Who has the better plan for Ladysmith-Oceanside’s family-doctor shortage, Stephanie Higginson or Kris McNichol?

Nearly 9,000. That is how many people in Oceanside and the mid-Island have no family doctor, by the count of the Mid Island Health Alliance, a volunteer society that has been raising $1.5 million from the community to build a new clinic in Qualicum Beach, the Primrose Medical Centre.¹²

Others have not waited either. In February, Murray Coughtrey opened an urgent primary care clinic in his own practice on Fern Road in Qualicum Beach, covered by MSP and open two days a week. Its one doctor was seeing upwards of 47 patients a day.³

He opened it so that people would not have to “sit for six hours or eight hours” at the urgent care centre for something a clinic could handle.³

The member of the Legislature for these communities is Stephanie Higginson. In government she has been the Parliamentary Secretary for Primary Care Access.⁴ She is running again for the BC NDP. The Conservative candidate is Kris McNichol, a Parksville business owner who has met a payroll on this island for more than 25 years, and who names health care as the riding’s biggest challenge.⁵⁶

Here is where the two main candidates say they stand, in their own words, from the answers both gave the PQB News this week.⁴

Where they stand: Kris McNichol and Stephanie Higginson, in their own words, on three issues in the riding.

Kris McNicholConservative Party of BC

Stephanie HigginsonBC NDP · incumbent since 2024

Health care

Kris McNichol “ensuring these centres have the staffing and resources to meet community needs is essential”. He backs his party’s $60 million for a cath lab in Nanaimo.⁴

Stephanie Higginson “I have worked closely with the community to lower our family practitioner wait list by 23%, seeing over 2,000 people attached to a doctor or nurse practitioner.” Her party promises a new urgent and primary care centre in Parksville-Qualicum Beach.⁴⁷

Housing

Kris McNichol “Housing affordability requires faster, predictable approvals and more attainable housing options, including townhouses, rentals and homes where seniors can downsize.”⁴

Stephanie Higginson “We have supported housing affordability in Oceanside through the purchase of Moilliet Manor by BC Rental Protection Fund and delivered over 300 units of affordable housing to the region”⁴

Cost of living

Kris McNichol “I support the Conservative Party of BC’s commitment to raise the provincial basic personal tax exemption to $32,000”⁴

Stephanie Higginson “we are proposing to put limits on rising gas and grocery prices by intervening and regulating these industries”⁴

Both put health care at the centre. In our view the difference is in what happened on her watch, and in who has been filling the gap.

01 Stephanie Higginson’s job was primary care access. Oceanside is building its own clinic.

Higginson does not hide from the subject. In her answers to the PQB News this week she wrote:

Those 2,000 people matter, and the progress is hers to claim. But do the arithmetic on her own figures. If 2,000 people are 23% of the list, the list was about 8,700 long, and more than 6,000 people are still on it. That squares with the alliance’s count of nearly 9,000 people without a family doctor across the region.⁴¹

Meanwhile the walk-in door at Oceanside Health Centre in Parksville saw 47,850 urgent care patients in 2025-26, an average of 131 a day, up from 28,870 visits in 2018-19. Island Health told the PQB News it is “a challenge and a strain point.”⁸

Her answer this campaign is a promise. A re-elected BC NDP government, she says, will open a new Urgent and Primary Care Centre in Parksville-Qualicum Beach.⁷ In our view, the MLA who held the government’s primary care access file should have delivered that centre already, not a campaign pledge to build one. In the meantime, a clinic owner and a volunteer society did what they could on their own.

02 Kris McNichol has met a payroll for 25 years and coached Oceanside’s softball players.

Kris McNichol

Conservative Party of BC candidate, Ladysmith-Oceanside

Home

Parksville and Nanoose Bay, more than 30 years on the Island

Family

Married to Sheryl; three daughters; grandparents

Business

Ownership interests in five businesses, from industrial equipment to a marina

Community

Softball coach; president, Oceanside Minor Softball Association; former volunteer firefighter

Portrait: Conservative Party of BC

McNichol started his first company, in aquaculture, at the age of 27.⁹ Today he has ownership interests in five businesses “involved in industrial equipment and services, manufacturing, construction, building products and marina operations”, among them the Sproat Lake Marina.⁶⁹ He has coached softball for years, served as president of the Oceanside Minor Softball Association and of the Sproat Lake Water Sports Association, and volunteered as a firefighter.⁶

He ran federally for the Conservatives in Courtenay-Alberni in 2025 and finished second to the NDP’s Gord Johns.¹⁰ He said then that he was running for people under 40 who are facing the cost of housing: “It’s a real tough grind for them and if nobody steps up for them, then they don’t have a voice.”⁹

03 McNichol would staff the urgent care centres, back the cath lab and put seniors’ care first.

Asked the same three questions as Higginson, McNichol named health care as the riding’s biggest challenge, and started with the centres people already use:

He backs his party’s commitment of $60 million toward a cardiac cath lab at Nanaimo Regional General, and he stood with the candidates who announced it on 13 October.⁴¹¹ The one change he most wants in the next four years is for this riding, one of the oldest in Canada, to be a place where “seniors can age with dignity, independence and the support they deserve.” That means home care before a crisis, restoring the old property-tax deferment rules for seniors, and more long-term care beds.⁴⁸

On the cost of living he backs raising the basic personal exemption to $32,000, and on housing he wants faster, predictable approvals and more townhouses, rentals and homes where seniors can downsize. He also makes a point that small towns know well: “The province must be a reliable funding partner for water, sewer and roads rather than leaving the burden entirely on local property taxpayers.”⁴

Ladysmith is a mill town, and this winter its mill went quiet. Western Forest Products put its Ladysmith sawmill on a curtailment of at least two weeks from February, citing weak markets and log supply, while its Chemainus mill down the road stays curtailed through 2026.¹² McNichol’s answer is the one a man who builds things would give. Local businesses should be able to grow and create good jobs “without being buried in unnecessary costs and red tape.”⁶

04 Higginson’s posts said British Columbians deserve answers. She answered none of the 646 replies.

Higginson’s campaign account on X carried eight posts between 22 September and 17 October. All eight were quote posts aimed at the Conservative leader, Lorne Doerkson, and his party. None was about Ladysmith, Parksville, Qualicum Beach or Nanoose.¹³ On Facebook and Instagram we found no campaign posts from her that we could read.¹⁴

The last of them, on 15 October, asked where the Conservatives would cut, and opened with a demand:¹³

Stephanie Higginson@SHigginsonBC · X · 15 October 2026, 9:19 a.m.

“British Columbians deserve answers - where will Lorne and the BC Conservatives cut?”

Her eight campaign posts on X drew 646 replies. We found no reply from her to any of them.¹³¹⁵

Her eight posts drew 646 replies. In our reading of the incumbents’ accounts, she answered none of them, and we found no reply from her to anyone all campaign.¹⁵ Some of what lands under a politician’s post is abuse, and nobody owes abuse an answer. But in our view, a candidate who demands answers from her opponents should be ready to give a few to the voters in her own riding.

05 Ladysmith-Oceanside is within reach, and Kris McNichol is the challenger who can take it.

338Canada, which turns the published polls into a projection for every riding, rates Ladysmith-Oceanside “NDP leaning.” Its update of 16 October puts the BC NDP at 47% and the Conservatives at 43%, each with a margin of seven points either way. The four-point gap is well inside that margin.¹⁶

Ladysmith-Oceanside, projected vote

338Canada, update of 16 October 2026. Bars show the projection; the thin lines show its margin either way.¹⁶

Stephanie Higginson, BC NDP

47%

Kris McNichol, Conservative

43%

Charlene Smylie, BC Green

10%

0%30%60%

Charlene Smylie, the BC Green candidate, is projected at 10%. Only McNichol is within the projection’s margin of the lead.¹⁶

The last result shows how close it was. In 2024, Higginson won by 2,047 votes over the Conservative candidate, Brett Fee. If about 1,025 of her voters had chosen the Conservative instead, the seat would have changed hands, out of 34,092 valid ballots.¹⁷ That year an independent, Adam Walker, the former NDP MLA for Parksville-Qualicum, took 5,559 votes. He is not on the ballot this time, so every one of those voters is choosing again.¹⁷¹⁸⁵

In our view, Kris McNichol is the stronger choice for Ladysmith-Oceanside, and the projection puts him within reach.

06 The Primrose clinic is scheduled to open nine days after the vote. Community donations are building it.

The Mid Island Health Alliance has set the ribbon cutting for the Primrose Medical Centre on 26 October, and the clinic is scheduled to open to patients on 2 November. Four family doctors and twelve visiting specialists have signed on.¹ Advance voting runs until 21 October, and Final Voting Day is 24 October.¹⁹

In our view, a clinic owner who says the health authority was not involved, and a volunteer society that raised the money itself, did the work that a Parliamentary Secretary for Primary Care Access was appointed to lead.³¹ Kris McNichol has spent 25 years doing what that clinic owner did: seeing a problem in his community, putting his own money in and getting to work.⁶

Oceanside is building its own doctors’ clinic. In our view, it deserves an MLA who builds things, and Kris McNichol has spent 25 years doing exactly that.