FORSETH – Failed cancer clinic promises are a fitting reason for recall campaign

THIS IS A COMMENTARY I started several days ago; now, with a story airing on CHNL 610 today, it seemed like a good time to continue ….

BC Premier David Eby vows in the face of unacceptable cancer care wait times the province will make every intervention — from prevention and treatment to ­clinical trials — to improve ­cancer care in the new year, conceding faster progress is needed.

The province is looking at “every opportunity” to make sure patients get the care they need, Eby said in a ­year-end interview with the Times ­Colonist.

Here in my home community of Kamloops we have been waiting for OVER 30 years, for improved cancer care … something promised by, and committed to, by successive NDP governments.

A decade ago a commentary shared in BC Political Reports reminded us that then NDP leader Mike Harcourt had promised cancer clinics for THREE BC interior communities — Kamloops, Kelowna and Prince George – this, in the lead-up to the October 1991 provincial election.

Indeed on Oct. 4, 1991, Kamloops South NDP candidate Art Charbonneau said that the NDP were committed to the cancer-clinic project.

Well, the vote counts were barely completed, and Mike Harcourt’s NDP declared the winner, when the bottom fell out of that promise.  And that promise, repeated numerous times now, still seems a far-off proposition

Since then, a cancer centre for the City of Kamloops has pretty much been promised by the NDP ever election since – including by John Horgan in the 2020 election campaign …

In fact, trying to counter scepticism about oft-repeated NDP promises, Horgan stated:

“I can’t speak for 30 years ago. I can speak for right now. And for the past three and a half years we’ve been delivering healthcare services right here in Kamloops. We can’t go back in history; I’d like to go back.”

Until a business plan (a much needed first step in getting things underway – which was promised would be in place by this past Fall by Health Minister Adrian Dix) is actually on paper and approved, a cancer center is never to see the light of day.

And that seems fitting given the ‘light’ of day is being blocked out by the dreary grey overcast weather we’ve been having.

But rest assured, the up-coming October provincial election will be as good a time as any for the next in a long line of broken promises.

All I can say is that if ever there was a more fitting reason for a recall campaign, this is it!

In Kamloops, I’m Alan Forseth.

Alan Forseth is a Kamloops resident. For 40 years he has been active, in a number of capacities, in local, provincial and federal politics, including running as a candidate for the BC Reform Party in the 1996 provincial election. He was involved in the BC Liberal leadership campaign and is now a member of the BC Conservative Party.