Nanaimo-Lantzville: George Anderson or Kelsey Pringle on the cath lab

Kelsey Pringle wrote that from experience. In the summer of 2026 her husband had a heart attack.² He needed a cardiac catheterization, the procedure that finds a blocked artery and opens it, and Nanaimo Regional General Hospital cannot do one. Pringle told the Nanaimo News Bulletin that he was kept in Nanaimo for two days before he was finally taken to Victoria for treatment.³

Now she is the Conservative Party of BC candidate in Nanaimo-Lantzville, and the cath lab is the first thing on her list. She is running against George Anderson, the BC NDP incumbent and Parliamentary Secretary for Energy and Climate Solutions.⁴ People in the region, she wrote when she accepted the nomination, “have waited far too long for a cardiac catheterization lab at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital.”¹

Kelsey Pringle

Conservative Party of BC candidate, Nanaimo-Lantzville

Family

A wife and a mother of two, aged 36

Business

Co-founder and owner of Motivation Monday Marketing, a digital marketing agency

Community

Director, Vancouver Island Economic Alliance; co-founder, Empower Women Canada

Why she runs

Her husband’s heart attack, and the wait for care in Victoria

Portrait: Conservative Party of BC

Here is where the two main candidates stand, in their own words.⁵⁶⁷

Where they stand: Kelsey Pringle and George Anderson, in their own words, on three issues in the riding.

Kelsey PringleConservative Party of BC

George AndersonBC NDP · incumbent since 2024

The hospital

Kelsey Pringle “A cardiac cath lab at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital, more family doctors, and shorter waits for the care you need.”⁷

George Anderson “My priority as the new MLA for Nanaimo-Lantzville is to make sure that we also see a patient tower and catheterization lab built in my community.” He points to the new intensive care unit, the high-acuity unit and the cancer centre now under construction.⁵

Public safety

Kelsey Pringle “End the failed decriminalization experiment and focus on treatment and recovery, not just managing addiction.”⁷

George Anderson His government, he said, “has delivered 250 new police officers, expanded the prison at Brennan Lake”, and is “looking at involuntary care”.⁶

Housing and the economy

Kelsey Pringle “Get homes built faster by cutting delays and costs, so young families and seniors can afford to stay here.”⁷

George Anderson He pointed to a 50-unit dry supportive housing project on Bryden Street for people in recovery, and student housing at Vancouver Island University.⁶⁵

Both say the cath lab matters. In our view the difference is in who has kept pushing for it, and that is the record we turn to now.

01 George Anderson told the House the cath lab was his priority. He raised it once in 152 turns.

George Anderson was elected in 2024 as the first MLA for Nanaimo-Lantzville. In his first budget speech, in March 2025, he set out what he would fight for:⁵

We read every sitting transcript of this Parliament, from February 2025 to the last sitting in May 2026. Anderson took the floor 152 times. The cath lab came up in one of them: that speech.⁸

In our view, a priority is something you keep raising until it is done. Nineteen months after that speech, the cath lab is still not in the provincial budget.⁹

02 Premier David Eby promised Nanaimo a cath lab in 2024. Island Health’s draft plan pushed it out to 2030.

The promise was not Anderson’s alone. Here is how it has gone, in the order it happened.

1. 16 October 2024Three days before the vote, Premier David Eby told reporters in Nanaimo: “our commitment around cancer care and the cardiac cath lab here in Nanaimo continues.” He had already promised a new patient tower.¹⁰
2. 4 March 2025The provincial budget funded the hospital’s high acuity unit and the new Nanaimo Cancer Centre. Neither the patient tower nor the cath lab was in it.¹¹
3. 9 December 2025With Island Health’s draft capital plan putting the lab in 2030, the Nanaimo Regional Hospital District voted unanimously to put up to $50 million of local money toward it. Lantzville Mayor Mark Swain said: “Island health has pushed the cath lab out to 2030 …that is troubling.”¹²¹³
4. 13 January 2026Dr. David Forrest, a critical care specialist who chairs the Nanaimo Medical Staff Engagement Society, told the hospital board about the plans of Island Health and the province: “It’s a litany of promises from them and a legacy of failure.”¹⁴
5. 19 March 2026The province accepted the district’s offer to pay for concept and business planning. That starts an 18-month planning timeline, and the district chair’s best case is a lab open by late 2030 or into 2031. Finance Minister Brenda Bailey said the lab is not in the capital plan because the planning is “just beginning.”¹⁵

The government has built things at the hospital. A new intensive care unit opened in 2023, a high acuity unit followed, and the Nanaimo Cancer Centre is under construction and expected to open in 2028.⁹¹⁵ Those matter. But the service Pringle’s husband needed is the one still waiting.

And the clock on a heart attack does not wait for business plans. Forrest told the board that reaching a cath lab within 90 minutes of a heart attack has been the standard in medicine for more than 30 years. He said only the 40% of Islanders who live no farther north than Duncan have that access today, and that a lab in Nanaimo would raise it to 80%.¹⁴

03 Nanaimo’s doctors say the Conservatives were the first party to give them a real commitment.

On 13 October, Brennan Day, the Conservative candidate in Courtenay-Comox, stood in Nanaimo with Kelsey Pringle and committed a Conservative government to $60 million for the cath lab at Nanaimo Regional General.¹⁶ Two of the hospital’s own doctors were in the room. Dr. David Coupland said the push for a cancer centre, a cath lab and a patient tower began nine years ago, and that only the cancer centre has come. Dr. David Forrest said:

Pringle has put the lab first on her own list. Her campaign promises to fight for “A cardiac cath lab at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital, more family doctors, and shorter waits for the care you need.”⁷ She told the News Bulletin she would push for it in Victoria, “even if that means getting obnoxious in Victoria to get things to the finish line.”³

In our view, that is the right instinct. Nanaimo did not lack a promise. It lacked an MLA who would keep pushing until the money was in the budget.

04 Kelsey Pringle says she is not seeing results, and wants treatment, homes and lower taxes.

At the Greater Nanaimo Chamber of Commerce forum on 13 October, the candidates were asked about public safety, addiction and homelessness. Anderson spoke for the government’s record: 250 new police officers, a larger jail at Brannen Lake and a 50-unit dry supportive housing project on Bryden Street. He was also candid about downtown:⁶

Pringle answered that she had heard the list of programs, but was “not seeing the results.”⁶

Her platform is written in the same plain terms. She would “End the failed decriminalization experiment and focus on treatment and recovery, not just managing addiction.” She wants “Lower taxes and less government waste, so families and seniors keep more of what they earn.” And she would “Get homes built faster by cutting delays and costs, so young families and seniors can afford to stay here.”⁷

She runs a business, so she watches the books. She told the News Bulletin that the province’s deficit worries her: “My children and grandchildren will be responsible for paying off this debt, and that scares me.” She also wants the province to help the Nanaimo Port Authority speed up its expansion at Duke Point, and to cut the red tape that slows it.³

05 When voters answered George Anderson online, he mostly thanked supporters. One got a snowflake.

Credit where it is due. Anderson left the replies open on every one of the 37 campaign posts we read on Facebook, Instagram and X, which many of his colleagues did not.¹⁷ The question is what he did with them.

We read his campaign accounts from 22 September to 17 October, including every reply he posted on X and the Facebook and Instagram comment threads we could open. His posts on X drew 351 replies. We found 14 replies from him. Ten went to supporters, two were thanks or small talk, and one was a GIF. The only one that might have answered a question was cut off by Facebook and could not be read in full, so under our rule it earned no credit.¹⁸

On the morning of 13 October he posted on X that he was seeking re-election “to continue delivering results for our community.” One account answered him with two words of abuse. Anderson replied with a GIF of a snowflake.¹⁹

George Anderson@G_Anderson1 · X · 13 October 2026, 10:07 a.m.

Good Morning, I’m George Anderson @bcndp Candidate in Nanaimo - Lantzville. Here’s little bit about me and why I am seeking re-election on October 24, 2026 in order to continue delivering results for our community. #bcpoli #Nanaimo

The post drew 80 replies. The GIF above was his reply that afternoon to an account that had written “F--- off.”¹⁹

Nobody owes abuse a serious answer. But a snowflake is a taunt, not an answer. In our view, an MLA who uses his replies to thank his fans and mock a critic is not listening to the riding. He is talking to his own side.

06 Nanaimo-Lantzville is within reach, and Kelsey Pringle is the challenger who can take it.

338Canada, which turns the published polls into a projection for every riding, rates Nanaimo-Lantzville “NDP leaning.” Its update of 16 October puts the BC NDP at 46% and the Conservatives at 41%, each with a margin of seven points either way. The five-point gap is inside that margin.²⁰

Nanaimo-Lantzville, projected vote

338Canada, update of 16 October 2026. Bars show the projection; the thin lines show its margin either way.²⁰

George Anderson, BC NDP

46%

Kelsey Pringle, Conservative

41%

Sharleen Weatherley, BC Green

10%

Others

3%

0%30%60%

Sharleen Weatherley, the BC Green candidate, is projected at 10%. Of the challengers, only Pringle is within the projection’s margin of the lead.²⁰

The last result shows what it would take. In 2024, Anderson won by 3,620 votes over the Conservative candidate, Gwen O’Mahony.²¹¹ If about 1,810 of his voters had chosen the Conservative instead, the seat would have changed hands. That is about one voter in sixteen of the 29,580 who cast a valid ballot.²¹

In our view, Kelsey Pringle is the stronger choice for Nanaimo-Lantzville, and the projection puts her within reach.

07 Pringle’s husband came home. In our view, the next family should not have to go to Victoria.

Pringle’s husband came home. Not every family’s story ends that way, and she has said so herself.³ Advance voting runs until 21 October, and Final Voting Day is 24 October.²²

George Anderson told the Legislature he was certain the cath lab would get done. The doctors who have pushed for it for nine years say the Conservatives were the first to give them a real commitment, and Kelsey Pringle has lived the wait.⁵¹⁶

Her husband waited two days for a procedure Nanaimo still cannot do. In our view, Kelsey Pringle is the MLA who will keep pushing until the cath lab is built.