Lost in recent days amid the swirl of shock and uncertainty here and abroad was a report in our own backyard with revelations about long-term elderly care—neither surprising nor unclear in how they could have been avoided.
I didn’t say the disclosures weren’t troubling, though. Nor do I have much faith they’ll be fixed.
The emerging crisis in long-term care in this province has been glacial in the making over decades, but its acceleration under the BC NDP government is undeniable—even if it has been more productive comparably in providing new beds. It has been so easily foreseen with our aging population and so simply avoidable had it been anyone’s political priority.
The reality painted by B.C. Seniors Advocate Dan Levitt in his July report is more reminiscent of dystopian fiction: a widening gap between what we have and what we need, growing and desperate waitlists, overloaded and inappropriate acute hospital care, extensive familial burnout, along with staffing chaos and chronic shortages that deliver daily care hours mainly below the national standard.
Seniors languish at home or are jammed into hospitals when they can’t get the bed and attention they require, without even a simple benchmark to tell them what’s acceptable to its government as a wait time. It is indifference, bordering on negligence, crushed by incompetence.
As it is, every day of delay means thousands more seniors remain stranded in limbo, hospitals groan under unnecessary loads of people who shouldn’t be there, and families bear emotional and financial tolls they do not deserve.
And all to save what? A few million in redirected budget today, foreshadowing what will need to be spent in crisis tomorrow.
Our situation portends catastrophe—16,000 new beds are needed within a decade—if resolute urgency doesn’t develop in planning and building at a pace well beyond what has taken place. Failing to do so, Levitt writes, “will have a profound impact on emergency rooms, hospitals, family physician offices, seniors and families.”
A health-care expert told me Wednesday it won’t happen. We just aren’t capable of a catch-up of this magnitude.
Premier David Eby’s response to the report was one-part deflection—blaming the former government out of power now for eight years—and one-part word salad about how “we have to build faster, we have to build more and we have to build it more affordably to meet the demand that’s out there.”
But if it hasn’t even come close to being done, how can anyone believe it will be? What does it say when British Columbians in their final chapters are denied dignity because we just didn’t take our moral responsibilities seriously?
For the data fans, Levitt has been keeping score on the NDP: its promise in 2020 of 3,315 new and 1,755 replacement beds, for instance, has yielded only 380 new beds so far delivered.
The number of people on a waitlist for publicly subsidized long-term care was 1,657 in 2017; it’s now 7,212. The wait time was 146 days in 2018, when it was first measured; it was 290 days in 2024. In the last decade the system has gone from 77 beds per 1,000 people over the age of 75 to 58-per-1,000 today—the current shortfall is about 2,000 beds—and will go to 41-per-1,000 within a decade if beds are built and replaced at the same pace as they are now. There are more statistics in his report, but you get the drift.
The lack of beds isn’t all of the issue of access, of course. People are staying longer in care, so the turnover rate has dropped, but there is also a lack of such alternatives as home support, assisted living and respite care. And by their inertia governments of all stripes seem to consider caring for one’s declining parents as a child’s rite, rather than ensuring proper care as a right.
Our systemic relic has to move from passive projections to active prevention of a largely predictable social phenomenon. Congruent policy, planning, recruitment and construction need to surface to build at least 1,600 new beds each year. While we’re at it, we need to mandate into legislation daily staffing care of 4.1 hours per resident, the nationally recommended standard.
We have to treat this as an imperative more socially vital and as economically important as renewing our infrastructure, with fast-track licensing, design and procurement. It requires the input of regional advisory councils and First Nations, beyond what health authorities and families can provide, in order to guide bed allocation and service designs to ensure equity and availability across communities.
And, given the probable needs—our 75-plus population will grow from 517,000 to 772,000 by 2035—the conversation has to include continuum care villages, satellite adult day hubs in community centres, even dementia-specific facilities.
While the report is an important contribution, we have to look at models like those in the Netherlands, where there is a co-financed Long Term Care Act; or to AI in modelling care priorities and serving as triage tools and waitlist portals. Beyond that, Levitt notes, we have to expand the options to assist family caregivers facing ruinous personal costs.
We must build the beds, staff them right, integrate home care, and hold ourselves publicly accountable for results. Levitt has asked the government for its plan by October.
Time is not on our side, but action can still be.
Kirk LaPointe is a Lodestar Media columnist with an extensive background in journalism. He is vice-president in the office of the chair at Fulmer & Company.
