Over the course of the last month or so I’ve had the opportunity to have a couple of interactions with the South Okanagan Similkameen Medical Foundation.

Professional and clearly well-run, the non-profit charitable organization is undeniably a vital fundraising machine for hospitals and healthcare infrastructure in our region.

At our local South Okanagan General Hospital in Oliver the foundation cut the ribbon recently on a newly revamped trauma room thanks to a $100,000 private donation funnelled through the charitable foundation.

And on an even greater scale the foundation is all-hands-on-deck deep into a $10 million fundraising effort for an expansion of the cancer facility at Penticton Regional Hospital (PRH) which serves as our closest major facility.

But to be honest, I’m left somewhat perplexed by all this. Why is it that crucial bits of our healthcare infrastructure, like an emergency trauma ward and a cancer clinic, are being propped up by donors? By no means am I intending any disrespect to the donors, but really there is something very wrong here. Isn’t that what our substantial taxes are for?

It’s outright shameful that in both cases – cancer and trauma – that better foresight and financial planning wasn’t put into place years ago.

It’s easy to pin the larger healthcare crisis in all its facets on the government in power at the moment, but that’s quite wrong. This is the deep shame of successive governments of all ideological stripes for decades upon decades.

Certainly, the current NDP government shares in a portion of the blame, but realistically they’ve also inherited not just the existing healthcare problem, but one made far worse thanks to the pandemic.

Of course, I would be remiss to not highlight the rarefied air that former Premier John Horgan must have been breathing when he sought to spend $789 million of taxpayer’s money to rebuild the Royal B.C. Museum. That would have built a heck of a lot of trauma rooms or maybe even a couple of dozen cancer clinics.

The way I see it, the sheer size, success and outright importance of organizations like the SOS Medical Foundation which are active across the country, are both markers of the success, and the failure of our society.

Successful because our generosity and concern for the greater good shines brightly from small donors cracking open their piggy banks to large donations from wealthy donors. And they are a mark of failure of our duly elected officials and bureaucratic apparatus. Our elected officials are charged with a duty of care to ensure crucial things like healthcare are looked after in a meaningful way with eyes on the future.

As a society Canada created a wondrous universal healthcare system over many years that avoided the classist structure of the U.S. where millions have suffered from lack of proper medical care. But sadly we – the elected officials, the bureaucrats – didn’t maintain it and now the warranty has been voided.

I find it astonishing and somewhat gut wrenching that donations are so crucial to keep our basic healthcare infrastructure even just simply functioning. I’m referring to things like a trauma room virtually untouched since it was built 51 years ago – not even a coat of paint. The state of the cancer clinic at PRH is substandard and outright dangerous for those working in it, if the overview from the SOS Medical Foundation CEO is anything to go by.

It’s reasonable to assume that these charitable fundraising organizations will only become more important in the coming years as there is no sign that Canada’s healthcare crisis will be mended anytime soon. As such, the fact that private money plays such an outsized role in supporting healthcare infrastructure suggests a potential creep towards a two-tiered system.

I don’t mean privatization outright, but rather the advantage the hospitals that exist in wealthier areas such as the Okanagan might enjoy as compared to less well-off parts of the province where fundraising is more constrained by regional socio-economics. And then of course the benefits that could accrue to the individuals themselves that make large donations might perhaps create another two-tiered situation.

In two conversations with the CEO of the SOS Medical Foundation, Sally Ginter – who brings substantial acumen to her position after previous roles with Canadian Cancer Society and Ronald MacDonald House in Toronto – I’ve tried to get her perspective on this niche role that charitable organizations play in the face of what appears to be limited government funding by clearly, it’s not a rabbit hole she wishes to acknowledge, let alone dive into.

I also had a brief but interesting conversation with a large supporter of the foundation recently.

I asked him how he saw his support in light of the ongoing healthcare crisis. Seemed a reasonable question to me.

Much to my gobsmacked amazement he not only proceeded to deny there was in fact a healthcare crisis but he doubled down justifying his view by stating he and his family had never had any problems getting the treatment they needed.

That was some rarefied air right there.