B.C. health-care projects cancelled as government tightens budget

There’s growing backlash to the B.C. government’s pause of several health-care projects—and the latest casualty is Burnaby hospital’s expansion.

VICTORIA — Construction contracts for two health-care projects that the B.C. government said were being “re-paced” when it tightened the budget in February have now been cancelled.

However, Infrastructure Minister Bowinn Ma says the Burnaby Hospital redevelopment and the Beedie Long-term Care Centre in Delta are still part of government’s capital plan.

The sites were among nine projects which the government said were being slowed or re-paced in order to get its costs under control in light of a record-setting deficit of $13.3 billion.

Ma says projects generally unfold over different phases, and the contracts being cancelled were agreements that the Fraser Health Authority had signed before the government’s decision to delay construction.

Conservative Ian Paton, the member of the legislature for Delta South, says the NDP’s financial management has turned out to be disastrous, and the government has completely cut out his constituents.

Paton says it’s “embarrassing” for government to announce these projects, then say they have become too expensive.

“What farmer would be building a barn, knowing that he doesn’t have enough to complete the project?”

This report by Wolfgang Depner of The Canadian Press was first published April 30, 2026.