By Michelle Gamage
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

British Columbia is pausing construction on seven long-term care facilities as it searches for a way to reduce building costs.

The pause was announced as B.C. released its annual budget last week. During question period, Health Minister Josie Osborne said construction was being stopped while the province searched for ways to build the beds for less than $1.8 million each, which is what it currently costs.

Seven long-term care facilities in Abbotsford, Campbell River, Chilliwack, Delta, Fort St. John, Kelowna and Squamish have been put on hold indefinitely. Osborne said the projects are not cancelled.

“$1.8 million a bed simply isn’t sustainable. It’s time to step back, look at that and come up with new approaches,” Osborne said at a press conference Thursday morning.

The Ministry of Infrastructure is leading that review, she said.

B.C. is currently lagging behind in providing long-term care for seniors.

The province has a waitlist of 7,212 seniors, who are waiting an average of 290 days for a bed in a long-term care facility to open up, according to B.C.’s Office of the Seniors Advocate.

The number of people on the waitlist for long-term care has more than tripled over the last decade.

In December, Osborne told The Tyee B.C. would “stay focused on building new facilities” and that the province was “making up for a lack of investment [in long-term care] that we saw in years past.”

After the province announced its construction pause, Osborne said B.C. would “expand services for seniors throughout the entire continuum of care, so not just long-term care beds.”

This will include “innovative new approaches” like small care homes and a “program delivering care for seniors in need of that level of assistance right in their own home.”

B.C. is increasing home-support services and senior day programs, which offer respite for families, Osborne said.

The province needs to build out a continuum of care, invest in innovative new approaches and at the same time be building long-term care facilities, B.C. Seniors Advocate Dan Levitt told The Tyee.

He said the province calculates it will need to build an additional 16,000 beds by 2036 to meet the demands of an aging demographic. Over the next decade an additional 400,000 people will turn 65, “so we’re going to need more seniors care regardless of if it’s at home, in the community or in a care home,” Levitt said.

B.C. is “not even close to where it should be” when it comes to available long-term care beds, he added.

Over the past five years B.C. has built about five per cent more long-term care beds, bringing its total to around 30,000 across the province. But at the same time there was a 19 per cent increase in seniors, he said.

Levitt said that today B.C. is short about 2,000 beds. Over the next five years that will grow to 7,000 beds short.

“This is only going to get worse unless we build the infrastructure needed,” he said.

Data shows that the ongoing lack of long-term care beds is having an outsized impact on seniors, their families and health-care facilities such as hospitals, which are often operating beyond 100 per cent capacity.

A hospital patient who is too unwell to be safely discharged home but is not sick enough to require hospital care is referred to as an “alternate level of care,” or ALC, patient.

Many ALC patients are seniors with cognitive decline whose family or spouse is no longer able to safely care for them.

For 2024-25, the ALC rate for all hospitals across B.C. was just under 16 per cent, which is equivalent to about 1,600 beds, the Health Ministry previously told The Tyee.

That number can be higher in some areas, especially in smaller communities. At the qathet General Hospital in Powell River, for example, 10 of the 42 acute care hospital beds are occupied by seniors waiting for a bed in a long-term care facility.

On Thursday, The Tyee asked Osborne how the province would ease the strain on hospitals if it was pausing building the long-term care beds needed to reduce that strain.

Osborne responded that B.C. will continue to build out the long-term care system, including assisted living, and programs like long-term care at home. The province will also do “everything we can to prevent seniors from having to enter that type of care in the first place,” she said.

There’s “work that’s being undertaken for different and more innovative approaches to delivering long-term care,” she said. “We see a growing population of seniors. We know that it’s coming and we know that we have to be ready, and that’s why we’re taking the steps that we are.”

B.C. could do a lot more to support seniors living at home longer, Levitt said.

“Budget 2026 is not age-friendly,” he said. “This is not a senior’s budget.”

Levitt is worried that a combination of long-term care projects being deferred, property taxes being more expensive and the provincial sales tax being added to cable TV, landlines and yarn will have an outsized impact on seniors.

Many seniors live on a fixed or low income, he said, with a little under half of all seniors living on about $30,000 a year. When that’s your income, paying $9,000 for a year’s worth of home care is unaffordable, he said.

Levitt credited the province for maintaining its Shelter Aid for Elderly Renters program and for building affordable housing.

According to the 2026 B.C. budget, the province has spent less than four per cent of what it will cost to complete the seven paused long-term care facility projects.

The province estimates it will cost a total of $1.4 billion to complete the seven projects. So far it has invested the most in the Abbotsford facility, spending 12 per cent of what the project is estimated to cost in total. It has spent eight per cent of the total estimated cost of the Delta facility.

The other five projects have had minimal investments, with less than three percent of the total estimated cost being spent so far.

The long-term care facility in Abbotsford has been in the works for over a decade.