Bring HandyDART in-house

The BC Health Coalition, along with our members, partners, and allies, joins calls to solve the worsening crisis in Metro Vancouver’s HandyDART system by bringing HandyDART in-house.

HandyDART is an essential public service for many of Metro Vancouver’s vulnerable populations. Seniors and people living with disabilities rely on HandyDART to access essential medical appointments, treatments, and community programming. Yet, recent years have seen a dramatic reduction of services and an inability to meet the demand from HandyDART riders.

As a Coalition of individuals and organizations dedicated to a strong public health care system, we understand that access to transportation is an important social determinant of health. We know that residents across BC struggle to meet their health care needs due to inadequate public transportation infrastructure, leading to unequitable out-of-pocket expenses to travel to health care appointments, long and strenuous journeys while sick, or missed appointments.

 We have also witnessed time and time again the failure of contracting out public services to private contractors. In health care as in public transportation, the use of various contractors leads to the prioritization of the bottom line over the quality of service. Private contractors have a proven track record for cutting labour costs, thus struggling to recruit and retain staff.

 The solution to failed outsourcing of public services is to bring services back in-house. We celebrate the provincial government’s progress in bringing back more than 4,600 health care workers into the public system after almost 20 years of these workers having their services contracted to private companies. The province has shown great leadership in recognizing the failure of privatization and sub-contracting practices. We need a similar strategy to reverse the contracting out of HandyDART jobs and services.


Statement from Tuesday Andrich & Scott De Long, BC Health Coalition Labour Co-Chairs and Stacy Ashton & Daniel Harper, BC Health Coalition Community Co-Chairs