As of April 1, 2025, over $150,000 in health service funding has been cut from Galiano Island — part of a broader $400,000 loss across the Outer Gulf Islands (Galiano, Mayne, Pender, and Saturna).

These grants funded essential programs such as nursing, mental health outreach, and social supports — services that many in our community depend on.

Additional Letter for Reference

Letter Regarding Recent Cuts to Health Services

May 30, 2025

To: Hon. Josie Osborne, BC Minister of Health
Debra Toporowski, MLA, Parliamentary Secretary Rural Health
Cynthia Johnson, BC Deputy Minister of Health
Leah Hollins, Island Health Chair
Kathy MacNeil, Island Health CEO

Re: Request to re-establish grant funding for the Outer Gulf Islands.

Health services on the Outer Gulf Islands (OGI), Galiano, Mayne, Pender and Saturna, are
provided in partnerships between community-based Health Societies, Island Health, the BC
Ministry of Health and the BC Association of Community Health Centres (BCACHC).

This spring, Island Health and BCACHC (MOH funded) informed the OGI Health Societies,
without prior notice, that over $400,000 in grant funding, about 15% of their combined
operating budgets that these remote communities rely on to deliver essential health services,
has been terminated as of April 1, 2025, some of it retroactively.

The lack of consultation and absence of advance notice of the funding cuts is jeopardising the
OGI Health Societies’ ability to deliver quality and necessary health services.

• It will have a severe impact on the Societies’ ability to deliver primary care and mental
health services. Although the Ministry of Health and Island Health fund physicians, nurse
practitioners, community health nursing, limited mental health programming and
laboratory services on these islands, the facilities in which these professionals work, as
well as any allied support services, are mainly provided by the Health Societies. While
the Societies receive some overhead support, it is inadequate to cover the full cost for
these services.

• The Societies will be forced to reduce or cancel health services, such as First Call Nurses
and in practice nursing support, mental health outreach services, and social work
coordination, which rely heavily on grant funding from Island Health and the Ministry of
Health via BCACHC along with community donations and various foundations.

• The loss of patient services, such as practice based nursing and mental health supports,
will affect the capacity of our primary care practitioners and make recruitment and
retention more difficult in the long-term and jeopardise access by OGI residents to
primary care services.

• The Societies will face increasing financial pressure with limited ability to find alternative
revenue sources to cover the reduction in grant funding, resulting in lay-offs, reduction
in services, and diverting donations earmarked for capital upgrades to operations.

• In the long term there is a negative impact on our capacity to implement or use any
additional practitioner resources that might come through the OGI-Salish Sea Primary
Care Network Proposal, that was designed and scaled to address unmet needs, not
mitigate the loss of these grants.

The OGI Societies have been working hard for several years on a collaborative approach for
health services planning and delivery for our 7,000 residents and seasonal surge populations,
and were optimistic that we could work with our partners to develop an innovative Community
Health Centre model, a priority of the Provincial Government. These recent fiscal actions not
only discourage the volunteer-driven activities, but actively work against such a priority.

Funding needs to be re-established as soon as possible in an appropriate manner.

Signed:

Abbie Hain RN, PhD, Chair, Mayne Island Health Centre Association
Elizabeth Whynot, MD, Chair, Galiano Health Care Society
Bruce Waygood, President, Pender Islands Health Care Society
Eva Hage, Chair, Saturna Health Services Committee

cc.: Rob Botterell, MLA, Saanich North and the Islands
Erin Price-Lindstrom, Rural Site Director, Island Health
Kelly McQuillen, Executive Director Primary Care MOH
Valerie St. John, BCACHC Executive Director

Appendix: Description of Grant Funding Cuts

Before reviewing the specifics of these cuts, it needs to be stressed that medical providers on
the Gulf Islands spend 20-40% of their time attending to urgent and emergent care due to
seasonal surge populations and unattached patients.

On Galiano.

• Two BCACHC grants were terminated: $85,300 First Call and in Practice Nurse and
  $69,500 Mental Health Outreach.
• Clinic RN and first call nurse: often the first point of contact for patients, backs up offisland on-call physician on weekends, manages chronic conditions, supports stabilized
  patients requiring emergency care, enabling the understaffed MD’s (1.8 FTE) to continue
  to see patients rather than attending to one patient until evacuation.
• Mental health and wellness outreach worker manages 80 to 100 interactions per month
  with those normally beyond the reach of our limited primary care services, and has
  likely saved lives.
• Together, these team members create a holistic approach to healthcare, making a
  significant difference in the well-being of the community despite the challenges of
  understaffing and shortage of overhead funding.
• The RN and Mental Health resources take significant pressure of the practitioners,
  having an irrefutably positive affect on both retention and recruitment and ultimately
  ability to address a wait list of over 230 patients.

On Mayne.

•  BCACHC grant $168,000 2024-2025 with surplus roll over for FY 2025-2026 awarded for
  realizing strengthened administrative capacity and clinical service at the clinic:
  upgraded EMR implementation, provider/MOA EMR training, hiring of a part time
  administrator (0.4 FTE) and a preventative health and wellness coordinator (0.5 FTE),
  sourcing part-time social work (0.2 FTE) and first call RN (0.2 FTE) services.
• With 2 FTE unfilled provider positions for the past two years, Mayne Island’s lone family
  practice physician has an untenable clinical and administrative load.
• Over 60% of the island population (1300) are ineligible for anything other than
  emergent care at the clinic.
• >50% of the island population seek difficult to access, episodic primary care off island.
• Growing health clinic administrative demands, including service planning for the Salish
  Sea PCN decreases provider capacity for patient care, and requires reliance on
  significant volunteer hours for clinic operations.
• This 2024-2025 grant, with surplus roll over to 2025-2026 is the first step towards
  creating a turn key health clinic with a dedicated administrative and program
  management; a crucial component toward the attraction and retention of future
  primary care providers.
• Mayne Islands Health Care Association serves as an advocacy Society, providing direct
  day-to-day health clinic administration volunteer hours and running health programs
  with revenue from grants. In cooperation with the other islands, Mayne is in a process
  of changing to be similar to Galiano and Pender in the way they operate turn-key clinics
  in order to attract future healthcare providers to vacant positions, implement a
  succession plan for administration of the health clinic, and deepen capacity to
  administer grant-based prevention and wellness services.
• Cuts to future BCACHC grants will have a significant negative impact on our momentum
  toward building a stable, turn key health clinic that serves the primary health care needs
  of all Mayne island community members, and one that attracts and retains fulfilled
  clinicians and staff.
• Properly supported clinics should remove the possibility that Island Health will have to
  take over the administration of the clinics.
• BCACHC cuts could mean the layoff of our newly hired part time administrator and
  wellness coordinator FY 2026-2027, closure of the social work part time service,
  restricted health grant applications due to decreased capacity to professionally
  administer programs, no capacity to respond to 2025 at risk population needs
  assessment and canceling implementation of the first call nurse.

On Pender.

• $90,000 per year: Closer-to-Home grant from Island Health.
•  A legacy funding arrangement in place for 30 years; terminated with little notice.
• Funded phlebotomy services, mental health programming and community wellness
  programs/volunteer coordination and administrative support for all three areas.
• The loss of funding has either eliminated or will compromise provision of these three
  key services in our rural and remote community.
• Limited alternatives on-island for mental health support and no alternative to
  phlebotomy services should that be affected long-term.
• Accessing alternative services off island comes at a higher cost to both the patient/client
  personally and the healthcare funds.
• Phlebotomy service at about 2100 draws per year saves MoH $115,500 in BC Ferry
  Travel Assistance Program (TAP) forms; much more than the costs of providing a remote
  service.
• Grant was in effect “team-based” funding, and was cancelled because Island Health has
  no mechanism to deal with team-based funding.
•  The Society is bearing some of the continuing costs of the phlebotomy service as it was
  in the middle of accreditation, and the lay-off provisions for two mental health
  counsellors.
•  Pender echoes the concerns raised by Galiano about mental health services.

On Saturna.

• Saturna has never received any grant funding for health services.