Action4Canada - March 03, 2024


Corrupt BC Government Continues to Punish Unvaxxed Healthcare Workers

Topics
unvaccinated health care workers
Hosted by
Tanya Gaw
Mentioned
Honourable Speaker Linda Drew Bonnie Henry B.C. United COVID-19 Okanagan
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Episode Stats


Length

7 minutes

Words per minute

123.11

Word count

883

Sentence count

63

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Learn English with Honourable Speaker Mike de Jong. Speaker: Will the Premier finally rehire the health care workers that they fired, or will he stubbornly sideline health care professionals while B.C.'s health care system continues to crumble?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Mr. Speaker, this coming Monday, B.C. will become the last province in Canada and the only jurisdiction in North America to ban unvaccinated health care workers from their own health care system.
00:00:19.580 While Nova Scotia joins the rest of North America in dropping vaccine mandates, B.C. stubbornly clings to its nonsensical and divisive policy.
00:00:31.340 B.C. has long been an outlier. Apparently, the science is different in every other jurisdiction in North America.
00:00:39.200 And I just want this House to remind this House, I was the first leader and B.C. United was the first party to call for the return of thousands of unvaccinated health care workers back on June 22nd, 2022.
00:00:56.040 Back on June 22nd, 2022, nearly two years ago.
00:01:08.140 So my question to the Premier is this. Will the Premier finally rehire the health care workers that they fired or will he stubbornly sideline health care professionals while B.C.'s health care system continues its blast?
00:01:26.040 Mr. Minister of Health.
00:01:37.400 Thank you very much, Honourable Speaker.
00:01:40.940 The House will know that the vaccine mandate referred to by the Leader of the Opposition,
00:01:48.140 one of the Opposition, by the way, the B.C. United Opposition, called for and applauded when it was introduced.
00:01:56.000 Thank you.
00:01:57.300 It is, Honourable Speaker, the result of a provincial health order.
00:02:12.160 The purpose of that provincial health order was to protect the most vulnerable British Columbians during the COVID-19 pandemic.
00:02:20.460 It is an order by the provincial health officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, who is a world-leading scientist and, I think, an extraordinary provincial health officer in British Columbia.
00:02:32.120 I, in fact, Honourable Speaker, have heard members of the Opposition brag, Honourable Speaker,
00:02:45.320 that she was hired under B.C. Liberal government as deputy provincial health officer by them because of her outstanding qualities.
00:02:54.440 We continue to act to protect patients in British Columbia from COVID-19.
00:03:01.440 There are people living in hospital right now with COVID-19 in the hundreds in British Columbia.
00:03:07.800 And just because the Leader of the Opposition wants to overturn a public health pact that was introduced under a B.C. Liberal government
00:03:16.760 because of some sort of race to the bottom amongst opposition parties doesn't mean that we aren't going to continue to respect
00:03:23.760 the provincial health officer and her orders.
00:03:31.760 The Leader of the Official Opposition, Supplemental.
00:03:34.920 Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
00:03:36.920 Well, with that answer, it is no surprise that we have a collapsing health care system here in British Columbia
00:03:42.780 because I have spoken to health care professionals who were terminated,
00:03:47.320 including a nurse who ran the emergency department at Langley Hospital,
00:03:52.440 a hospital, by the way, which is regularly diverting patients
00:03:56.120 because they haven't got enough nurses to actually look after those patients. 1.00
00:04:01.400 And we can't afford to lose these kind of highly skilled health care professionals
00:04:07.120 at a time when we so desperately need them.
00:04:09.840 We've also heard from nurses, Mr. Speaker, like Linda Drew,
00:04:14.040 a fired registered nurse with over 20 years' experience
00:04:18.000 who still is teaching the nursing program at UBC Okanagan in Kelowna.
00:04:24.900 And Linda says, and I quote,
00:04:27.260 the current mood in health care is one of defeat.
00:04:31.240 We are constantly short-staffed.
00:04:33.580 You have already lost so many of these nurses and health care workers
00:04:38.460 to Alberta and the United States, end of quote.
00:04:42.400 And this at a time when we learn that B.C. once again
00:04:47.220 has the longest wait times at walk-in clinics in the entire country.
00:04:52.480 That's their record.
00:04:53.780 So when, when will this Premier finally listen to Linda
00:04:57.700 and listen to every other jurisdiction in North America,
00:05:01.860 bring back these health care workers
00:05:03.360 and help our health care system today?
00:05:09.860 Minister of Health.
00:05:11.140 Well, Honourable Speaker, the fact is
00:05:13.140 that British Columbia has led Canada
00:05:14.960 in recruiting new nurses and net new nurses.
00:05:17.500 Well, Alberta has lost nurses in the last few years. 1.00
00:05:20.400 I mean, I mean, the, the, the, the minister may believe
00:05:27.680 that the Canadian Institute for Health Information
00:05:29.860 is an NDP front.
00:05:31.840 The, the, the leader of the opposition may believe that,
00:05:34.300 Honourable Speaker, but it's incorrect.
00:05:35.940 The facts are the facts.
00:05:37.280 Ninety-nine percent plus of health care workers
00:05:40.720 in British Columbia got vaccinated
00:05:42.360 because getting vaccinated was good for them
00:05:44.880 and good for patients, Honourable Speaker.
00:05:47.480 Honourable Speaker.
00:05:47.980 In the last, in the last nine months, Honourable Speaker,
00:05:52.140 B.C. has added net new more than 700 family doctors.
00:05:56.380 In the last year, Honourable Speaker.
00:06:04.780 Members, members, members, members, members, Mr.
00:06:13.340 Honourable Speaker, the facts are the facts, Honourable Speaker.
00:06:16.600 From 2009 to 2016, not per capita, not per capita,
00:06:22.760 but in actual numbers, in a time of a rising population
00:06:25.720 and an ageing population, we lost registered nurses
00:06:28.340 net in British Columbia starting in 2009
00:06:31.240 when the leader of the opposition was Minister of Health,
00:06:33.320 Honourable Speaker.
00:06:34.140 We have led Canada in hiring new nurses
00:06:37.120 because we support our public health care workers.
00:06:40.100 When our provincial health officer makes a decision
00:06:43.260 around vaccines, for example, Honourable Speaker,
00:06:46.660 we don't start by applauding it and calling for it
00:06:49.220 and then turning around afterwards
00:06:50.660 because the Conservative Party is advocating
00:06:52.540 and making a different approach.
00:06:54.640 We stick to our position because we support...
00:06:57.800 We stick to our position because we support Dr. Bonnie Henry
00:07:06.920 and we support health care workers in British Columbia.
00:07:09.840 Thank you.