Hundreds of healthcare workers from across Canada and the US are arriving this weekend to help address chronic shortages: 24% of island residents lack a family doctor. The speaker asks locals to welcome visitors wearing red lanyards and share why they love living here, hoping some will stay permanently.
Chapters
So Jocelyn and I have some friends coming to the island this weekend. As I make this video, hundreds of them are in airports, lined up at Tsawwassen, transferring at YVR, or are already here. Some from across Canada, but most are coming from the US. They're coming because they want to support us. They too are angry at how their government has treated Canada. So rather than just, you know, sign a petition online and be done with it, they are getting on planes and ferries and spending their money here in our shops, in our restaurants, more than 600 of them. And half of those groups, the ones marked in blue on this map, have a healthcare worker with them coming because they are looking at BC, at this island, as somewhere they might want to build a life. And we need them. 24% of people here still do not have a family doctor. The new hospital in Duncan will need nurses to fill it. If you are one of those Canada is broken, people who are angry that you have to wait 10 hours at the ER, take a ferry to get a prescription refill. I get it, I get it, I'm angry too. But Canada is not broken. Not yet. Not if we are all pitching in to fix this. So this is one way we do that. One more thing: the healthcare workers who are already here, who've been here for years, who worked themselves to the bone through the pandemic, and who are still showing up every shift. They are the reason our system has not completely fallen apart. This weekend is about giving them the support they deserve. Like, just cover so that they can take their leaves, or an extra person or two so that they don't have to call in sick knowing that that will close the ER that night. So when you see a visitor this weekend, they'll be wearing red lanyards. Tell them you're glad they came. Tell them about that part of BC that made you fall in love with this place. Because a few of them are going to go home and pack their things and move here. Dozens already have from last year's infusion and are working in our hospitals up and down this island today. And years from now, there's going to be a kid born on this island to a family that almost didn't come. A kid that grows up hiking on these trails, catching trout off the dock at Coleridge Dam, going to school here, becoming a doctor here. A kid who'll never know that it started with a red lanyard and a weekend in a country that needed them as much as they needed us. That kid is going to be so Island, it's going to be embarrassing. So welcome, friends. Thank you, neighbors. Let's do this.
