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Wrong. There’s only the Parkland (Former Chevron) refinery left in the Lower Mainland and it hasn’t expanded. The supply to those refineries in Cherry Point Washington has. They make both Parkland and PG look puny.
It amounts to prices dropping all over, in all of Canada except for us in northern BC. Perhaps the refinery in PG is at capacity, but the cost to bring refined fuel from Edmonton hasn’t increased. No one is offering a legit explanation.
You’re also stuck in the past with your anti-green alternatives and EV rants. XERO percent of EVs in BC require coal. And if you can’t plug in at your home or apartment, that isn’t the EVs fault in the least. Just as it isn’t the EVs fault some corporate chargers goiuge as much as the oil companies.
Drive through southern Alberta and see all those tractors haying amongst the wind turbines. No damn excuse that’;s not happening everywhere else, especially in BC.
The problem IS that we dragged our ass too long, just like we did on LNG exports.
If you’re wondering where I get some of this from, my sister & I both worked summers at the Chevron refinery in college. Dad retired as their PR guy. My in-laws bought a cabin Washington, they renamed the area something marketable. Nice harbour view out the front window. Ugly mess refineries out the back. Spindly trees that will hide them in a few more decades.
You’re railing against the inevitable.
Wrong. There’s only the Parkland (Former Chevron) refinery left in the Lower Mainland and it hasn’t expanded. The supply to those refineries in Cherry Point Washington has. They make both Parkland and PG look puny.
You’re misunderstanding what I wrote. I have not said or suggested that Parkland is part of the cost reduction in gasoline or that their output of gasoline has expanded. It is the refined fuels from Alberta that have increased in delivery via the pipeline. This is the volume that was previously unable to ship through the single pipeline due to crude volume requirements to facilities such as Cherry Point and elsewhere. The excess refined product was sent via rail which added considerable cost to consumers.
While the pipeline tolls on sending gasoline through the TMPL since expansion completion has increased by ~$0.059/L, it is offset from the $0.20-0.30/L reduction in shipping costs from using rail.
That said, throughputs at the Burnaby key point has increased significantly between Q1 and Q2 of 2024. The Burnaby key point delivers ~55,000 b/d to the Parkland Refinery while also delivering refined petroleum products for use in Burnaby and surrounding areas. Parkland supplies roughly ~25% of GVA’s gasoline and ~30% of YVR’s jet fuel. Those numbers are obviously capped by their own refining capacity, not that of Alberta.
Whether or not the observed discounts from the TMPL refined gasoline trickle up to where you are does not dismiss that they exist, and it has nothing to do with Parkland OR Tidewater Midstream.
Throughputs at the Burnaby key point have increased by 76.5% quarter over quarter, from an average of 7.67 thousand m3/d in Q1 2024 to an average of 13.53 thousand m3/d in Q2 2024 (most recent quarter of data).
It amounts to prices dropping all over, in all of Canada except for us in northern BC. Perhaps the refinery in PG is at capacity, but the cost to bring refined fuel from Edmonton hasn’t increased. No one is offering a legit explanation.
Does the Prince George Refinery not receive their feedstock from NE BC sources via the Pembina Western Pipeline System? The closest point to PGR along Segment 3 of the TMPL that runs between Mount Robson and Blue River is ~240 km away.
You’re also stuck in the past with your anti-green alternatives and EV rants. XERO percent of EVs in BC require coal. And if you can’t plug in at your home or apartment, that isn’t the EVs fault in the least. Just as it isn’t the EVs fault some corporate chargers goiuge as much as the oil companies.
I’ll wait patiently for you to quote where I said any EVs in BC runs on coal. Did I say it’s an EVs fault if the owner doesn’t have a place to charge it? What point or argument are you trying to make? I wrote, “BC is a great place for an EV if you can charge it at home and not use or pay for Supercharging.”, and “By contrast, Alberta running ~85% on natural gas and coal, with only 3% of there electricity coming from hydro. It makes a lot more sense to put wind turbines up in Alberta, than it does in BC, period.”
Drive through southern Alberta and see all those tractors haying amongst the wind turbines. No damn excuse that’;s not happening everywhere else, especially in BC.
Why do you feel we need many more wind turbines in BC? I presented several reasons why Alberta has more wind turbines than we do. All are valid, common-sense reasons that are not disputable. You probably noticed while you were in Sourthern Alberta admiring those turbines that it was windy out – nearly all the time, windy. That’s a rather unpleasant trait of living in the prairies, but it is fantastic for spinning wind turbines. I can’t say the same for Vancouver, Chilliwack, Kamloops, Kelowna, Prince George, etc. While there may be some appropriate locations to install turbines in BC, there also needs to be a requirement for it. If the province is already 98% “green”, what do we need thousands of additional wind turbines for at this point in time? You are aware that there are ~292 wind turbines in BC already and plans for more, right?
You’re railing against the inevitable.
I’m just being realistic. I have zero problems with the existence of EVs or renewable energy sources. As I said, “I would buy one, but I have nowhere to run a cable to charge a car where it wouldn’t cross a sidewalk or get stolen. Kind of the same problem people in condos and apartments currently have.”
I also have no problems with wind turbines. As I said, “Wind is a good solution for Southern Alberta, because they have a lot of it, and it’s an easy place to install turbines. They’ve already got the highway and road infrastructure to put these things up pretty well anywhere they want and they have a reason to do it - which we do not.
By contrast, Alberta running ~85% on natural gas and coal, with only 3% of there electricity coming from hydro. It makes a lot more sense to put wind turbines up in Alberta, than it does in BC, period.“
Have you made an argument that contradicts what I have already stated?
Here’s a few links to news articles and a study that discusses why there has been drop in price at the pumps due to the TMX completion.
Global News - Lower gas prices in Metro Vancouver linked to TMX pipeline
CityNews Vancouver – Gas prices drop across Lower Mainland; report suggests change related to Trans Mountain Pipeline
Yahoo Finance – Gas prices fall in B.C.; TMX pipeline to lower fuel costs
C.D. Howe Institute - The Big Squeeze: Lessons from the Trans Mountain Pipeline about the Costs of Invisible Bottlenecks
See the final paragraph of The Evolution of British Columbia Prices vs Alberta Prices for context on current discounts.
Here are a few links where you can see the sources and output of the Parkland and Tidewater Refineries in Burnaby and Prince George.
Tidewater Midstream - Prince George Refinery - Our Operations
https://www.tidewatermidstream.com/our-operations/
Parkland - Burnaby Refinery - About The Refinery
Here is the detailed map of the TMPL that shows it does not travel to the refinery in Prince George.
Canada Energy Regulator - Detailed Route maps for Trans Mountain Expansion Project
The problem IS that we dragged our ass too long, just like we did on LNG exports.
There is no problem is there? What is the problem? IIRC, BC is ranked ~5th for wind generation in the country and only <2% of electricity generation is from natural gas. Any new generation is likely going to come from wind, so the ratio of hydro/wind vs natural gas is only getting better, not worse.
There were/are several pending wind projects in BC, mainly in the northeastern part of the province. They became redundant and unnecessary when Site C was planned to move ahead.
Until we drastically increase our needs for more electricity, we simply don’t need more turbines at this time, but they’re ready to go in as soon as demand increases. They’re also small, easy to install and highly scalable, unlike a dam.
There is a push from the government and BC Hydro to electrify your vehicle and your home heating, that demand will eventually come around, but you can’t expect consumers to throw out a perfectly good furnace and install a heat pump, or throw out a perfectly good car and buy an EV, just because BC Hydro says they should. The adoption of heat pumps and EVs is more and more common, and therefore the demand for more electricity in BC will grow as demand for natural gas diminishes.
Don’t worry, wind turbines will be here when they’re needed with or without the Green Party. This scaling of an already adopted energy source should have nothing to do with an election policy. The Greens fake platform is pretending that they’ll be responsible for these new turbines going in, and they’ll try to fast-track the timeline by shutting down natural gas infrastructure. They’re essentially economic terrorists.
Their only motive is to irresponsibly fast-track a reduction of ‘fossil fuels’, even if the product is being exported to other countries and filling in for coal or oil fired power generation. It isn’t environmentally or economically responsible to fast-track electrification, but they’re pretending that it is.
To accomplish what? What immeasurable difference is that going to make in BC, or globally?
You can look at the largest automakers right now and how they’ve scaled back on EV production, laying off employees and closing plants across the globe because the demand for that product isn’t high enough yet to maintain profit margins. Volkswagen is considering closing plants in Germany, Ford has downsized EV production and transitioned a plant back to ICE production. Rivian may be bankrupt by Q1 2025, etc. As the market grows, there will be bigger successes beyond Tesla in this segment, but that push shouldn’t be coming from government policy. In the end, the consumer decides what it is they want to buy. If they want to buy an ICE and you’ve been forced to spend billions of dollars to design, develop, manufacture and market EVs, in an unrealistic timeframe - is that good for the economy, for jobs, for growth in that industry?
Currently there isn’t a huge demand for heat pumps in BC. New homes are still being build with natural gas furnaces, and I’ll be replacing my natural gas furnace with another one if I need to. In the not to distant future, if it’s economically feasible for me to due so, I’ll likely be heating my home with a heat pump and driving an EV because, why not?
Buisiness Intelligence For B.C. - Why wind power will dominate B.C.’s next power call
Yes the delivery of refined gas has improved since TransMountain. Obvious that prices dropped there somewhat. But remember the rest of their gas wasn’t shipped from Alberta by rail, it came from Washington State barely a hundred miles away.
It’s also down in price all over Canada.
My bitch is that after that drop, and with 20¢ transit tax on top, we’re paying more than that. Here in northern BC. It’s dropped only a couple cents since summer.
The green energy comments are in response to Rustad’s outright dismissal of wind & solar and the loudmouth blabbing about small nuclear as the solution which will put us 20 years behind.
Do something now, not hope for something better later.
It’s 2024 not 1957 expanding and deregulating primary resource extraction is not the most important issue, hell I remember my grandpa and friends griping about Canada’s dependence on that back in the early 1960s.
This is an election thread. Gas prices are not my #1 concern other than the gas tax is the only part of the price that benefits all of us.
Climate change and the decline of N central BC is. Doubling down on things that haven’t and don’t work is not.
Yes the delivery of refined gas has improved since TransMountain. Obvious that prices dropped there somewhat. But remember the rest of their gas wasn’t shipped from Alberta by rail, it came from Washington State barely a hundred miles away.
I’m not disputing that the volumes of refined products Edmonton does not supply come from additional sources such as Parkland, Tidewater Midstream or from Washington state, etc. As for what was being shipped by rail from Alberta, I have assumed it was strictly crude in the past but recent articles may suggest they occasionally contained refined products that may or may include diesel, jet fuel or gasoline, which is what I wrote and it may be inaccurate to assume capacity of refined products have or will increase. That specifically is something I would need to read up on as the data becomes available.
Fortunately it makes no difference if rail bulkers contained strictly crude or not, the tolls still apply due to crude being otherwise displaced from the pipeline to a rail car to make space for refined products, or vice versa. My comment on the “gasoline” or “refined product” volume since the expansion being higher may not be accurate - it may be currently the same volume of refined products, with only a higher volume of various grades of crude. I have not seen any public data that shows what volumes of what products specifically travel down the original line vs the new line or what specifically was previously loaded in rail cars prior to April.
Overall, there is substantially higher capacity between the two lines since the expansion was completed at brought online which is reducing if not eliminating the requirements for rail shipments and is contributing to a drop in price.
I will need to watch the throughput charts for Burnaby to see if refined product volumes pick up over time which could be an indication – or not. Regardless of contents, gasoline is now cheaper, due to a volume reduction from rail and capacity increase in the pipeline(s) - which is what is relevant to your observations of lowering prices in Southern BC.
It’s also down in price all over Canada.
Exactly, the price of a barrel of oil has been on average, declining through the summer, which generally means the price of gasoline will follow – everywhere. If you look at the actual closing rates between Edmonton / Calgary gasoline prices vs Vancouver / Victoria gasoline prices over the same time, you’ll they’ve done more than drop with the market. Vancouver and Victoria prices have become closer to what the AB prices are. I assume gasoline prices in BC came up slightly at the beginning of the October while missiles from Iran were flying over my head on their way to Israel, as I was actively trading oil stocks during that week because of the high volatility in global oil prices.
Here’s some data I ploptted in Excel, grabbed from public fuel price data from statscan. You can clearly see the downward trend in both Alberta and BC over the summer, but since the pipeline has been brought online, the gap between AB and BC fuel prices has closed significantly, likely due to the toll reductions.
My bitch is that after that drop, and with 20¢ transit tax on top, we’re paying more than that. Here in northern BC. It’s dropped only a couple cents since summer.
You live in a remote community though, right? Have you compared your fuel price trends with other small villages throughout the country, or are you comparing your prices with GasBuddy or other online sources such as statscan that tends to provide better historical data for larger centers? Gas Buddy currently has no inputs for FSJ or Smithers. Rupert shows $1.769-1.823/L, Kamloops shows $1.539-1.669/L. Are you saying FSJ is significantly more expensive than $1.829? There could be a bias in your findings there if you’re no comparing apples to apples.
There could be other reasons such as freight cost to FSJ, empty return loads, fuel station maintenance and operating costs, etc. I don’t know what the answer is, but curious to know how much more expensive it is for you there, vs similar communities that require similar delivery costs.
The green energy comments are in response to Rustad’s outright dismissal of wind & solar and the loudmouth blabbing about small nuclear as the solution which will put us 20 years behind.
Do something now, not hope for something better later.
It’s 2024 not 1957 expanding and deregulating primary resource extraction is not the most important issue, hell I remember my grandpa and friends griping about Canada’s dependence on that back in the early 1960s.
- So you don’t actually care about the wind turbines not being here by the thousands, or you do?
- Hydro isn’t a clean enough energy source in your opinion?
- Should we shut down hydro generation and replace it with wind?
- What’s the concern with nuclear power, and how would it put us 20 years behind? My opinion is the entire world is 20 years behind on moving to nuclear.
- I don’t follow with the deregulating primary resource extraction not being an important issue statement. You said, “The problem IS that we dragged our ass too long, just like we did on LNG exports.”. So clearly, the approval processes have caused problems with industry and energy projects moving ahead in the past, and you’ve brought it up as being a problem. Why is it not a problem now? My only opinion on whatever is going on with the mining industry is that it needs to keep on track to provide revenue for services, create jobs and build an economy. All of those points are important, are they not? How do we fund education, our medical system and the homeless/drug addiction crisis without revenue from industry?
This is an election thread. Gas prices are not my #1 concern other than the gas tax is the only part of the price that benefits all of us.
Climate change and the decline of N central BC is. Doubling down on things that haven’t and don’t work is not.
Gasoline price and wind turbines seem to be what you’re most vocal about in this election thread beyond calling out the candidates for their opinions on matters that don’t align with yours. What is it that matters to you then? It sounds like environment might be a top priority, but I fail to see how we’re failing it in BC. Or how building turbines we don’t have a use for is going to change anything. Surely you’ve looked at global CO2 emissions and power generation methods vs our own right? Honest question, if not just BC, but the entirety of Canada slipped off into the ocean tomorrow, would it make any difference in CO2 emissions or the current rate of climate change?
I’m writing this from a wellsite in Iraq, where every cubic foot of gas is being burned because they don’t have the infrastructure to use it for electricity or heat. Instead, they run diesel generators to supplement the government supplied electricity that runs for between 2 and 12 hours a day. Diesel costs about $0.50/L here and gasoline is slightly more than that. Just 1 amp of electricity runs about $10-15 dollars with 6A continuous service being around $86/month… for 6 Amps.
BC isn’t going to make a dent in global emissions if we stopped using hydrocarbon fuels tomorrow. Canada as a whole is, ~1.4% of the planet’s emissions. Roughly ½ of that is from transportation and household heating. So lets say 0.8% of the worlds CO2 emissions could be reduced if all of Canada stopped driving cars and stopped heating their homes. BC’s emissions are 34% below the national average, but if we divided as being 12.8 % of the population, that’s 0.096% of a difference.
Is there actually a meaningful difference to be made by hasty policy? Why is gasoline price such an issue to you? Do you drive so much that the $0.20/L difference is weighing on you financially?
For myself, my truck is about $300-350 to fill and my boat is roughly the same, so I keep an eye on fuel prices across the province more than most likely do. $700 every few days adds up in the summer, so GasBuddy is pulled out anytime I’m heading to the pumps because a $0.20/L difference between stations could be nearly $80 dollars otherwise thrown away, per fill. Unless you’re getting 10 mpg like I am, I’m not sure how you can be so upset about an ~11-15% difference in fuel costs between a major city directly connected to a Suncor distribution terminal, vs a small remote village - to confirm, you do live in Fort St James, right?
Housing… This guy mimics my thoughts on how the Conservatives are taking a more fiscally responsible approach allowing the private sector to do its thing with less government oversight, while the NDP is set to control the entire process whether investors and municipalities like it or not. They have some good zoning reform changes that could work, but at the same time have taken a shitty stance against the investors/capital and have greatly screwed up on the stricter tenancy laws. Overall I think the NDP has a less favorable platform for creating affordable housing.
As he puts it, “they are chasing capital out of the province”
I also agree with his perspective that if you run a good economy, houses will get built on their own.
On paper it sounds good when Conservatives say let’s get government out of everything and let the free market sort it out. Let’s make healthcare and education private, and take away regulations for loans. America does this failed form of government every so often. In 2008 Obama had a disaster to clean up after 8 years of the Bush administration.
In 2015 Canada rejected Stephen Harper. Now everyone hates Justin. I suspect if Rustad is elected that BC residents will after a time collectively say: “Right, now I remember why we voted out the Liberals.”
There must be a middle ground here. Heathcare and Education are very different topics because they’re not for the most part privately funded. The home building industry has no business (in my opinion), being controlled by an entity that isn’t funding it. Builders and developers should have say in what they want to invest in. If the projects are not profitable, or not likely to sell, they’ll just go somewhere else. Meanwhile, you’ve got landlords across the province selling off their rentals and 2nd homes due to shitty policy from the NDP. We’ll be getting rid our rental condo once the current tenant is done at this rate. It’s no longer a worthwhile investment.
That said, I do think there should be more private health care in Canada. Having a two-tier system shouldn’t be looked at as a negative thing. Didn’t we go through this with MRI machines a decade or more ago? I feel whenever something good comes from the private sector, the left gets upset and complains someone is making too much money, etc.
I respectfully disagree. For profit medicine does not benefit the average poor person or worker in BC. Rich people will always be able to jump to the head of the line. If less money is invested in public health care then the availability of doctors will decline for people who can’t afford private medicine. We have a doctor shortage across BC.
As a taxpayer I resent the fact that my tax dollars help to fund private schools here in BC. I have no problem with parents sending their kids to private schools. Just don’t ask me to pay for it. I want my tax dollars funding public education. Build more schools and hire more teachers and EAs.
I’m not suggesting that less money should be invested into the public health care system, only that it shouldnt be frowned upon for those that can afford private care to have it available for them.
Currently it seems people just fly to another country for medical services that they’re not getting in a timely or satisfactory manner here.
Not only are those individuals arguably paying more than their fair share in taxes by but they’re funding addition equipment, facilities, doctors, and removing themselves from a already overwhelmed healthcare queue.
As a tax payer, I resent the fact that there are safe use drug sites, that our government decided to legalize their drug use in public spaces and that there are now proposals to let these people use inside of a hospital.
I resent that the judicial system does nothing to repeat offenders while we spend tax dollars tasking the RCMP with this nonesense catch and release game, and that fire crews daily routine is attending to overdoses and mental health episodes.
What do you figure will attract doctors to BC? Salary? Reduced workload? Reduced living costs? The NDP and Greens seem to hate people who earn as much as doctors, maybe backing off on discriminatory taxation might be a start?
I do believe that private health care (for a fee) is available in many locations if you have the money…in fact medical tourism is I believe fairly profitable business wise (bon voyage).
Although you don’t believe less money should be spent on public health care where do you envision the necessary resources ( human and otherwise) for operating private health care will come from? Finally, what is your argument against the upper courts in Canada deciding that health care should be based on need rather than profit?
From the consumers of that health care, perhaps even discounted rate time to the public system that’s at a rate below the equivalent of buying new equipment and staffing contacts… Why would the upper courts have anything to discuss and why should they have a say in someone who wants to seek medical assistance on their dollar while providing more access to those who cant?
Maybe you could even keep the public system as it is with the allowance of people to pay for services for faster service if they’re able to - that could become a controversial topic, but it would also pump money into the public system. The payments from private customers would supplement existing wage of doctors and nurses and even fund new equipment and staff to supplement the public health care when not being utilized by paying patients.
If medical tourism is quite profitable elsewhere, why can’t it work as a local service here with the only change being those facilities and doctors also take the overflow of the public healthcare system when it isn’t booked up?
Could that not work? Doesn’t it already exist here? Isn’t that where the private MRI clinics came from? To an extent, what I’m talking about already exists here, but it’s constantly contested.
I can’t find an article because this was a long time ago, but didn’t a bunch of MRIs become purchased by private clinics in BC with the agreement to allow the public sector access to them, back in the early 2000s?
Maybe there isn’t enough interest in it, but companies like PriorityMRI in Richmond offer MRI services from single body part to full body for $800-$2300.
It would even be nice to be able to pay something on top of a free bloodwork exam for example to have a wider range of analysis rather than what you were sent for. It sounds like a lot of things go missed because they weren’t called for on a referral. What would be the harm in paid additions to existing services such as this?
From the consumers of that health care? Doctors, nurses, specialized medical equipment would come from the consumers? Doctors, nurses, specialized medical equipment and knowledge are a scarce resource (the US is a different medical system and - not necessarily widely admired) and although unclear your solution appears to potentially distress the public system even further - could you explain how it would work?
Your might want to google the case involving Dr. Brian Day and the Cambie Medical Clinic in British Columbia to answer your question about the upper courts being involved: those names might not be accurate but should get you to an answer.
As for taxes: they are a way of being privileged to be part of a community: a right of passage - the community you are part of determines how they are spent through a democratic process. If you want to pump money into the public system advocate for increased taxation of those wealthier not decreased taxation. Use your vote wisely - it has a hell of a lot more purchasing power than you may think.
A political rant about health care does not make good policy.
I must not be understanding the argument, or you’re not understanding what I’m trying to say.
There seems to be a concern that we don’t have enough doctors, and we want to retain more of them in BC. There may also be inadequate facilities and equipment needed for those facilities to operate as intended. Waiting times / queues for ER, surgery, treatments are longer than they should be and many people regardless of their income are not getting the screening they need to prevent the spread of diseases such as cancer, before it’s too late to treat. Is that agreeable so far?
What I’m not understanding is how a proposal to supplement the current health care budget with private funds cannot pay for staff or equipment, or, that it will somehow degrade the quality and timeliness of treatment for those that don’t choose to use it. How could bringing in more professionals and equipment, while potentially reducing the current queues potentially distress the public system even further? Couldn’t this even retain doctors and nurses that wouldn’t otherwise come to BC to work in both public and private cases, with a reduced cost to the public health system?
I’ll make up an example…
I used the MRI clinic as an example. Are you under the impression that the BC Government purchased their equipment and pays the staff at that clinic to operate the machine? Or is the $2300 dollar per visit fee from patients paying for most if not all of that cost? If you purchase a high-end MRI for $1,000,000 and have 5 staff with an annual salary of $150,000, over 5 years the cost of the initial machine and 5 years of salary would be ~$4.75M, at 2300 a visit that’s 2065 scans over 1820 days, or only 1.13 scans per day to cover that investment. After the ROI of the MRI, you’re at less than 1 scan per day to pay for the staff.
You would now have 5 new health care professionals working in the industry, paying ~$1.5M back into the tax system annually, a new $1M MRI machine and thousands of imagine appointments removed from the public health care queue, and an available MRI to assist with the others in the queue.
Obviously the costs, salaries, facility, maintenance, etc will not be as above, but this is how I imagine “how it would work”.
What’s broken with this idea that is causing degradation to the public health care system rather than supplementing it? If nothing, why can’t this be scaled more closely along side the rest of the system, rather than just specialized imaging appointments?
Looking up Dr. Brian Day, the Cambie Surgery Centre is still operating today. The lawsuit appears to have been filed by the Cambie Surgery Centre and patients versus the Medical Services Commisions claiming they were being denied the ability to fund their own access to care, rather than receiving it in order based on medical priority. Whereas the MSC and Supreme Court Justice John J. Steeves are “ensuring access to necessary medical services is based on need and not the ability to pay”.
This is where I’m suggesting they should NOT have a say in what a private clinic is doing, unless they’re also funding that clinic to operate. I’m not sure of the circumstances of how that worked(s) with the Clinic back in 2009 when this case was brough to the courts.
it seems nonsensical to me to stand firmly with the belief that everyone deserves the same level of healthcare in order or need, when the the current system isn’t capable of caring for the people in order of need, or otherwise. If the provincial system isn’t capable to caring for the population, I don’t see any reason why a 2nd system can’t co-exist to move extend care to more patients, more quickly. Surely with some healthcare reform, it can be achievable to further increase the capacity of the public healthcare system with some private heath care investments?
Maybe I don’t get it.
I don’t follow with the privilege statement. I don’t want to misinterpret what you’re saying. It doesn’t appear to me that I can decide where the community I live in spends the taxes I pay, at a municipal, provincial or federal level.
I spend about 6 months of the year in Canada and use very little of the public services and infrastructure, I don’t agree with where my taxes are spent, and the city I live in has degraded heavily in recent years due to poor decisions and bad policy from those who collect my taxes - which is greatly reducing my quality of life and willingness to stay in the city, or even the country. With any attempt to get further ahead, save for retirement or invest for my family’s future, I feel the government just tries to take more from those that are succeeding at their chance to retire or provide for their children beyond the minimum means.
It feels like the life-goal in Canada is to pay your house off before you’re unable to continue working, just so you can sell it, and hopefully live on the equity. The current generation entering the workforce has a significantly lower chance to own a home or meet that “goal”. It doesn’t seem like much of a privilege.
As previously mentioned, the red-tape holding back industry in this country is what’s holding back all public services. The Greens want to continually reduce our ability to export natural resources and make this country rich enough to have the education and health care system that we deserve. Instead, we’re arguably one of the most resource rich countries on the planet with one of the smallest populations and we can’t figure out how to staff an ER or school room, provide clean drinking water, or maintain critical infrastructure. Instead, we rely on taxation to replace industry and economy and it isn’t working. We could be better off than Norway, easily.
Instead, we’re arguing about why a different province that doesn’t have access to hydro power is installing wind turbines, and why we don’t have them. Or that to most obvious and clean future source of electrical generation globally, isn’t something we want to have. That everyone needs to see the same doctor or it isn’t ethical, etc.
Fix the economy, become resource rich and sail away from this embarrassment.
Thank you for your imaginary scenario. If you would cost out real world scenarios that would be more helpful in the discussion.
I pointed to Dr. Day and the Cambie clinic in respect to a legal case.But having checked it out does it not state it is a free standing private hospital that people from all around the world travel to ( medical tourism?).That it seems to me is what you were arguing for in your cash for care scenario! You want to pay for care because you can afford: could that be an option?
Thank you for your imaginary scenario. If you would cost out real world scenarios that would be more helpful in the discussion.
No, that isn’t my expertise, but you’re welcome to show me how a private healthcare provider is unable to operate independently or in conjunction as a supplement to the public health care system if you feel it is necessary. You’re more than aware that my imaginary scenario is exactly that, to aid in the discussion. If something as simple as an MRI clinic can’t work (there are several) – what are the multitude of private clinics in the province doing differently to successfully operate. Do they or do they not employ medical professionals and supply medical equipment that are, or could be potentially supplemental to our public health system?
I pointed to Dr. Day and the Cambie clinic in respect to a legal case. But having checked it out does it not state it is a free standing private hospital that people from all around the world travel to ( medical tourism?). That it seems to me is what you were arguing for in your cash for care scenario! You want to pay for care because you can afford: could that be an option?
Opening a hospital for ‘medical tourism’ as you put it certainly wasn’t a specific direction or recommendation I made, just an example to demonstrate privately funded health care must be sustainable if it exists. I may misunderstand, but there seems to be doubt from you that such a facility could operate on the payments from just patients. Are all of these private health care facilities subsidized by their local governments as a requirement to survive?
First you asked me, “Although you don’t believe less money should be spent on public health care where do you envision the necessary resources (human and otherwise) for operating private health care will come from?” and when presented with the explanation that patients (consumers) that use the service could possibly fund the service you replied, “From the consumers of that health care? Doctors, nurses, specialized medical equipment would come from the consumers?”.
Clearly I’m misunderstanding where you’re saying this can’t work. You’re acknowledging that private hospitals of medical tourism not only exist but are fairly profitable, that the Cambie Surgery Center exists and was started as an alternative treatment center to the public system, and that you “believe that private health care (for a fee) is available in many locations". What is your argument to say these facilities “distress the public system”.
For example, if Cambie Surgery Center began performing joint replacements, and there is otherwise a 1 year waitlist for a knee replacement in the public system, would that 1 year waitlist not reduce? What if public health care only had a 1 year wait list because they had insufficient bed space to get the volume of patients through, but CSC could provide bed space AND the professionals to carry out the surgery. Wouldn’t that be a cheaper alternative for the public health care system to speed up the queue, rather than building their own facility and hiring more staff and equipment?
I believe I clearly stated that one idea might be to allow sharing of the privately paid clinics/hospitals to take on patients from the public system to speed up the wait times and reduce the load on the public system without the cost of running those entire centers coming out of the public health care budget.
to be absolutely clear, you don’t think it’s possible for a doctor or a piece of equipment to see patients from both queues without degrading public heath care? Why not?
There could be a thousand different ways this could be set up. Use your imagination.
Best I can understand, Dr. Day founded the Cambie Surgery Center as a for-profit clinic in 1995 and it operated as such until they received the order to stop. It currently employs 50 full time and part-time nurses and 125 doctors with up to 5000 patients a year for various surgeries. Wikipedia says this may be the busiest private hospital in Canada.
Here are two notices they have posted on their website, demonstrating that they are not operating at the level of care they could be due to government restrictions.
“Cambie Surgery is not yet currently not permitted to perform total hip, knee, and shoulder replacements, but are in the process of applying for approval”
“Due to the B.C. Court of Appeal decision, our B.C. surgeons are no longer permitted to provide private surgery or consultations for B.C. residents. This does not apply to cosmetic surgeries, exempt groups covered under 3rd-Party insurers, or individuals not covered under B.C. MSP (i.e. reside in B.C. on a VISA). Some restrictions do apply.”
Surely there is a way to allow both sides to work together as one team and alleviate some of the load on the public health care system when needed, while also attracting doctors, surgeons, nurses, imaging techs, that may not otherwise choose to work directly for our public health system - be it the location, the pay, or any number of reasons.
OR
We could just spend more on public health care. Is there an issue beyond funding? Can’t government revenue pay for funding? Wasn’t the Pacific Northwest LNG terminal (PNW) supposed to bring in $1.3B in annual government revenue, but we held it up for long enough that the feasibility of the project declined and Petronas lost interest and abandoned the it? Can’t projects like that help fund our health care and education systems? Shouldn’t we push harder to approve such projects in the interest of national wealth, health and prosperity?
The issue is that private healthcare can exist in Canada, but it’s very expensive, and so is private “full coverage” insurance. Because it has to compete with “free.”
So what a lot of people want is to have doctors, clinics, labs, to be able to do both “public” and “private” work at the same time.
This is problematic, because it means people want the public taxpayers to effectively subsidise private health care.
You can’t get a private clinic or private hospital to be profitable, because it has to pay doctors, nurses more than they would get working for the public system.
That’s why private medical tourism is usually in places where you can pay doctors and nurses a lot less than they would make here.
If you think private health care would be profitable, then you’re more than welcome to set up a hospital, or a clinic. These already exist. But you shouldn’t expect the public to subsidise the salaries of your employees, or of your lab equipment, or whatever.
So they finally released the costing of their platform and it turns out, a bigger deficit than either the NDP or Greens.
Can’t even claim to be fiscal Conservatives anymore. Just social conservatives.
Weirdos, regressives. Surprised there shitty education policy doesn’t include banning girls from wearing jeans. And their ad campaign of 100$ misinformation, to the extent of a fake FB page claiming to be the BCRCMP.
Appreciate Orangetang’s deep dig into gas prices, but yeaterday a friend came back from Vancouver and wanted to know why gas was still almost 20¢/L more here. It did go down a nickel
This is disingenuous. It should say “B.C. Surgeons who are paid by public dollars”
Why should taxpayers have to subsidise for-profit private health care?
This is the playbook, though, right? Public Risk, Private Profit.
The reverse question should be asked – why can’t a private clinic pay for its own doctors and equipment?