To the Government of British Columbia, the Ministry of Health, and British Columbia’s Health Authorities

We, the undersigned, call upon the Government of British Columbia and all provincial health authorities to make hospital parking free for nurses, physicians, allied health professionals, healthcare workers, support staff, and other essential hospital employees while they are working. Healthcare workers should not have to pay to park at the very hospitals where they provide essential care to British Columbians. They are not visiting for convenience, shopping, or leisure. They are reporting to work to care for patients, support families, and keep our healthcare system operating.

Imagine being a nurse or other healthcare worker working a busy, short-staffed emergency department. Your shift is scheduled to end at 7:30 p.m., but just as you are preparing to leave, a patient suffers a cardiac arrest. You stay. You provide care, support your team, and help the patient’s family. You cannot simply walk away because your shift has ended. An hour passes, and then another 30 minutes. When you finally leave the hospital, exhausted, you discover that your parking has expired and your vehicle has been towed. You stayed late because a patient needed you. Now you are facing hundreds of dollars in parking tickets or even worse, having your car towed and have no way to go home after your shift that already emotionally taxed you. 

Is this fair?

Healthcare is not a nine-to-five job. Cardiac arrests, strokes, traumas and dying patients do not wait for the end of a shift. Healthcare workers routinely stay late because their replacements have not arrived, departments are short-staffed, or patients still require care. A healthcare worker who stays late to save a life should not come out of the hospital to a parking ticket. A healthcare worker who is called in during an emergency should not have to worry about paying to park before rushing into work. And no employee should have to surrender part of their wages simply for showing up to work, for showing up for British Columbians.

But the problem begins even before parking expires. Healthcare workers should not have to spend part of their wages simply to access their workplace. Nurses, healthcare aides, respiratory therapists, laboratory staff, cleaners, porters, unit clerks, paramedics, food service workers, and countless others should not have to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars each year just to park while they are working. Many healthcare workers work overnight, weekends, holidays, early mornings, and unpredictable shifts. Public transportation may not always be available or practical, and for many employees, driving is not a luxury but a necessity. Adding parking fees to an already demanding job creates another financial burden on the people our healthcare system depends upon, making recruitment and retention that is already so difficult even more hard. 

Across British Columbia, hospitals use a variety of parking operators, including Impark, Concord Parking, Robbins Parking, Precise ParkLink, WestPark, Advanced Parking, Diamond Parking, and Platinum Parking, among others. While parking management has a legitimate purpose, hospitals are not ordinary commercial properties. The people parking there are essential workers reporting for duty. Hospital parking should support healthcare operations, not create another source of financial hardship for healthcare employees.

This is about more than saving a few dollars. It is about fairness, respect, recruitment, retention, and recognizing the reality of healthcare work. British Columbians regularly call healthcare workers heroes, but respect needs to be reflected in the systems surrounding their work. Healthcare workers already give their time, energy, skills, and compassion to British Columbians every day. They should not be financially penalized for reporting to work or for staying beyond their scheduled shift when patient care requires it.

We therefore call upon the Government of British Columbia, the Ministry of Health, Fraser Health, Interior Health, Island Health, Northern Health, Vancouver Coastal Health, the Provincial Health Services Authority, and the First Nations Health Authority to establish a province-wide standard providing free hospital parking for healthcare workers while they are working.

At a minimum, healthcare workers should be protected from parking tickets and towing when they are providing patient care, responding to emergencies, working overtime, or otherwise required to remain at the hospital beyond their scheduled shift. Healthcare workers should not be penalized for staying to care for British Columbians. Healthcare workers show up for British Columbians. The system should show up for them.