The Thompson Regional Hospital District expects to contribute into seven figures toward a pending cancer centre at Royal Inland Hospital.
B.C. Health Minister Adrian Dix was at RIH on Thursday to announce the business plan for the five-storey, $359 million cancer centre had been approved and the project was moving to the procurement phase. The groundbreaking is pegged for 2025 with a projected opening of 2028.
The project is being paid for jointly by the provincial government, Interior Health and the TRHD.
“I would expect in the millions,” TRHD chair Mike O’Reilly told Castanet Kamloops of the hospital district’s projected contribution, which would assist with construction and equipment purchases.
Dix said the health ministry and regional hospital district are currently “working out” what that contribution will be with more details on the breakdown of that to be announced “later.”
O’Reilly told Castanet Kamloops negotiations with the province are in the early stages and the exact dollar amount to be contributed is yet to be determined.
The TRHD, however, is planning to put money aside.
“At our last regional hospital district board meeting, in our provisional budget, we put a three and a half percent tax increase in to be voted on in March coming up next month, knowing that some point a cancer centre was coming to Kamloops,” O’Reilly said.
He said the hospital district wants to ensure predictability when it comes to saving up funds for this project.
“We don’t want an eight per cent tax increase coming up in two years because the cancer centre’s coming, so let’s start looking at that now, so it’s predictable, stable tax increases instead of an eight per cent, 10 per cent, two per cent, five per cent. There’s predictability and stability, which is what our taxpayers need,” O’Reilly said.
The province is building four new cancer centres — in Kamloops, Burnaby, Surrey and Nanaimo — to add to the existing six in B.C.
Dix said construction of the Kamloops centre is expected to run parallel to Nanaimo and ahead of Surrey, which is part of a larger project in the Lower Mainland city.
“I would expect Kamloops to be pretty much first in terms of opening because of the nature of the project,” Dix said.
