Editorial cartoon of a tired patient between a ribboned urgent-care doorway and an appointment-book barrier while empty doctor chairs cast a long shadow
Cartoon: two urgent-care doors do not automatically erase the doctor waitlist.
Courtenay–Comox needs more access to care. That is exactly why the promise should come with receipts: location, opening date, staffing, daily patient capacity, walk-in rules and attachment outcomes.

The BC NDP’s latest Courtenay–Comox health promise sounds simple: open a second Urgent and Primary Care Centre and make it easier for people to get same-day care close to home. Nobody should sneer at that need. The Comox Valley has real patients, real families and real pressure on North Island Hospital.

But an urgent-care announcement is not the same thing as a doctor-attachment plan. On October 15, the BC NDP said a re-elected government would add a second UPCC in Courtenay–Comox, building on 48 UPCCs already opened across B.C. The release says the goal of the new centre would be walk-in service, triaged by urgency, and that it would complement the current UPCC’s appointment-only model.

That phrase — appointment-only — is the receipt. Island Health’s current Comox Valley UPCC page tells people seeking same-day care to call when the clinic opens. It says care is by appointment, that staff may assess the caller’s needs, and that walk-in appointments are not available. Island Health’s broader same-day primary-care page is just as blunt: appointments are required, people should call to book, and calling does not guarantee an appointment.

So voters are entitled to ask what is actually changing. Will the second centre truly take walk-ins, or will “walk-in” become another phone-triage queue by the time doors open? Where will it be? When will it open? How many physicians, nurse practitioners, registered nurses, mental-health workers and social workers are already committed? What hours will be funded seven days a week? How many daily visits will it handle, and how will Island Health measure whether it reduces emergency-department pressure?

The bigger gap is primary care. The province’s September 16 update celebrated one million people connected to a family doctor or nurse practitioner since 2018 and said about 80% of B.C.’s population now has a primary-care provider. But the same government release included the hard number: as of September 2026, 323,000 people were still registered with the Health Connect Registry.

That is why the Courtenay–Comox promise needs more than a ribbon. UPCCs can patch urgent same-day problems, but they do not automatically give a patient a longitudinal family doctor or nurse practitioner who knows their history, renews medications, follows chronic disease and catches problems early.

Eby should publish the Comox Valley waitlist count, the project budget, the operating budget, the staffing model and a quarterly dashboard showing whether local attachment improves after the second centre opens. If the NDP wants credit for access, it should show voters the access ledger — not just the announcement.

Sources and records