Rural mayors threaten to withhold taxes if health-care concerns not heard
Rural B.C. mayors fed up with slow ambulance responses and persistent hospital emergency room closures are threatening to withhold tax dollars to the province if their concerns aren't taken seriously.
The mayors of Port McNeill, Clearwater, Barriere, Ashcroft and Fort St. John say that their small-town communities have struggled with rolling ER closures, and several of their residents have died while waiting for an ambulance to arrive.
Clearwater Mayor Merlin Blackwell, who has been sounding the alarm all summer about closures at Dr. Helmcken Memorial Hospital's emergency department, said the rural mayors want to work co-operatively with health authorities and the Health Ministry to come up with solutions to the healthcare staffing crisis.
But if they continue to be shut out of the conversation, holding back taxes could be an option that gets the province's attention.
“The one large tool that we do have, that one hammer, is holding back on submitting taxation to the province and the health authorities until they really come to the table and listen to us,” Blackwell told Postmedia on Wednesday.
“We want to be listened to. We really want a proper seat at the table so that we're not just rubber-stamping the needs of hospitals and hospital boards who are not coming to the table for a two-way conversation.”
Last week, an infant in Barriere went into cardiac arrest while the closest ambulance was 64 kilometres away in Kamloops. In July and August, two seniors in Ashcroft went into cardiac arrest and died while waiting almost half an hour for paramedics to arrive. Both seniors were in medical distress in the same block as the ambulance station.
Fort St. John Mayor Lori Ackerman agreed that mayors in the Interior, who sit on the Thompson-Nicola Regional District, could withhold the district's 40 per cent share of capital costs from the health authority.
Ackerman admits that would be unprecedented, but “there's no precedent for anything in this conversation because our health care has never been this bad. We've not withheld funds before, but we've never had a reason to.”