UPDATE: Dan Davies reacts to service interruptions at hospitals in Northeast BC

FORT ST. JOHN, B.C. — MLA Dan Davies says the recent service interruptions in Fort Nelson and Fort St. John shows how fragile B.C.’s healthcare system is.

“The system is broken! People’s lives are at risk!!,” Davies said in a Facebook post on Tuesday. 

The Peace River North MLA has been looking for solutions to the province’s health care system for the last several years, saying, “It’s on life support.” 

“It just goes to show the state of our healthcare system and how fragile it is, the level of shambles that it actually got down to,” said Davies. 

Davies blames the current state of health care on Adrian Dix, B.C.’s Minister of Health, and is calling for his resignation. 

“He’s failed British Columbia and its citizens on delivering a health care system that people feel confident in.” 

Back in March, Dix said there is work being done to address the strain the healthcare system is under.

“We have a transformational system. Over 60 [years of age], the vast majority of doctors are men. Under 60, the vast majority of doctors are women,” said Dix in a CHEK News report.

“It’s a changing system and the medical system has to change to that.”

“Younger doctors do not want to run businesses, they want to practice medicine. And so we worked with the Doctors of BC, we have a new agreement, we’ve added 600 family doctors net new this year.”

The MLA, along with Fort Nelson Mayor Rob Fraser, is also calling for an independent audit of Northern Health due to the large number of service interruptions at Fort Nelson General Hospital. 

“We’ve been calling on an audit and in the external, independent audit of Northern Health for a couple of years now,” said Davies. 

“This is important to any large organization. You need to have someone look at it. I really think that we need to find out what’s not working in Northern Health.”

While touring Prince Rupert General Hospital in March, Dix has said he is “frustrated too” at the current state of the health care system and that the ministry is working to improve the recruitment in the Northern Health region, according to KelownaNow.  

Davies, along with Peace River South MLA Mike Bernier, have advocated that an immediate solution to what they see as a crisis in the province would remove restrictive COVID-19 vaccine mandates and re-hire unvaccinated healthcare workers who were let go during the pandemic. 

Energeticcity.ca reached out to Northern Health for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.