Horgan’s ‘tongue in cheek’ joke offends Victoria couple who took out ad to find doctor

British Columbia’s premier has come under fire after he made a “tongue in cheek” reference to the couple who placed an ad in a Victoria-based newspaper to find a family doctor.

Premier John Horgan says he’s considering using the same approach as Janet and Michael Mort to pressure the federal government to increase health funding to provinces.

“Maybe I’ll take out an ad in the paper,” Horgan said Tuesday. “I don’t know, I suspect we’re gonna do that anyway, but I’ve been pretty candid with the Federal Government about this, as have my colleagues.

“Again, this isn’t a question of partisanship. It’s not a question of a region. It’s the whole country,” Horgan said.

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But Mort says she’s offended by the premier’s response, especially since she and her husband were forced to resort to desperate measures to find a doctor for 82-year-old Michael.

She says her decision to place an ad in the Times Colonist worked, but left her with deep concerns about B.C’s health care system.

“No one in government helped me with it, we did that ourselves,” she said. “I think if we had followed through I think about five doctors in Victoria would have taken Michael, but we took the first one.”

Mort, who’s an Order of B.C. recipient for her work in public education, says she’s written a letter to Horgan asking for a meeting to discuss repairing health care in B.C., with or without
federal help.

Horgan says Canada’s premiers lobbied the federal government for increased health funding last month during meetings in Victoria.

Meanwhile, the president of Doctors of B.C., Dr. Ramneek Dosanjh says the Mort’s situation is disheartening, and very telling of the current state of affairs.

“While I can’t comment on the specifics of this situation, what I can talk about is that we’ve got nearly one million patients in this province in the same predicament,” she said.

“It’s not acceptable. We have got to do better and the pressure is now on for our government partners to really deliver solutions that are meaningful and sustainable, and will definitely change the way our healthcare system is.”

Dosanjh says the current state of health care in the province “can no longer continue,” and stresses that her organization is advocating “tirelessly.”

“You trust us when you come to us in the clinic and in the hospital. Trust us; we are making as much effort as we can to really influence and change the way things are being done in this province,” she said.

With files from OMNI