The NOW asked each Burnaby candidate to answer 10 questions ahead of the provincial election on Oct. 19.
We will be publishing candidate answers by question daily.
Answers by candidates who participated are listed in alphabetical order by surname.
Question: How will you address the doctor shortage in Burnaby, and how will you reduce local hospital wait times?
Reah Arora - BC NDP (Burnaby East)
We are facing big challenges here in Burnaby and across the province. Any interruptions to services are stressful, especially for anyone in an emergency situation needing immediate care. Over the past year, we hired more than 800 new family doctors, and connected over 400,000 people to family doctors and nurse practitioners, though we acknowledge there is still much work to be done. We are adding 128 spaces to the UBC medical school and building a new medical school in Surrey to prepare the next generation of doctors.
We’re growing our healthcare capacity across the board. BC’s nursing workforce is the fastest-growing in Canada, with over 6,300 new nurses hired in the last year alone. We are breaking down barriers to get health-care workers on the front lines; over 2,000 internationally trained nurses and more than 900 internationally trained doctors have been licensed to practice in BC in the past year. Additionally, pharmacists are now able to prescribe free birth control and treat minor ailments. We opened a new Urgent and Primary Care Centre in Burnaby in 2022. While there is more to do, these initiatives will help ease the strain on our healthcare system that is still rebounding from the pandemic and coping with an aging population. We know John Rustad and the Conservatives would take the opposite approach, cutting public healthcare by $4.1 billion and handing it over to private corporations. The end result will be that those who can pay are first-in-line and middle-class families are left behind.
Simon Chandler - Conservative Party of BC (Burnaby East)
As part of our patients-first healthcare plan, we aim to direct funding away from the healthcare bureaucracy and towards front line healthcare workers such as doctors and nurses. We will also implement guaranteed wait times through hiring more front-line workers and creating a patient-based funding model that will encourage hospital output and increased efficiency.
Meiling Chia - Unaffiliated (Burnaby South-Metrotown)
Every resident of Burnaby and our Province deserves access to quality healthcare and a physician when they need it most. We must streamline the process for home-trained doctors and expedite the accreditation for internationally trained professionals—many of whom are Canadians who sought higher education abroad due to the limited availability of post-secondary spots for doctors and lawyers. By increasing the number of qualified practitioners able to serve our communities, we can significantly alleviate the strain on our healthcare system and better meet the needs of British Columbians.
Paul Choi - BC NDP (Burnaby South-Metrotown)
Addressing the doctor shortage and reducing hospital wait times in Burnaby are top priorities for me. The BC NDP has already made significant progress in these areas by hiring over 800 new family doctors in the past year alone and connecting more than 400,000 people with family doctors and nurse practitioners since 2023. We're also expanding medical training, adding more spots at UBC's medical school and opening a new medical school at SFU to ensure we have more doctors in the future.
To reduce hospital wait times, we're building and expanding hospitals across BC, including 29 new and upgraded hospitals. We've also opened 39 Urgent and Primary Care Centres (UPCCs) to help reduce strain on emergency rooms and give people faster access to care. We’ve brought in over 6,300 new nurses and licensed 900 doctors with international credentials, helping to grow our healthcare workforce. This, alongside expanding pharmacists' ability to prescribe treatments for minor ailments, is making it easier for people in Burnaby to access the care they need quickly.
If elected, I will continue to work on strengthening our healthcare system and ensuring the people of Burnaby receive timely, high-quality care.
Raj Chouhan - BC NDP (Burnaby-New Westminster)
People deserve to know they’ll get the healthcare they need when and where they need it. David Eby and the BC NDP are hiring and training thousands of doctors, nurses and healthcare workers. We are also building a new medical school in Surrey to fast-track more people into this profession. We hired 800 family doctors in the last year alone because we know that strong services have always been what defines us as British Columbians. Our commitment is that everyone who wants a family doctor or nurse practitioner will have one by the end of 2025. With the steps we have taken, we are on our way to meet that goal. But the BC Conservatives have made it clear they do not share these values and will pause the work that is underway. John Rustad’s plan would mean $4.1 billion in cuts, leading to longer waits and making it harder to see a doctor. He cut healthcare services when he was in government before, and he will do it again if given the chance. His plan to move us backwards is a risk we cannot afford.
Anne Kang - BC NDP (Burnaby Centre)
Health care is an issue that I care about passionately. I am committed to working with my BC NDP colleagues and to addressing the doctor shortage in Burnaby. We have been taking strong actions to reduce hospital wait times and to ensure that people and their families can get the care they need and deserve. We have removed the Medical Service Premium, which is BC’s largest middle-class tax cut. We are recruiting more healthcare workers to provide care, expanding the scope of practice of midwives and pharmacists and increasing prevention and screening services for cancer. In partnership with family physicians, we have established a new physician payment model that have brought more doctors into family practice. Last year alone we hired 800 new doctors. Following the actions set out in our Health Human Resources Strategy, the BC NDP expanded UBC’s undergraduate medical program by 40 seats (for a total of 306 seats) and its graduate medical program by 88 seats (for a total of 328 seats). Additionally, the BC NDP, working with Simon Fraser University, is opening the first medical school in Western Canada in 55 years.
Martin Kendell - Independent (Burnaby North)
We have a major crisis when it comes to providing a doctor for every family in British Columbia. Realistically, we will never be able to realize this goal ever again unless we greatly increase patient to doctor ratios or change the delivery of health care in this province.
One component of our health care system that is working well are the Urgent and Primary Care Centres that are opening across the province. This is a good long-term solution that will allow all BC residents the opportunity to see a medical professional immediately.
Our front-line workers in the health care system are being shortchanged funding due to an excessive amount of senior management positions through six different health regions in this province. I propose that we return to a model where the entire health care system in this province is administered through one central agency, and we can redirect tens of millions of dollars to provide competitive compensation in order to retain medical professionals and encourage them to settle in underserved communities, and ensure the ability to properly staff facilities such as the new Burnaby hospital when it opens in late 2025.
We must recruit aggressively from other parts of Canada and around the world in order to fill the current shortfall of doctors that will get worse as older doctors move into retirement. We must accelerate the ability to administer competency testing to ensure the skills of these international doctors are sufficient so they can start treating patients immediately.
Han Lee - Conservative Party of BC (Burnaby South-Metrotown)
To address the doctor shortage in Burnaby, we will implement a “Patients First” healthcare model that expands access to care and reduces wait times. This includes hiring back healthcare workers who were removed due to personal health decisions and providing incentives for doctors to practice in high need areas like Burnaby. We will also streamline administration in healthcare facilities, allowing doctors to focus on patient care instead of paperwork.
Carrie McLaren - BC Green Party (Burnaby South-Metrotown)
This is another area that will take some time, but some shorter term solutions include increased funding for nurses in the public system, and incentivize sufficient staffing and support training by paying practicums and loan forgiveness for healthcare students. Also reduce bureaucracy and paperwork for comparable trained staff from other provinces, or countries. There are longer term solutions to free up doctors to help patients avoid emergency lines, including the Dogwood model where the admin burden is lifted from Doctors so they can free their time and energy – see Green Platform for more.
Janet Routledge - BC NDP (Burnaby North)
We face some big challenges in BC. There’s a shortage of doctors and nurses across the country, and our families are growing older. We’re building a new tower at Burnaby Hospital right now, and we’ve hired over 800 new family doctors and 6300 nurses in the past year alone. We’re starting to see some improvement, but there’s a lot more work to do. Rustad, on the other hand, has committed to cutting $4.1 billion from our healthcare system. We can’t afford that. We need to build capacity, not reduce it.
Tara Shustarian - BC Green Party (Burnaby East)
It is imperative that we listen to the medical practitioners and work with them to find the answers. The people I speak with are quite clear that we can construct buildings, and buy beds, but we lack staff. We have new citizens in BC from other countries who were licensed medical practitioners, but who need to be fast-tracked in BC to be licensed here. Also, General Practitioners are businesses, and their incomes are controlled by the province, but their rents are controlled by Landlords. Landlords also collect the property taxes from them. The City of Burnaby can encourage doctors to Burnaby by providing tax relief to them. Wait time in hospitals is a perennial problem as hospitals treat not only acute care but primary care as many people do not have a family doctor. For example, It is an expensive and inefficient system to treat a child’s ear ache. I would advocate for the Dogwood model being proposed by the BC Greens and former federal Minister, Jane Philpott. Under this model, all residents in a neighbourhood would have a right of access to a local medical centre. The medical centres would be very efficiently run with nurse practitioners and administrative assistants assisting doctors and relieving them of some administrative functions. Local hospital wait times will be reduced if more people have access to primary care in their community and don’t have to go to an emergency for medical help.
