BC Green leader supports Kamloops cancer centre changes, but won’t commit to inclusion in deal with NDP

The BC Greens interim leader couldn’t say whether his party would be able to add a Kamloops cancer centre redesign into its cooperation agreement with the NDP government that’s up for renewal this fall.

But the MLA for West Vancouver-Sea to Sky says he wants people in Kamloops to get the healthcare services they’ve been asking for.

“I can’t say what that [cooperation agreement] would be yet, but everything’s on the table,” Jeremy Valeriote said Thursday at The Vic, where he stopped as part of his summer MLA tour.

He said he’ll reach out to local B.C. Conservative MLAs Peter Milobar and Ward Stamer to see how he can help their push to get the cancer care centre redesigned to include a PET/CT scanner, and have chemotherapy and radiation services under one roof.

Valeriote noted Kamloops is one of the largest population centres in the province and healthcare is the next biggest priority for his party after the environment.

“Getting communities what they need in terms of redesign is obviously a priority,” Valeriote said.

Milobar and Stamer are two of five area B.C. Conservative MLAs who’ve written Premier David Eby asking for those changes to the project, which has yet to break ground.

The government has said the changes can’t be accommodated due to limited space, and alterations would increase costs and add years to the $359-million project’s timeline. Their letter has the backing of the Thompson Regional Hospital District, which has been asking for the same amendments.

“I know budgets are tight, we’re in a big deficit situation, but, from what I understand, Kamloops has been fighting for this for a long time and your locals MLAs have been talking about it, so I hope to see [them receive] those services,” Valeriote said. “I know you’re not getting one of the scanners that you may be hoping for, which I’m hoping there’s plan to bring that along, but it sounds like it’s been a long road already.”

Valeriote said Milobar and Stamer could also reach out to him for support for their constituents’ healthcare needs, though that won’t necessarily mean including a redesigned cancer centre in the two parties’ Cooperation and Responsible Government Accord.

Among the four new cancer centres the province is building in B.C., the one destined for the Royal Inland Hospital campus in Kamloops is the only one that won’t have a PET/CT scanner and the only one that will have radiation and chemotherapy departments in separate buildings.

The location of the opther three cancer centres are Burnaby, Nanaimo and Surrey.

Agreement has been slow

Valeriote and his fellow BC Green MLA Rob Botterell have a deal in place to support Premier David Eby and the NDP’s government’s one-seat majority in the Legislature, which is due for renewal discussions in the fall.

However, it doesn’t seem as though adding the Kamloops cancer centre redesign to the agreement would make it a guarantee as, Valeriote noted, the agreement has had its own challenges with the government.

“It’s slow going sometimes on some of the projects that we agreed that we’d work on, but it is moving forward, so we’re pretty happy with the way it’s gone,” Valeriote said.

He said he hopes they will be able to find common ground again with the NDP and bring about projects “that actually deliver for people in B.C.”

“Which is really the whole point of all this,” Valeriote said.

Under the agreement the two B.C. Greens give the government its support in exchange for specific actions in 12 policy areas including health care, housing, environment, electoral reform and B.C.’s response to American tariffs.

The deal differs from the confidence-and-supply agreement the two parties signed in 2017 because it allows the Greens to disagree with government in areas not explicitly covered by the accord.

A number of disagreements have risen between the New Democrats and the Greens since last fall’s election, including the government’s decision to axe the consumer carbon tax and Bill 15 — which proposes to speed up public and private infrastructure projects as a response to American tariffs.

— with files from the Canadian Press