The data has been on the table for decades. So why does every government act shocked?

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, JUNE 8, 2026, VANCOUVER, BC—Every year, like clockwork, a BC government minister stands before a camera to assure us they are working urgently on the “healthcare crisis.” Emergency rooms are overwhelmed. Long-term care waitlists have ballooned. Hospital projects are delayed — “re-paced” in NDP-speak. We are told this is unexpected, complex, and government is doing everything it can.

I have spent my career looking at data and planning for what it tells us is coming, and I want you to understand nothing about BC’s healthcare crisis was unexpected. Not one bit of it.

Statistics Canada has been publishing Canada’s aging population projections for decades. The trend has been hiding in plain sight. Between 2010 and 2025 alone, years when governments of various stripes held power in Victoria, the share of British Columbians aged 65 or older jumped from roughly 15 percent to over 20 percent. That was not a surprise. That was a projection, confirmed by the data, year after year. Every health planner in this province had access to those numbers.

The numbers downstream from that trend are equally unsurprising. Canadians over 75 are hospitalized at nearly two and a half times the rate of those aged 50 to 74. High-needs patients in that age group, a small fraction of the population, account for more than half of all hospital days used by seniors.

You do not need a crystal ball to understand what happens when the fastest-growing segment of your population is also the highest consumer of hospital resources by far. What you do need is a spreadsheet and the willingness to act on what it tells you.

In BC right now, the numbers are stark. The waitlist for a long-term care bed has tripled since 2016, from about 2,400 people to over 7,200. The average wait time has nearly doubled to nearly ten months. In the 2023-2024 fiscal year, BC hospitals logged 531,000 “alternate level of care” days, days when a patient, typically a senior, was occupying a hospital bed simply because there was nowhere appropriate to send them. That is the equivalent of 1,454 hospital beds occupied every single day, not by people who needed acute care, but by people for whom the system had no better answer.

And how has this government responded? Earlier this year, in the 2026 budget, the NDP quietly delayed seven long-term care projects from Abbotsford to Fort St. John. Phase 2 of the Burnaby Hospital and Cancer Centre, a facility that people in that city were told was coming, was deferred with no firm new timeline. Last month, contracts on those projects were cancelled outright. The government called it “re-pacing.” Burnaby’s mayor called it what it was: deeply frustrating and a broken promise. BC’s own Seniors’ Advocate warned it would put more pressure on emergency rooms and force patients into acute care beds they don’t need.

This is not crisis management. This is the predictable consequence of a government that looked at the same data we all had and chose not to plan.

I understand the counterargument. Premier Eby has pointed out that the previous BC Liberal government built almost no long-term care beds between 2007 and 2017. He is not wrong about that. But the NDP has governed this province since 2017. The demographic projections did not change when the government changed. The baby boomers kept aging. The data kept updating. And the actions did not match the need. You cannot inherit a problem in 2017, govern for nine years, and then point backward when your own plans fall apart.

Healthcare remains the top concern for a majority of British Columbians: 58 percent, according to Angus Reid polling during the last provincial election. Seniors vote at higher rates than any other demographic. They are not asking for sympathy. They are asking for a government that respects them enough to plan for a future that has been visible in the data for thirty years.

The answer is not to pretend this isn’t complicated because it is. The answer is not a simple slogan—slogans don’t build long-term care beds. The answer is evidence-led planning, fiscal discipline, and the willingness to make real commitments grounded in what the data tells us is coming.

The rapid growth of the 65-plus population flattens after 2030 as the last boomers clear that threshold, but the province will continue to face increasing demand for senior care services for years to come. We have, right now, a window—not a comfortable one, but a real one—to get ahead of this. To plan. To build. To stop managing crises that were never really crises at all, just consequences we chose not to prepare for.

British Columbians deserve a government that is honest about this. One that acknowledges when something is complex instead of pretending it is under control. One that tells people the truth the numbers show, and then actually acts on them.

This “crisis” was always a choice. It’s time British Columbia chose differently.

CentreBC, June 2026

Karin Kirkpatrick is the leader of CentreBC, a provincial political party committed to pragmatic, evidence-led governance for British Columbia.