PUTTING HUGE BURDEN ON ALREADY OVERTAXED TAXPAYERS
PROVINCE DOESN'T HAVE THE MONEY & IS NOT FULLY COMMITTED
LOCAL TAXPAYERS ASKED TO SUSTAIN THE UNSUSTAINABLE!
Unsustainable Means Unsustainable — So Why Are Taxpayers Being Forced to Carry It?
There is something deeply unfair about what is happening with the Nanaimo hospital tax increase.
Janice Perrino has now openly acknowledged two things. First, the current model requiring Regional Hospital Districts to fund 40 per cent of major hospital projects is unsustainable. Second, households are already being stretched. Those are important admissions. Because once you admit the model is unsustainable, the obvious question is not how to press harder on taxpayers. The obvious question is why taxpayers are being asked to carry it anyway.
That is the contradiction at the heart of this whole debate.
British Columbia’s own budget projects a $13.309 billion deficit for 2026/27, with taxpayer-supported debt forecast to rise to $189.0 billion by 2028/29. At the same time, the Province’s public budget language still describes Nanaimo Regional General Hospital expansion as the launch of initial planning, not a fully secured construction commitment.
So what exactly is happening here?
Local taxpayers are being told they must pay much more now, even though the larger funding partner is a province already buried in deficits and debt, and even though the project itself is still publicly framed at the planning stage. That is not funding certainty. That is front-loading risk onto the local taxpayer.
And there is another part of this that should trouble people even more. The NRHD’s own public material says it typically provides 40 per cent of the funding for capital equipment and major capital projects, with the remaining 60 per cent coming from the Province or donations. Yet by Perrino’s own explanation, local taxpayers are already being used to help push early project work forward before the larger provincial construction commitment is publicly locked in. That may not be the same as paying the Province’s whole share outright, but it certainly looks like local taxpayers are being asked to carry more of the early burden than they should.
Supporters of the tax hike keep saying this approach will “save interest.”
But that only looks true if you stare at the government ledger and ignore the people paying the bill.
Government can usually borrow more cheaply than struggling households can. So if the Board reduces borrowing on its own books by taxing harder now, while residents respond by leaning further on credit lines, card balances, or deferred payments, then the interest has not been saved. It has simply been moved — from a lower-cost public borrower to higher-cost private borrowers.
That is not fiscal prudence. That is cost shifting.
You do not need formal accounting training to recognize when something is financially unsound. As the old saying goes, when your outgo exceeds your income, your upkeep becomes your downfall. That applies to governments as surely as it does to households. When deficits become routine, debt keeps climbing, interest costs grow, and taxpayers are constantly asked to carry more, the issue is not complexity. The issue is discipline. What we are seeing more and more is not careful fiscal management, but a pattern of overspending, cost-shifting, and political avoidance dressed up as planning.
No one disputes that Nanaimo needs better hospital infrastructure. The hospital is old. Capacity is tight. The need is real.
But real need does not justify an unfair financing model.
If the Province has not publicly secured the construction money, if the Province’s own finances are already under severe strain, and if the local funding formula is admitted to be unsustainable, then the answer should not be to hammer taxpayers now and hope the rest works out later.
Because if a program is unsustainable, then forcing already struggling taxpayers to sustain it is not leadership.
It is desperation dressed up as planning.
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