Pender Harbour and District Health Centre Society executive director Nick Gaskin appeared before the SCRD committee of the whole May 22 to present the centre’s five-year financial plan in hopes of convincing the elected before him to approve funding for a roof for the 50-year-old building in next year's budget process. The $92,250 request was deferred in the 2025 budget talks.
Over the past 15 years, the SCRD has supported the centre with $112,429 in targeted funding for capital projects, Gaskin shared.
Other capital projects the centre has undertaken include the $250,000 Primary Care Wing renovation (funded through the local Mey family’s donation, Sunshine Coast Healthcare Auxiliary and a fundraising campaign), which is under way with a July expected completion.
Other capital expenses to come before 2030 include a septic line replacement, furnace replacement, tree clearing, security system upgrades and repaving. The centre is currently looking at a $277,000 funding shortfall in its five-year financial plan, said Gaskin.
The re-roofing is necessary, says Gaskin, as the metal roof is showing signs of aging, including minor leaks. The centre doesn’t have another funding plan besides pulling on donation reserves, which he says “poses risks to organizational fiscal sustainability.”
As a community-led non-profit, the centre gets no core funding from the government –– and the Ministry of Health cut $170,000 of funding to the centre this year, said Gaskin. “Our partnering clinics have various other funding sources they can tap into, which we don't have access to as a community health centre.”
Gaskin said they’ve been lobbying for core operational funding from the province, but that the province has “yet to come to the table with that discussion.”
“Historically, they've given us an emergency grant every year for the last five or six years, and we've run our social work program, diabetes, CBM, adult day program through that emergency grant. But this year due to fiscal pressures at the ministry, they've pulled all the funding for [community health centres], and so we've lost some of those programs and had to cut back substantially,” said Gaskin. He added that for a little more than a decade they’ve had a service agreement with Vancouver Coastal Health, but that they “run an operational deficit of about $100,000 a year on that contract,” and have yet to have VCH come to the table to discuss renegotiation.
Vancouver Island Health (a separate health authority) has “gone heavily towards investing in health centres and small communities,” said Elphinstone director Donna McMahon. “Because we are attached to Vancouver Coastal Health, it's a different picture, and that's really unfortunate, because communities need health centres, in my opinion.”
“I think we do provide a really vital service at Pender Harbour, and we take away a lot of demand on other VCH services, such the hospital and other clinics,” said Gaskin, adding that previous requests for funding, such as with the primary wing upgrade, have been denied.
The centre, with 20 part-time and casual staff ranging from nurses, social workers, counsellors, dietitians, mental health assistants to operational and managing staff, averages around 20,000 visits a year, said Gaskin. “We want to be a community health centre that focuses on the social determinants of health, and we don't necessarily want to just be a primary care clinic.”
