Editor:
Vancouver Coastal Health’s Chair Kip Woodward wrote to set Sunshine Coasters straight on alleged “facts” about Trellis’s Silverstone privatized residential care facility. He apparently believes us naive regarding knowledge of public financing.
Arguing for a private rather than a public sector solution to replace the current Totem and Shorncliffe residential care facilities, he stated: “VCH simply does not have the capital dollars to build a new facility. Nor does the government.” But apparently VCH does have the financial resources to buy 125 beds from the private sector, the cost of which will reflect the capital and operational costs plus corporate profit, each and every year, for decades to come.
To suggest that neither VCH nor the province has access to capital is ludicrous. How does Kip imagine the province funds various infrastructure, schools, computer systems and the like? It borrows, often via low-interest bonds, repaid over time. Because the province has the authority to tax, the risk of default is extremely low – it can borrow at substantially lower interest rates than the private sector should it choose to.
For Kip to argue that coastal concerns about maintaining publicly financed and delivered residential care for our seniors is “ideological” and risks denying seniors a new facility is disingenuous. The argument isn’t that private is bad, it’s that private is more expensive in the long run and less secure for residents, staff and our communities.
Public resources directed to boost private profits are simply not available to fund care or staff. But they frequently produce hefty financial contributions to provincial Liberal re-election coffers. That the province chooses not to use its financial borrowing advantage is ideological, and that’s a fact!
Jef Keighley, Surrey
