Hundreds rally in Surrey, B.C., as health minister under fire for continued ER closures across province

Hundreds of people gathered outside city hall in Surrey, B.C., Saturday to speak out against what they say is inadequate health care south of the Fraser.

"We do not have any of the interventions that we need south of the Fraser and that causes delay of care for us," Dr. Randeep Gill, an ER doctor at Surrey Memorial Hospital who led the event, said at the rally.

"Our population is exponentially growing and we have to take a stance now before it's too late."

Many in the crowd voiced their frustration with the provincial government. Protesters said Surrey residents get fewer health-care resources than elsewhere in the province. 

On Friday, Health Minister Adrian Dix highlighted progress on a 30-point plan to improve care in the Fraser Health region, including hiring more than 200 staff at Surrey Memorial.

Despite those improvements, Dix said long wait times aren't going away anytime soon.  

"We have more people in hospitals than ever before in our health care and we have more people working in the system than ever before," Dix said. "That demand is the new normal and we have to work to address it."

Concerns about access to and the quality of health care have been echoed across the province in recent weeks. 

In other parts of B.C., short-term closures of emergency rooms have become de rigueur and elected officials are putting pressure on the provincial government to step up.

In Oliver, a small desert community south of Kelowna, the emergency department at the South Okanagan General Hospital was closed for 24 hours over the Labour Day weekend and again Monday night.  

"I'm not getting any reassurance that [the province is] recognizing the seriousness of the issues that are going on," Mayor Martin Johansen told Chris Walker, host of CBC's Daybreak South.

"I really think the response from the ministry is pathetic. In my world, if you were functioning at this low level at any job, you would have been fired a long time ago."

Johansen said the problem in Oliver stems from multiple causes, including a lack of physician access to the province's rural locum program, a loss of the loan forgiveness program for nurses, and a population that swells with tourists in the summer. 

There's also the issue of an aging population that can be more difficult and time intensive to treat, he said.