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B.C. Premier David Eby promised health-care fixes by the fall election, now he’s banking on illusions
Promised by the NDP to open in 2023, the new SFU medical school is now expected to open in 2026
VICTORIA — There was a ring of familiarity in the air this week as David Eby dusted off a promise from the last NDP election platform to show he is doing something about the current crisis in the health care system.
The setting was the Surrey campus of Simon Fraser University. The premier flanked by a supporting cast of ministers, MLAs and officials, declared “a resounding yes to a new medical school, the first new medical school in Western Canada in 55 years, right here in Surrey.”
This was hardly news. The New Democrats promised pretty much the same thing in their 2020 NDP election campaign.
The new SFU medical school was supposed to open its doors to the first class of doctors in September 2023. They’d be preparing for their second year of schooling about now if the NDP had managed to deliver on its election promise.
The school is now projected to open its doors at the end of summer 2026, presuming the new schedule is any more reliable than the one the New Democrats touted in 2020.