Image via @SChandraHerbert

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, AUGUST 5, 2026, VANCOUVER, B.C. — There is a difference between showing up for a parade and showing up for a community. Two days ago, Spencer Chandra Herbert, the NDP MLA for Vancouver-West End and a cabinet minister in David Eby’s government, led the NDP delegation down Pacific Boulevard in the Vancouver Pride Parade. Two days later, patients of Spectrum Health, the clinic just blocks from his own riding that provides HIV care to roughly a quarter of all British Columbians living with HIV, learned their government had quietly pulled the funding that keeps that care running.

You cannot lead a Pride parade through your own riding on a Sunday and let your government defund the HIV clinic serving your own constituents by Tuesday. That is not leadership–it is a costume.

Spectrum Health has operated on a population-based funding model since 1999, paying physicians according to the complexity of the patients they treat rather than a per-visit fee, with dedicated funding for HIV care built in. That model is what allowed Spectrum to run walk-in STI testing and PrEP refills, team-based nursing, and the kind of longitudinal relationships that keep people living with HIV healthy. 

The Ministry of Health has told Spectrum that funding ends September 30. One of the clinic’s physicians, Dr. Nel, has already told his patients he is closing his practice on October 31 because the new funding model cannot sustain it. The seven remaining physicians at Spectrum are at capacity and cannot absorb his patients. Many of them have few or no alternatives for specialized care.

Mr. Chandra Herbert has represented the West End since 2008. He has spent years positioning himself as the Legislature’s most visible advocate for the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, and he has real accomplishments to point to. But advocacy has to extend to the funding decisions made by his own government, not stop at the parade route. There is no public record of him raising the Spectrum funding cut before it became public, no statement defending the clinic, nothing. His own constituents found out from a clinic letter, not from their MLA.

The Ministry says defunding HIV care was never the intention. Perhaps, but intentions do not show up in a lab result, and they will not fill a prescription. The contract the government actually offered does not include ongoing, dedicated HIV funding. A clinic that has spent 27 years building trust with a community that has good reason to be cautious about the healthcare system is now being asked to do more with less, at the exact moment its own MLA wants credit for standing beside that community in a parade.

This is not really a story about one clinic or one MLA. It is a story about how this government governs: symbolism first, substance later, if ever. CentreBC believes in evidence-led healthcare funding, not decisions made to hit a budget line and explained after the fact, if a reporter happens to ask. If population-based funding was working–and by every account it was–for one of the most medically complex patient populations in the province, the burden of proof should have been on government to justify cutting it, before the cut, not after.

There is a more honest way to do this. Before a funding model changes, the Ministry should have to show the impact on continuity of care for the patients affected, particularly where alternatives are scarce. Dedicated funding for complex and specialized care, including HIV care, should be built into the base model, not left as an afterthought subject to negotiation. 

And when an MLA marches in Pride, his constituents are entitled to expect he’ll fight just as visibly for the healthcare that keeps them alive.

British Columbians living with HIV do not need another flag raised over the Legislature or another appearance timed to a parade. They need a government–and a local MLA–willing to fund the care that keeps them healthy and to be honest when it will not. CentreBC believes in informed leadership that treats people as more than a backdrop for good publicity.

By Mike Bernier, Leader of CentreBC.