We all want young people to thrive. They are our children, grandchildren, friends, and neighbours. Their wellbeing matters today — and our shared future depends on the lives they are able to build. Parties’ spending choices should reflect this commitment.

Yet BC’s 2026 budget plans to increase annual medical spending by $3.2 billion by 2028 — more than double the combined increase for K-12 education, child care, trades training, and social services. This works out to about $2,100 in additional annual spending per retiree, compared with roughly $440 per resident under 45. On top of this disparity, the province projects another $37 billion in deficits over the next three years — unpaid bills left for younger and future generations to shoulder.

As spending rises to meet the needs of an aging population, investments in the foundations of younger people’s wellbeing aren’t keeping pace. Status quo spending will only continue to shortchange younger people. 

This election, every party must commit to investing adequately in the building blocks of a healthy society — affordable housing and child care, quality education, adequate incomes, and a healthy environment — with the same urgency they bring to supporting our aging loved ones.

BC’s public accounts put last year's deficit at $7.7 billion, and a larger shortfall is projected this year.

Trump’s economic turmoil and threats to Canadian sovereignty create real fiscal pressures. But they cannot explain away a challenge that successive provincial governments failed to address long before he returned to office: the predictable rise in medical costs as our population ages.

Governments knew these costs were coming but did not adequately prepare revenue systems to cover them. When we blame these deficits on Trump's economic turbulence, we overlook this real, made-in-BC challenge. The longer we postpone that conversation, the higher the bill. 

Every party should explain how it will fairly fund the medical care our aging population needs. Without that plan, younger generations — already squeezed by BC’s exceptionally high housing costs — will inherit growing bills while investments in their own wellbeing fall further behind.

Too many British Columbians lack a family doctor, wait too long for medical services, or turn to emergency rooms because they have nowhere else to go. Parties must address these access problems. But recruiting more doctors from the US or elsewhere isn’t an adequate plan for better health.

Many British Columbians may be surprised to learn that BC already has far more doctors per capita than it did in the 1970s. Between 1976 and 2022, the number rose from 162 to 270 per 100,000 residents. Family doctors increased from 88 to 141.

These figures don’t discount the access challenges that need to be addressed in some communities. But they do show why parties must look beyond recruitment and ask: why is the line of patients needing care growing, and what can we do to shorten it?

Health science has long shown us that health doesn’t begin with medical care; it begins in the conditions into which we are born, grow, live, work, and age. All parties should commit to aligning their budgets with this science by investing more urgently in housing, education, child care, adequate incomes, and a healthy environment than they do in medical care.

BC used to follow this prescription, investing more in social services and education than in medicine. Today, the opposite is true. Finding a better balance between the care we need when we’re sick or injured, and the building blocks that help us stay healthy, is a central task for BC’s next government.