be able to speak with a clinician who can provide meaningful updates or access a dashboard that reflects their status within a reasonable time frame.

Population-level reporting still has value. It helps establish baselines, monitor trends and evaluate whether policy changes are improving outcomes. But those reports alone, especially in the form proposed in Bill M232, will not make the long-term-care system more transparent for individuals waiting for placement.

The strategies outlined in the bill do not align with the practical, person-centred transparency that family and clients require. As the Parliamentary Secretary for Seniors’ and Long-Term Care Services, I appreciate the member’s advocacy in this area and will look forward to working with the seniors advocate and many others to improve transparency for seniors and their families.

Rosalyn Bird: I am pleased to rise today in support of Bill M232, Long Term Care Access and Transparency Act, introduced by my friend and colleague from Courtenay-Comox.

At its core, this bill is about accountability. It is about transparency, and most importantly, it is about the dignity for seniors and the clarity for families who are navigating one of the most difficult transitions of their lives.

Across British Columbia, families are struggling to understand how long they will wait for long-term care, where their loved one will ultimately be placed and whether a hospital bed is being occupied simply because no appropriate space exists. Yet, despite the seriousness of this issue, comprehensive and comparable data is not routinely published in a way that allows the public or this Legislature to clearly assess performance and outcomes.

This bill does not make sweeping promises, as this problem is not simple. What it does is require the government to measure, publish and account for what is happening in long-term-care access across every health authority every month.

In my riding of Prince George–Valemount, these challenges are not theoretical; they are deeply felt. Northern communities face distinct pressures alongside an aging population, geographical distances, workforce shortages and limited facility capacity.

[11:25 a.m.]

In Prince George, families often wait anxiously for placement in facilities such as the Jubilee Lodge or Simon Fraser Lodge. In smaller communities like Valemount or McBride, options are even more limited, and seniors are sometimes forced to leave their home communities altogether to access care. That separation from family, from familiar surroundings and from lifelong neighbours carries a real human cost.

We also see the additional strain this challenge places on our hospitals. When seniors become alternate-level-of-care patients occupying hospital beds even though they no longer require acute services, it creates a bottleneck throughout the system. At emergency rooms, the pressure is felt. Surgical schedules are disrupted. Health care workers are stretched even thinner.

The bill requires health authorities to report not only the size of wait-lists but medium and maximum wait times. It requires reporting on how many seniors are waiting for more than 30, 60, 90 or even 180 days. It requires transparency about how many individuals will die waiting for placements.

Those are difficult numbers. They are uncomfortable numbers, but they are necessary numbers. Without clear reporting, the government can speak in generalities. With clear reporting, this Legislature and the public can evaluate outcomes.

The bill also addresses another reality families know too well — seniors being placed in facilities that are not their preferred choice, sometimes far from home, while waiting on transfer lists indefinitely. By requiring publication of transfer list data and timelines, this act shines light on a process that is currently opaque. Transparency does not solve capacity challenges overnight, but it does establish a foundation for honest assessment.

For too long, the NDP government has spoken about historic investments in long-term strategies, yet families in northern communities continue to face extended waits and uncertainty. When reporting is inconsistent or incomplete, it becomes difficult to determine whether capacity is keeping pace with demographic growth, particularly in regions like Northern Health, where populations are aging fast and recruitment challenges continue to persist.

This bill would also require an annual report to this House, laid before members, summarizing trends, alternate-level-of-care pressures, actions taken and projected capacity relative to population need. That is not an unreasonable request. It is a basic standard of public accountability.

Seniors built this province. In Prince George and throughout the Robson Valley, they worked in forestry, mining, small business, farming and public service. They raised families, supported community organizations and contributed to northern British Columbians’ economic backbone.

When they reach a stage in life where they require residential care, they deserve clarity. The families deserve transparency, and this Legislature deserves measurable data. This act does not assign blame. It assigns responsibility. It recognizes that long-term-care access is not merely a budget line. It is a measure of how we treat those who can no longer advocate for themselves.

I urge all members of this House to support this legislation so that we can move beyond broad assurances and towards measurable accountability. Seniors and their families deserve nothing less.

Jeremy Valeriote: I’ll try and be brief. I’ll just start out by saying that I’m 100 percent supportive of transparency when it comes to health authority reporting on this. I’m an engineer. I got into this because I wanted to see more evidence-based policy and decisions, and you can’t make those without transparent evidence.

As with the primary care review that we participated in with the Minister of Health last year, this kind of fully transparent data is very useful, and it gets us all to a common understanding, on the same page, so we can begin to solve some of the problems.

A few stats that we do have access to I think have been read into the record, but I’ll do it again.

[11:30 a.m.]

B.C.’s population of 65 and over has increased by 20 percent. The number of long-term-care beds has only grown by 5 percent. From 2016 to 2025, the number of people waiting to be admitted to long-term care has tripled, from roughly 2,400 to 7,200. Average wait-list time is ten months, growing by 98 percent over the last eight years, from 146 days in 2018 to 290 days in 2025.

This strongly suggests that we need a plan. As far as I am aware, there is no plan, so the development of a plan to fill these gaps seems like a reasonable proposition.

I’m feeling it quite acutely in my riding, when it comes to Squamish Hilltop House long-term care which has been delayed, desperately needed in the community and no sign of forward progress — or, at least, a strong pause on it.

As a public service, the public should have access to wait times and access to all forms of health care, including long-term care. This does meet some of the recommendations from the office of the seniors advocate. I understand the objections that I’ve heard about increasing administrative burden or diversion of resources. That’s fine. If there’s duplication or effort not well spent, it can be interrogated in the committee.

The other thing I want to push back on is the idea that two-tier health care could be a result of this or that privatization would provide better care. We saw, through COVID, that this long-term-care system needs our serious attention.

I’m prepared to support this at second reading and hear it out in committee. I think it’s an important step forward to put everybody on the same page when it comes to the data that we do have and reporting.

With that, I thank you, Madam Speaker.

Darlene Rotchford: I’d like to begin by acknowledging that we’re gathered on the traditional lands of the unceded territory of the lək̓ʷəŋən-speaking People, today known as the Songhees and xʷsepsəm First Nations.

I’d like to thank the member for bringing the bill forward, raising serious issues. As someone who came from the health care sector, I can appreciate what his intent is. However, I think it is fair to say that I am probably one of the few in this room who actually did this for a living, so I’m going to express my concerns on Bill 232 and highlight some of those things.

A referral is only the first step. It is the first step in a process of accessing long-term care or other bed-based services. After that referral, individuals must be assessed to determine eligibility and appropriateness for placement. Only then are they added to a wait-list. I want to remind people that wait-lists aren’t static.

I’ll talk a little bit more, further as we go about this, how wait-lists can actually give people a false sense of hope. Why I have concerns about the way the bill is written is because of that. The last thing our seniors need is a false sense of hope.

We need to make sure when we’re looking at our wait-lists that they’re accurate. We can’t disclose that they’re accurate because they’re fluid. They are designed to be fluid by the way in which the individual’s acuity and care needs can and do change sometimes daily.

When I was a health care worker in mental health and addiction, I managed the wait-list for our detox program. On an average day for Victoria Detox, you would have anywhere from, I’ll say, 87 to 150 people on the wait-list. That was your average day. I have seen people at the bottom of that wait-list, and then their medical assessment needs would change, and they’re the fifth from the list. Then the next day someone’s list would go up, and it would go up, and it would fluctuate. That’s kind of how it worked.

For example, two individuals may be on the same wait-list at any time. One may have, let’s say, mobility limitations that only make them appropriate for certain facilities that would be appropriate for them. The other may initially have lower care needs but later experience a decline in health requiring more urgent placement. As those clinical needs evolve, so does your prioritization. This is how we ensure care is delivered based on need. For that reason, providing a fixed position on a wait-list can be very misleading and upsetting.

I can appreciate it, as somebody who came from that sector, because I’ve had to make those really tough phone calls to people to say: “I’m really sorry your loved one is at this place.” So again, I don’t do this without knowledge but also how it feels to those family members or those loved ones who have to be on the other end, who are crying and being angry at where their loved one is. No matter what the wait-list is, to be fair, within our health care system, it’s a similar process.

[11:35 a.m.]

Any ranking, at best, is an estimate. My concern is that Bill M232 may unintentionally create a false sense of certainty for families who understandably want clear answers during an already stressful time.

You know, you hear comments being made in here about our seniors. I think you’re not going to get anyone in this House to say our seniors aren’t a priority for us, even though the opposition would like to think otherwise. These people built our country. They backed us in our country. Again, as someone who has an aging father herself, I can’t even begin to say…. They’re a priority for me.

I have them in my community. I have a very aging…. Okay. I’m going to date myself. I’m not going to tell my age. I went to school in 2003, post-secondary. They were talking about baby boomers in 2003, and it’s 2026. So I think for anyone to say, “We didn’t know this was coming,” to be fair, as we were trying to build up….

Many governments before this government knew it was coming. So when we got elected, we were behind and going: “Okay. We haven’t built long-term care. In this day, we’re looking at a wait-list. What does it look like?” So we’ve had to get to that point.

The Minister of Health and regional health authorities closely monitor average wait times for long-term-care homes. This information is already shared publicly, either through regulatory publication or via health, home and community care access lines.

Additionally, many of the data elements referenced in this bill are already reported annually by the office of the seniors advocate in its Monitoring Seniors’ Service report and the long-term care and assisted living registry summary report. In many respects, the process proposed in this bill will duplicate existing systems and add an administrative burden without addressing underlying issues and capacity.

I sit here day in, day out, and I listen to people going on about how we need to omit red tape, and I don’t always disagree with them. We need to look at eliminating red tape and making things more accessible for people. It was part of why I got elected. I said: “People should have access to things.”

Adding another level is not going to help anybody. It’s not going to help our wait-list. It’s not going to help our staff who, again, the opposition barks at us about, saying: “You need to support them more.” Well, their wanting to add a level of bureaucracy sure isn’t going to do that. Instead of adding layers of bureaucracy, our focus must remain on expanding access and strengthening our care.

We’re doing that through programs such as Better at Home, which supports older adults with non-medical tasks like grocery shopping, light housekeeping and minor home repairs, so they can remain independent longer. As of October 2025, there are 100 Better at Home programs across this province. Eligible low-income seniors receive service, actually, at no cost, and in 2024-2025, nearly 32 percent of those seniors paid no fees.

By helping seniors age in place, we also lower demand pressure on our long-term-care facilities. Programs like LTC@Home use virtual care technology tailored toward individual needs and monitored by care teams, allowing seniors to receive enhanced supports in their homes. Hospital at home provides short-term acute care in the comfort and safety of the patient’s home, freeing up hospital beds but providing good patient experience.

At the same time, we are rebuilding and strengthening our seniors care workforce. One of the most significant barriers to reducing wait times is the availability of our skilled staff. Our government has standardized wages across long-term care, bringing over 5,000 care home workers under the public sector agreement. I myself at one time was under the Community Bargaining Association and was part of that, and I can tell you it was a very happy day.

We’ve expanded training seats for care aides, licensed practical nurses and registered nurses, and we are recruiting internationally while ensuring pathways to practical and saved efficiency in British Columbia. These measures directly address capacity, quality of care and wait times, issues this bill does not substantially resolve.

You heard the minister get slammed on the record about long-term care and the fact that we’ve had to extend some of our projects, and I can appreciate that.

However, you also heard her talk about the Colwood care home that is actually being built in my riding of Colwood, and how we were able to go back to the board, look at it from a budgetary perspective, make it more affordable and still keep it online and get operational. That’s what we’re doing with the beds that they say we’re cancelling — which actually is not true. We are just relooking at them and at how we can do them responsibly. We’ll keep looking at all that.

I want to reflect on my most difficult days working in health care. They were not the days I was verbally abused or even when I was personally at risk. The hardest day was actually during COVID-19, when I was actually forced to go working in bed booking and to triage every single patient. We were forced to reduce bed capacity to comply with safety protocols.

I had to call individuals who had been waiting some time, people who were vulnerable and hopeful, and inform them that they were being removed from the wait-list because their medical needs had changed, and I heard the fear and the heartbreak.

[11:40 a.m.]

It is not something, again, that I take lightly when I talk about this, because I know the person on the other end of that phone, whether it’s the family member or the senior. That experience reinforced for me that wait-lists are not simply numbers. They represent human beings, whose circumstances can change rapidly.

It also reinforced how fragile capacity can be, how critical it was when we invest in expanding services rather than creating additional administrative requirements. My little team at the time was four FTE staff to manage our list, to fill our beds and our programs.

When we talk about taking away red tape and we talk about what we need to do to cut down services to make sure we’re supporting front line, this bill would not do that. While I respect the intent of the bill, I do not believe it will achieve its stated objective. Instead, it risks placing additional strain on already stretched health care staff, without meaningfully improving access to care. For those reasons, I’m unable to stand here and support this bill.

Misty Van Popta: I rise today to speak to Bill M232, the Long Term Care Access and Transparency Act, as not only the critic for Infrastructure but as someone with aging parents.

Let me be clear at the outset. Infrastructure is not just roads and bridges. It’s hospitals, it is long-term-care homes, and it is hospice beds. It is the physical backbone of dignity for seniors in this province. Right now that backbone is under strain, not only because we lack capacity but because we lack transparency.

The office of the seniors advocate has warned that British Columbia will need 16,000 new long-term-care spaces to meet projected demand. Instead of accelerating construction, this government cancelled six long-term-care projects in Budget 2026. As the Infrastructure critic, I find that deeply troubling. You cannot build what you refuse to measure, you cannot plan what you refuse to report, and you cannot restore public confidence while operating in the dark.

This bill addresses a fundamental gap — the absence of clear, timely, publicly available data on long-term-care beds, hospice capacity and subsidized home supports. Families today are left guessing. They do not know how long their loved ones will wait. They do not know how many hospice beds are available. They do not know how many seniors are occupying hospital beds because there is nowhere else for them to go. That is not just a data problem. That is a planning failure.

When we talk about alternate-level-of-care patients, seniors who remain in hospital beds because long-term care is unavailable, we’re talking about a systemwide bottleneck. Acute care beds become clogged, emergency departments get backed up, and surgeries are delayed.

Planning depends on accurate inputs. Clause 2 of this bill would require health authorities to provide monthly reports on wait-lists. To correct the member across the way, this bill does not call to disclose where an individual is on the list, just how long the list is.

Clause 3 requires the information to be published publicly — not buried, not delayed but published. If this data is already being collected, then there is no excuse not to disclose it, and if it is not being collected, we have a far bigger infrastructure crisis than we even feared.

Clause 4 requires an annual public report, wait-list trends, alternate-level-of-care numbers, actions taken to improve access and an assessment of current and future capacity. That is not radical. That is responsible governance. Major capital planning in this province routinely involves multi-billion-dollar commitments, yet we do not have a consolidated, transparent, monthly accounting of long-term-care access pressures, one of the fastest growing areas of infrastructure demand.

Clause 5 goes further. It requires the minister to produce a plan within one year to improve access to long-term care, hospice and home supports, with annual updates thereafter. Infrastructure without a plan is politics; infrastructure with transparent reporting is accountability. This legislation does not micromanage operations. It does not prescribe ideology. It does not impose partisan solutions. It demands transparency.

[11:45 a.m.]

The government knows its long-term-care strategy isn’t working. Then it should welcome this bill. It knows capacity is insufficient. So publish the numbers. If it believes wait times are improving, then show British Columbians the trend lines. There is no legitimate policy reason to oppose transparency, unless the objective is to avoid accountability.

Seniors built this province. They paid taxes. They raised families. They contributed to our communities. They deserve honesty about whether a bed will be there when they need it.

As Infrastructure critic, I can tell this House we cannot responsibly plan capital expansion, land acquisition, staffing models or public-private partnerships without accurate, timely public data. This bill would ensure monthly reporting on long-term-care wait-lists and wait times, public accounting of alternate-level-of-care patients in hospitals, transparent hospice capacity numbers, disclosure of deaths while waiting for care, clear reporting on home support access and a publicly tabled, annually updated, capacity plan.

Those are not partisan demands. They are the minimum standard of modern health infrastructure systems. We will no longer accept decisions made in the dark that affect our most vulnerable citizens. Transparency is not an attack. It is an invitation to rebuild trust.

I urge all members of this House to support Bill M232 at second reading, so that it can proceed to committee, where it can be strengthened if necessary but not silenced. Seniors deserve dignity, families deserve clarity, and British Columbia deserves honest infrastructure planning.

Harwinder Sandhu: I rise to speak to Bill M232, the Long Term Care Access and Transparency Act.

I want to begin by thanking the member for bringing this bill forward. This issue of long-term-care access and transparency matters to all of us in this House. Seniors built this province. They raised families, built businesses and strengthened our communities, and they deserve to age with dignity, security and respect. We all agree on that.

Since forming the government, we have made seniors care a priority. The reason I want to speak a little bit to it before diving deeper into the bill is because I had the honour to work on this file during my last term. We have been investing in assisted-living, long-term-care home support, and we have made historic, largest investments in this sector.

B.C. was the first province in Canada to sign a bilateral agreement with the federal government to invest millions of dollars into strengthening home and community care. We acted quickly because we understood that helping seniors to remain at home safely is not just compassionate. It’s a smart policy, and it helps the wait times in health care facilities. Many seniors are benefiting from that investment.

Here is the truth. While long-term care is essential for many seniors, most seniors want to age in place. I have held the hands of many seniors crying, like Ivy and many others. They want to stay in their homes for as long as they want. Because they built their homes, this is their everything.

I know how shattered I myself and other health care professionals feel all the time, when you have to be in that situation and you cannot sign the file or the placement request until the senior is ready. I have worked in health care in this beautiful province, as many of you know, for more than 20 years. I have seen firsthand, as I mentioned, that it’s not one-size-fits-all.

My own mother, along with many other seniors, has refused to go to long-term when there is…. We have these discussions. It’s a tough decision, and I understand that there is a need to continue. There is a time when seniors and families do have to make that tough choice. That is why the approach has not been one-dimensional.

Besides building hundreds of long-term-care beds, I want to share that we have built…. There’s lots of discussion on both sides, and especially members from across, saying that government or the members sitting here somehow don’t care. When we talk about seniors, they are our parents. They are our grandparents. There is no rhyme or reason for anybody, no matter which side of the House you sit on, not to care.

[11:50 a.m.]

That is why our government invested $3 billion into long-term-care infrastructure, resulting in building hundreds of new beds, created or underway, in this province while we continue to invest in other services. The hospital at home program provides respite care for families, which is essential, as well as Better at Home care, which we deliver with the United Way.

We are building long-term-care beds. There was a conversation about Interior Health. I am still their employee. We have built more than 500 beds so far since coming into government. That includes 96 beds in Vernon at Creekside Landing. Also, those beds provide proper tub baths, a proper place where seniors can live with dignity. A dementia care strategy was also incorporated in those.

But beds are not enough. We must staff them, and that is why our government trained close to 8,000 care aides under the HCAP program. That is why we increased the direct care hours immediately, right after 2017, at 3.15 hours per resident per day. An average, too, that is being used now — 3.59 hours, because time spent with direct senior care matters. We’re continuing working towards the national four-hour standard.

Yes, we will continue. Some may note that when we say we continue to work, this is exactly why we are here. That is why people elected us, not to stop but continuing to work.

Now I want to speak about another reality we must face. We’re seeing cost estimates for some new long-term-care construction projects coming forward at over $1.8 million per bed. Let that sink in: $1.8 million per bed. That is taxpayers’ money. That is public money. When costs rise to that level, we have a responsibility to pause and reassess, to be fiscally responsible.

With $1.8 million, we continue…. We could fund substantial home care supports, caregiver programs, dementia supports and affordable senior housing or other community-based services to fill the existing gaps. It is not about stopping the progress. It’s about making sure every dollar stretches as far as possible to support as many seniors as possible.

When we came into government…. Let’s talk about it. We have inherited a broken system, and our former government…. Many may not like me sharing this reality. Over their ten-year strategy, they invested approximately $1.7 million, with an m, in ten years. If you break that number down, that is creating two, maybe three beds per year in the entire province.

That is why where we are…. It matters why. When I looked at it when I had that file, I knew why these gaps exist. Our responsibility has been to fill those massive gaps, but also we dealt with the pandemic and other issues that the province faced.

Now Bill M232 focuses on additional reporting requirements and transparency measures. Transparency matters, data matters, accountability matters, but I must raise a concern that I have heard directly from front-line workers.

[The Speaker in the chair.]

Our nurses, care aides and administrators already spend significant numbers of hours on documentation and reporting. Health care workers consistently tell us that they want more time with the residents, not more time filing more documents. Every additional legislated reporting requirement risks adding to their existing administrative workload, and every extra hour spent on paperwork is an hour taken away from direct patient care. We must ensure in our pursuit of transparency that we do not unintentionally increase bureaucracy at the expense of bedside care.

It is also important to recognize that as much of the data referenced in this bill is already collected and publicly reported, the Ministry of Health and health authorities closely monitor wait times. The office of the seniors advocate, a very important role they have, publishes annual reports with provincewide, facility-level data on key indicators. We should carefully assess whether new monthly reporting requirements would meaningfully improve transparency, whether they would duplicate the existing framework.

[11:55 a.m.]

During my previous term, I had the honour of working extensively on the long-term-care file. We advanced and strengthened our dementia care strategy that we constructed with families. I spoke directly with residents. We listened to families. We heard from experts. We met with care providers, and what we heard consistently was that they want timely access, they want quality staffing, they want compassion, they want support at home for as long as possible, and they want government to be responsible with public dollars. That is what we’re striving to do.

We have invested more than $3 billion, as I mentioned, in long-term-care infrastructure, creating hundreds of new beds. We’ve trained thousands of care aides. We increased direct hours. We are the first province to sign the bilateral agreement. We’ve expanded Better at Home care and innovative supports like long-term care at home and hospital at home, and we will continue. Seniors deserve nothing less.

As we consider Bill M232, let us do it thoughtfully and carefully. Let us think about…. Let us protect transparency, let us protect front-line care times, let us protect taxpayers’ dollars, and above all, let us protect dignity, safety and independence of seniors in our province.

This is not about politics. It’s about people. It’s about our parents. It’s about our grandparents. It is about building a system that respects their wishes, whether that means care in the facility or supports at a home they love. And it is about supporting the backbone of this system, the health care providers. That is the work we will continue to do, because we cannot pause.

I move adjournment of this debate.

Harwinder Sandhu moved adjournment of debate.

Motion approved.

Hon. Sheila Malcolmson moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

The Speaker: This House stands adjourned until 1:30 p.m.

The House adjourned at 11:57 a.m.

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