Mid Island-Pacific Rim’s choice on its hospital and its highway: Josie Osborne’s record or Joshua Dahling’s promise

On 20 November 2025, the intensive care unit at West Coast General Hospital in Port Alberni closed. It has three beds, and there were no longer enough staff to run them. Patients who needed life support were stabilized and sent away, in most cases to Nanaimo.¹

Three weeks later it got worse. From 10 December, the hospital stopped admitting patients who did not have a family doctor with privileges there, and Island Health warned that two or three patients a day might have to be transferred elsewhere. The emergency department stayed open.² Island Health’s own vice-president for the hospital, Dawn Thomas, said it plainly:

The province’s Minister of Health at the time was Josie Osborne. She is also the MLA for Mid Island-Pacific Rim, the riding West Coast General serves.³¹ This October she is asking its voters for a third term. The Conservative Party of BC candidate running against her is Joshua Dahling, a Port Alberni man who has spent nearly 30 years helping people through addiction, illness and grief.⁴⁵

Before the record, here is where the two main candidates say they stand, in their own words, from the answers both gave the Alberni Valley News this month.⁶

Where they stand: Joshua Dahling and Josie Osborne, in their own words, on four issues in the riding.

Joshua DahlingConservative Party of BC

Josie OsborneBC NDP · incumbent since 2020

Health care

Joshua Dahling “recruit more doctors and nurses, reduce wait times, and improve rural services”, with “expanded psychiatric care, treatment on demand, residential addiction treatment”⁶

Josie Osborne “strengthen West Coast General Hospital, advance Tofino General Hospital’s replacement and expand mental health and addictions services”. Her record: by July the hospital had ten new emergency and ICU nurses and had reopened an ICU bed.⁶¹

Cost of living

Joshua Dahling “increasing the basic personal exemption to $32,000”⁶

Josie Osborne “building affordable housing, expanding access to quality childcare, responsibly managing ICBC and BC Hydro to keep rates low”⁶

Jobs

Joshua Dahling “attract investment, reduce unnecessary regulations, support small businesses, revitalize forestry”⁶

Josie Osborne “Support forestry, fisheries, maritime industries, tourism and small businesses, while attracting investment and creating new opportunities”⁶

First year

Joshua Dahling “I’d establish regular community meetings throughout the riding”⁶

Josie Osborne “I’ll launch a Winter Community Tour, building on my regular community coffee chats throughout the riding.”⁶

Both promise to listen, and both name the hospital. The difference, in our view, is in the record, and that is where this piece goes next.

01 Josie Osborne was the Health Minister and the local MLA when West Coast General lost its ICU.

On 1 December 2025, Ian Paton, the Conservative MLA for Delta South, put it to her in question period. This is the exchange, as Hansard records it:⁷

Hansard · 1 December 2025 · oral question period⁷

Ian Paton, MLA for Delta South“…and the minister’s own ER and ICU in Port Alberni is shut down indefinitely because they don’t have the staff to run it.”

Josie Osborne, Minister of Health“It is really hard on communities when their emergency room closes. … He is correct that the intensive care unit has been diverted at West Coast General Hospital in Port Alberni, but the ER does remain open.”

She was right that the emergency room stayed open. But the ICU in the minister’s own riding stayed shut for half a year. One bed came back in mid-May 2026, and in July Island Health was still working to reopen the other two.¹ Underneath it is the doctor shortage. Local reports put at least 8,000 Port Alberni residents without a family doctor, with more retirements coming.⁸

The hospital has new nurses now, and Island Health has added internal medicine physicians, some recruited from the United States. That is real, and the people who did it deserve thanks.¹ But in our view a riding whose MLA ran the health ministry should not have had to learn what it means to lose its ICU.

02 Joshua Dahling left the logging industry, got sober and spent 30 years helping people in crisis.

Joshua Dahling

Conservative Party of BC candidate, Mid Island-Pacific Rim

Roots

Came to Canada at four; grew up in poverty, homelessness and addiction

Turning point

Sober since 1997; left the logging industry in 1998

Work

Alcohol and drug treatment, then nearly 30 years in human services

Community

Co-founded LUMARA, a charity for families facing serious illness and grief

Home

Port Alberni, since 2018

Portrait: Conservative Party of BC

Dahling came to Canada from South Africa in 1980, at the age of four. In his party’s words, he grew up with “extreme poverty, instability, homelessness and addiction.” In 1997 he got sober. A year later he left the logging industry and moved to Nanaimo to study human services, raising three young children as a single father while he worked in alcohol and drug treatment facilities.⁵

In 2009 he and his wife, Dr. Heather Mohan, began building LUMARA, a registered charity that supports children and families living with serious illness, grief and loss. He moved to Port Alberni in 2018. When he is not working, his party says, he is hiking, fishing, boating or swimming, “no matter how cold the water is.”⁵

He has known hard times as a parent, too:

His case on health care comes from the same life. Asked to name the riding’s biggest issue, he named access to health care, including mental health and addiction services, “From Port Alberni to Tofino, Ucluelet, Cumberland, and our smaller communities.” He would push for “expanded psychiatric care, treatment on demand, residential addiction treatment, dry housing, crisis response, and compassionate intervention” for people in severe crisis.⁶

03 When Highway 4 burned, the valley’s lifeline was a forest road. There is still no agreement to keep it open.

In June 2023 the Cameron Bluffs wildfire closed Highway 4, the road that links Port Alberni, Tofino and Ucluelet to the rest of the Island. It stayed closed from 6 June until it reopened to single-lane traffic on 23 June. The detour ran between Port Alberni and Lake Cowichan on “forest-service and privately owned industrial roads.”¹⁰ For more than two weeks, the Alberni Valley and the west coast got in and out on logging roads.

Three years later, Osborne’s own answer to the Alberni Valley News lists this among the things she would still push for:

In our view, that agreement should have been signed before the smoke cleared. She was in cabinet the whole time.

The same roads carry the industry that built the valley. Port Alberni is known as the forestry capital of Vancouver Island, and the city points to the indefinite curtailment of Western Forest Products’ Alberni Pacific Division and layoffs at San Group’s Port Alberni operations.¹¹ Across B.C., the Council of Forest Industries counts more than 15,000 forestry jobs lost since 2022.¹²

Osborne’s answer on jobs is to “Support forestry, fisheries, maritime industries, tourism and small businesses.” Dahling, who worked in the bush himself, would back policies that “attract investment, reduce unnecessary regulations, support small businesses, revitalize forestry, and create good-paying jobs throughout our riding.”⁶ On the cost of living he backs his party’s plan to raise the basic personal exemption to $32,000, so working people keep more of what they earn.⁶

04 Osborne limited who could comment on most of her Facebook campaign posts. Dahling promises to show up.

We read every BC NDP candidate’s campaign posts this fall. On Osborne’s Facebook page, 18 of her 22 campaign posts carry the notice below, and none of her 54 older posts do. One of the restricted posts carries 1,079 comments.¹³

Josie OsborneFacebook · her campaign page · 18 of 22 campaign posts

“Only people who follow this Page for more than 24 hours can comment.”

The platform’s own words, under her posts. A voter who had not followed her page a day earlier could not reply.¹³

Those who could reply got little back. In our reading of her campaign accounts, her posts on X drew 1,539 replies, and we read 615 comments under 58 of her Facebook and Instagram posts. We found one reply from her in all of it, and it went to a supporter.¹⁴

Dahling has made a different promise. Asked what he would do in his first year, he said he would hold regular community meetings across the riding and report back in public:

05 Mid Island-Pacific Rim is within reach, and Joshua Dahling is the challenger who can take it.

338Canada, which turns the published polls into a projection for every riding, rates Mid Island-Pacific Rim “NDP leaning.” Its update of 16 October puts the BC NDP at 45% and the Conservatives at 41%, each with a margin of seven points either way. The four-point gap is well inside that margin.¹⁵

Mid Island-Pacific Rim, projected vote

338Canada, update of 16 October 2026. Bars show the projection; the thin lines show its margin either way.¹⁵

Josie Osborne, BC NDP

45%

Joshua Dahling, Conservative

41%

Gracie MacDonald, BC Green

14%

0%30%60%

Gracie MacDonald, the BC Green candidate, is projected at 14%. Only Dahling is within the projection’s margin of the lead.¹⁵

The last result shows what it would take. In 2024, Osborne won by 2,676 votes over the Conservative candidate, Adam Hayduk. If about 1,340 of her voters had chosen the Conservative instead, the seat would have changed hands. That is fewer than one voter in twenty of the 28,810 who cast a valid ballot.¹⁶

In our view, Joshua Dahling is the stronger choice for Mid Island-Pacific Rim, and the projection puts him within reach.

06 West Coast General has one ICU bed back. In our view, the riding deserves an MLA who shows up.

Advance voting runs until 21 October, and Final Voting Day is 24 October.¹⁷ Dahling has promised to hold meetings across the riding and to report back on what he has done.

Last November the people of the Alberni Valley watched their hospital send its sickest patients down the highway, while their own MLA ran the health system.¹³ Joshua Dahling has spent 30 years with people at the worst moments of their lives. He says residents deserve someone who shows up, listens and follows through.⁶

The ICU closed on the Health Minister’s own doorstep. In our view, Joshua Dahling is the MLA who will show up when it matters.