Editorial cartoon of an ambulance blocked by a giant bureaucratic stamp while a distant hospital glows across the water
Cartoon: emergency care stalled at the paperwork barrier.
The Nanaimo Regional Hospital District says the province committed in fall 2024 to a cardiac catheterization lab at NRGH. In March 2026, the district said Victoria had accepted local funding for concept planning — while construction remained outside an authorized provincial build.

Nanaimo’s cardiac-care fight is no longer about whether the need has been identified. It is about why the Eby government is still leaving a life-saving regional service in the planning funnel after local taxpayers offered to help move it.

On October 13, the Conservative Party of BC said it would commit $60 million in provincial funding toward a cardiac catheterization lab at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital. NanaimoNewsNOW independently reported the pledge the same afternoon, including Brennan Day’s warning that serious heart-attack patients north of the Malahat can still face transfers to Victoria or the Lower Mainland for treatment that should be closer to home.

The geography matters. The Conservative release says the lab would serve more than 450,000 people across Central and Northern Vancouver Island. NanaimoNewsNOW’s 2025 year-end review described the same north-south divide: two cath labs in the capital region and none up Island, with advocates pointing to major differences in cardiologist access north and south of the Malahat.

The most damning part is the local financing record. The Nanaimo Regional Hospital District’s March 25, 2026 budget release says the province made a fall 2024 commitment to both a new patient tower and a cardiac catheterization lab at NRGH. It also says the province accepted the NRHD’s offer to pay for the concept plan for those projects. The hospital district further offered to pay for the subsequent business plan and the construction costs of the cath lab from existing reserves.

That is not a community sitting back and asking Victoria to do everything. It is a regional hospital district telling the province: we have reserves, we will front key costs, and we are ready to partner. The March release also says a 21 per cent tax increase for 2026 was needed to support contributions to priority projects and build reserves.

NanaimoNewsNOW reported in December 2025 that the hospital district unanimously approved up to $50 million to fully fund cath-lab construction, effectively loaning the province the money so the project could proceed. Yet by October 2026, the opposition was still able to make a $60-million cath-lab pledge because the project had not become a funded construction commitment from the NDP government.

The cautious, factual charge is this: David Eby’s government can point to concept planning, but concept planning does not treat a heart attack. It does not eliminate the transfer to Victoria. It does not answer why a fall 2024 promise still needs opposition pressure and local taxpayer reserves nearly two years later.

British Columbians should demand the missing ledger: the business-plan timeline, the provincial capital line, the Island Health service plan, the staffing plan, the procurement schedule, and the date when construction funding was — or was not — authorized. If the NDP believes planning is progress enough, it should say that plainly to every family north of the Malahat.

Sources and records