BC’s health minister got a firsthand look Sunday at the Lower Columbia Community Health Centre in Trail, as the future of the blood lab in the same building remains in doubt.
Josie Osborne toured facilities in Trail and Castlegar this weekend, met with Interior Health staff, and community leaders. She spoke to reporters at the community health centre, which opened last year.
Osborne said the centre “fills a very important niche serving some of the more vulnerable populations and people who have had traditionally a little more difficulty in accessing healthcare.”
“Being a team-based centre, the counsellors, social workers, nurse practitioner, physicians, nurses, medical office assistants, work together so that when somebody comes in, the right person is able to meet the needs of that person in the moment,” she said.
Osborne said she was impressed with how the space in the Riverfront building on Dewdney Avenue has been converted for that purpose.
Some of the gloss on the new facility was overshadowed by Interior Health’s announcement last year that it would close the blood lab in the same building and move staff to the regional hospital and LifeLabs at Waneta Plaza. Following a public outcry, the health authority paused the move.
In a Facebook post last week, Trail mayor Colleen Jones said rumors have been circulating that the downtown lab might close July 1. She said she asked Interior Health directly about it and wanted to “reassure everyone that lab services at the downtown location will continue as usual until further notice.”
Jones said Interior Health is still collecting information and reviewing options.
“While we haven’t heard updates recently, that doesn’t mean things have stopped,” she wrote. “It means the work is ongoing behind the scenes and we want to make sure that we get this right.”
Osborne said Jones has brought the issue up “very consistently, advocating really well for her community right from the very beginning when the proposal was made.” While Osborne could offer no insight on the long-term future of the lab, she said it was important to hear the perspective of local residents.
“Interior Health is always looking at the best use of the resources that they have and making decisions about that,” she said. “But hearing from locals and understanding of travel patterns and how people access it is a really important part of that decision making.”
Osborne said she has heard “loudly and clearly” since becoming health minister in 2024 that people in the Kootenay Boundary face big challenges accessing care, including transportation in the winter, especially for specialty care.
As a former mayor of Tofino, and as someone who has lived in rural BC most of her life, she said equitable access is “near and dear to my heart.”
She also said she was “so inspired by the dedication and passion and compassion” of local health care workers whom she met and appreciated the advocacy of local leaders and from people who formed the society that’s now operating the community health centre.
“You just can’t effectively run a health care system and deliver good care for people without that kind of dedication and understanding of the local people,” she said.
