Health Minister Josie Osborne. Photo by ADRIAN LAM /TIMES COLONIST
By Alec Lazenby Published Jan 16, 2025
Osborne was given the large task of addressing everything from cancer care to implementing mandatory treatment for mental health and addictions.
Health Minister Josie Osborne will have her work cut out for her in the coming years as Premier David Eby and the NDP make fixing the health-care system one of their top four priorities, alongside boosting the economy, reducing the cost of living and addressing public safety concerns.
If the cabinet mandate letters released Thursday are any indication, Osborne’s to-do list is long and includes improving cancer care (B.C. has in recent years been sending patients with certain forms of cancer to Bellingham for treatment) and implementing the premier’s promise to expand involuntary care for people with severe mental health problems.
Already representing around 40 per cent of the provincial budget, the ministry’s expenditures are bound to rise with the reintegration of the mental health and addictions ministry into the health portfolio.
Osborne is being asked to find savings within her ministry in the face of B.C. budget constraints that include a projected $9.4 billion deficit this year and the pending threat of 25 per cent tariffs on all Canadian exports by the U.S.
Two key campaign promises by the NDP in the recent election were to end emergency room closures in rural areas and get a family doctor by 2026 for all British Columbians on the Health Connect Registry.
That will require a number of new physicians, which the government is attempting to tackle through the addition of 80 seats to UBC’s medical school, the construction of a new medical school at SFU and the streamlining of certification requirements for internationally trained physicians.
A new payment model introduced in 2023 by then health minister Adrian Dix also encourages more physicians to go into family practice by paying them for the number of patients they see, the complexity of those patients and overhead costs for their office. Previously, family physicians were only paid per patient visit.
In the mandate letter, Eby also directed Osborne to work on developing new rules that would require the medical profession colleges in B.C. to recognize the credentials of Canadian health-care workers immediately, regardless of where they are from in the country.
For those trained in another country through a program equivalent to those undertaken by Canadian students, the deadline for colleges to grant them their certification will be six weeks.
All of this is complicated by data from the B.C. College of Family Physicians showing 40 per cent of family physicians in the province plan to retire or reduce their working hours in the next five years.
On mental health and addictions, Osborne and Amna Shah, the parliamentary secretary for mental health and addictions, have been told to work with Dr. Daniel Vigo, B.C.’s chief scientific adviser for psychiatry, toxic drugs and concurrent disorders, to open new involuntary care facilities at the Surrey pretrial jail and the Alouette jail in Maple Ridge.
