IN THE LEDGE – ‘Design for Kamloops cancer centre isn’t workable’

An exchange between Kamloops Centre MLA Peter Milobar (Conservative) and Health Minister Josie Osborne (NDP) in the B.C. Legislature on Wednesday (April 9, 2025) on plans for the Kamloops cancer centre.

Peter Milobar: Just a couple questions for the minister. I’m sure it won’t come as a surprise that I’ll be asking a couple questions around the proposed Kamloops cancer centre, and I’ll explain why I’m saying the word proposed shortly.

There’s been a lot of discussion about the design of the Kamloops cancer centre. The minister made herself available to myself and the member for Kamloops–North Thompson. I know she met with the hospital board delegation shortly after that.

This has been canvassed in this chamber now for a couple of years around the overall design of the Kamloops cancer centre. The fundamental problem is that the Kamloops cancer centre will be the only one in the province if not Canada and certainly North America that is designed as a site with two different locations.

The ministry is now having to figure out how to have their information software of Interior Health talk with the information software of B.C. Cancer. Part of cancer services and counts would be run inside the hospital by Interior Health where they don’t have the same expertise per se necessarily as B.C. Cancer does.

Again, this is the only setup like this within the B.C. cancer network and indeed across North America.

We’ve heard lots of different reasons and excuses from the government, back to this minister’s predecessor, for why this design has to be this way — anywhere from the site’s construction to cost to the building footprint to a height variance being needed for something like a critical cancer centre in a building that’s going to be built into a hillside, that needs about a three-foot variance to add a floor to it, which as a former mayor, I can assure the minister is a completely ridiculous argument. To think that a city council would not give that type of a variance in a city that does not protect view lines when rezonings come forward…. We are a city of valleys and hills, and so we’ve never protected view to begin with.

All that said, the most recent comments by the minister again indicate that not only will we have the only cancer setup like this, despite the urging of local medical professionals and cancer medical professionals, but this is a system and a design that was not workable and will make it next to impossible for proper recruitment. We’ve had positions unfilled for the better part of a decade in Kamloops already.

We now find out we won’t have a PET-CT scanner as part of this new building either — yet again, substandard compared to any modern cancer centre being designed. I would point out that there are actually more people from the Kamloops area that go to Kelowna for PET-CT scans, and Vancouver, than for radiation treatments.

Yet this new centre — brand-new build, it hasn’t even broken ground yet; it’s still at the drawing stage — cannot be accommodated with the changes to actually make it a modern cancer centre on par with everyone else. Kamloops isn’t asking to be treated differently; we’re being asked to be treated the same when it comes to cancer care, of all things.

The last piece, which is perhaps the most offensive piece, frankly, to the people of Kamloops, is that cost keeps getting flung out by the minister and previous ministers as another reason why not. While there’s already money being budgeted for the interior renovation that could be moved over to the new build, there’s the new-build budget as well.

I would point out to the minister that of 15 hospital projects under construction right now in British Columbia, they are a cumulative 16 years behind schedule. A cumulative 14 of the 15 are over budget, to the tune of $4.3 billion. So it seems if you’re a health care facility in any other part of this province, it’s okay to go $1.2 billion or $1.3 billion over budget. But if you’re the Kamloops cancer centre, you better be held to the exact dollar figure or you’re not going to be approved.

We can’t find any extra dollars for a cancer centre that’s supposed to have a 30- or 40-year lifespan, at least, in it to build it properly on the front end. We’d rather have a 40-year recruitment problem in Kamloops instead. It’s not acceptable. It needs to change.

The last piece is that we get told: “Well, we don’t want any further delays.” Actually, they don’t say “further”; the government says: “We don’t want delays.” This was a cancer centre promised by the late John Horgan in 2020 that would have its doors open by the fall of 2024, and the drawings aren’t even completed on it yet. Now this government says if they can’t get building immediately, they won’t build it at all. It’s already delayed, and it’s going to be built improperly.

When will this government, this minister, commit to actually designing the B.C. cancer centre in Kamloops to the same standard and the same design specs of every other cancer centre in British Columbia and provide people of Kamloops the same access to cancer care as people in Victoria will have with their centre, people of Nanaimo, people of Surrey with the one under construction, people in Prince George, people in Vancouver and people in Kelowna?

We are not asking for something other than already exists. It would be like saying you are building a tertiary hospital but you are not going to have a bunch of tertiary services in it. You are not building a full-fledged B.C. cancer centre if it is designed the way the one in Kamloops is.

Why is Kamloops the only project that is deemed to be okay to be built under standard to every other cancer centre in the province, and the only one that this minister and this government seems to be worried about going cost overrun?

Hon. Josie Osborne: Thank for the question from the member for Kamloops Centre.

Yes, he accurately references the fact that I have had the opportunity to sit down with him and his neighbouring MLA. I’ve had the opportunity, on behalf of myself and the Minister of Infrastructure, to sit down with the regional hospital district representatives and have a really good discussion about this project.

First and foremost, this is about delivering better cancer care to people closer to home. So this is about…. I know that the member has advocated strongly for years, as have local representatives, about just how important it is to deliver cancer care closer to home. The travel that people have had to go through, from places like Clearwater or Barriere down to Kelowna, for example, has been very challenging.

That’s why this government has been so committed to expanding the amount of cancer centres across British Columbia and reducing some of those barriers — hiring more oncologists, more radiation therapists, bringing in the equipment that’s necessary for people to get that cancer care.

Now, I think the member inaccurately references the amount of work that is needed to happen in order to redesign a project, and I don’t think the people of Kamloops and the surrounding area want to see delays in having that care come to them.

We are in a situation now where a ministry responsible for this has undertaken this work, and so I will direct the member to that ministry for the specifics around those questions. But the costing and design and procurement — that is done. Construction is expected this summer.

I know that the member has been out in the media and has told me that he could tolerate up to one year delay. But this would be longer than a one-year delay, and this is not necessary in order to deliver excellent cancer care to the people in Kamloops and the surrounding region.

B.C. Cancer has been working with Interior Health, has been meeting with physicians on site. Some of the things that I can confirm for the member are that the information technology systems will come together by the time the cancer centre is open. That’s important; that’s addressing a major concern that has been heard from physicians.

Of course, I know the member is very familiar with what will be in the Kamloops cancer centre. The three linear accelerators and the bunkers that are required for that. Radiation therapy planning, including a CT simulator; that is new technology that is making it easier for physicians to precisely locate tumours and be able to treat them. An outpatient ambulatory care unit with ten exam rooms and two consult rooms.

Most patients do not receive chemotherapy and radiation therapy on the same day. B.C. Cancer and Interior Health and staff at the hospital are working together to make it easy for patients to travel from one part of the campus to another part of the campus, should that be necessary. But I would point out that there are other places in British Columbia where people do travel much longer distances in order to receive treatment in the same day. For example, receiving one form of treatment at Lions Gate Hospital and then needing to travel to downtown Vancouver to receive the other part.

We want to do everything we can to make cancer care easier to access for people, to make it simpler for people to access, but we have to have a cancer centre in Kamloops to be able to do that. And I don’t think the people in Kamloops want to wait years to get that cancer care.

As I mentioned, the project is in the final stages of procurement. The construction will begin this summer. We are going to be delivering excellent cancer care for the people of Kamloops and the surrounding region.

I thank the member for his advocacy, and I thank, especially, the local leaders for their advocacy in coming down to Victoria to meet with me, to understand this, to talk about the fact that the PET-CT scanner is not part of the project right now.

The former Minister of Health was clear about that when the business plan was released in February 2024 last year — that that was not going to be a part of the centre at this time.

Peter Milobar: Well, it’s this government’s stubborn adherence to a poorly designed cancer centre that is causing the delays, and I absolutely have said if it takes this late in the game to get the government to finally listen to reason, yes, I would publicly…. And I have publicly said that, of course, if there’s a bit of a delay, I’d rather see it built properly for the next 40 or 50 years of serviceable life than to have it rushed through and designed improperly.

This isn’t myself saying…. I’m not a medical professional. My father was a specialist. I’m certainly not. But God forbid I get a cancer diagnosis. I’m going to rely on the cancer professionals to tell me how I need to be treated. I’m relying on their opinions and their advice on what they see as the shortcomings of this centre.

This is directly from the medical staff in Kamloops, and this has been raised in this chamber three times now at budget estimates and been ignored by…. The community has been ignored repeatedly by this government.

Although the government has chosen to create a whole other minister responsible for infrastructure now, it’s only been the Minister of Health that’s ever answered questions about this facility, and it’s only been the Minister of Health that does media about this facility in Kamloops. So I’m going to keep asking the Minister of Health about the medical aspects of this facility, and the government can figure out who wants to actually manage the actual construction of the project.

But the Surrey cancer centre was announced at the same time. It’s not being designed like this. It’s being built from scratch. If this was such a superior model, why is that not the case? If this was the new way to provide top-line cancer care for people, why are the new cancer centres in the ten-year cancer plan not being designed like this. Why is the update to the equipment in Kelowna not necessitating a redesign of the Kelowna cancer centre to replicate what’s going on in Kamloops or in Prince George, or in Victoria, or in Vancouver?

The minister conflates travelling from one part of Vancouver to get downtown to the full cancer centre as somehow different or the same as people having to travel between two buildings within Kamloops. I’d point out to the minister that people are travelling from Williams Lake once this centre gets built. People are travelling from Blue River once this centre gets built. They’re currently having to travel to Kelowna. They’re going to have to continue to travel in greater numbers to Kelowna for PET-CT scans because the government refuses to put that into this. Just because it was announced by a minister a couple of years ago that it won’t be part of this building doesn’t make it right.

That is the underlying problem with this whole process — the government’s stubborn refusal to acknowledge what the medical professionals in Kamloops have been calling for, for years, which is a properly designed cancer centre at the same level as other cancer centres and not being sold a bill of goods about how superior this will be because of one piece of equipment with a design that doesn’t even match up with other cancer centres literally being designed at the same time. And then the community is made to feel potentially guilty about any possible delays in a design that this government has stubbornly clung to despite repeated requests by those same community members.

The hospital board has wanted this redesigned the whole time. The MLAs have wanted it redesigned the whole time. The medical staff have wanted it redesigned the whole time. The only people that haven’t has been this government. And now our understanding is it gets ratcheted up a level where the government is alluding to…. If there are any further delays, the project will be scrubbed completely.

Now, Kamloops has a long history of distrust with NDP governments and cancer centres. They’re not going to re-litigate the original decision that got yanked away from Kamloops by then Premier Harcourt. But the community is still angry about that. So a simple request. We’re going to keep fighting to have this designed properly — to the minister.

Can the minister confirm that the Kamloops cancer centre is not under threat by this government in any way, shape, or form for cancellation if there’s any delay, if the community keeps advocating for a properly designed cancer centre in the first place, and if, by some weird fluke, the government finally starts to listen to reason and actually delivers a properly designed cancer centre. That is not suddenly the excuse for this government to cancel the cancer centre, as we are starting to hear has been now threatened to our community.

Hon. Josie Osborne: We clearly value this project. Despite all the economic uncertainty that we’re experiencing and that members of the opposition bring up consistently in this House, this project is going ahead. This project is in the final phases of the procurement process, and construction will start this summer.

This project will address the needs for people to get cancer care closer to home, and that is far superior to a situation where they are not getting that care. The project is moving ahead.

Source: B.C. Hansard