The Thompson Regional Hospital District has awarded the contract for a ten-month long public advocacy campaign for a Kamloops Cancer Centre to consulting firm Santis Health.
TNRD External Relations and Advocacy Advisor, Corbin Kelley, says the campaign – which will cost a maximum of $75,000 – is expected to get underway on November 21.
He told Radio NL the community engagement portion of the campaign is expected to begin early next year.
“What we’re really hoping for – like you said calling your MLA or write a letter to your local representative – we’ve certainly had those discussions with Santis in terms of how we can do that, and do that in a meaningful way,” Kelley said.
“We’re certainly wanting to work with members of the public to have a meaningful impact and meaningful outcome that actually gets shovels in the ground. Residents can keep their eyes peeled for information in early 2024 on how to get involved.”
Santis Health beat out three other proposals, as it scored the highest on the TRHD’s evaluation criteria with a score of 86.6 out of 100. In a report to the board, Kelley said the Santis proposal scored highest in most of the criteria, including Methodology and Previous Experience.
In May, Health Minister Adrian Dix said the Kamloops cancer care centre was expected to be open by 2027, with a business case set to be approved sometime this fall.
“This public advocacy campaign is because we’ve gotten not quite this far before but the province has said they would build the Kamloops Cancer Care Centre,” Kelley added.
“The advocacy campaign will sort of stop advocating to the province once shovels are in the ground, and the board has made that very clear.”
In September, TRHD Chair Mike O’Reilly told Radio NL the goal of the campaign is to keep the pressure on the provincial government, noting the facility is long overdue.
“As a board collectively we thought ‘hey, you know what, we need to look at doing something different’ because what we’ve doing for the better part of three decades has not worked,” O’Reilly said.
“We can only do so much [as a board] but collectively there’s about 150,000 people that we represent. We think those 150,000 voices are going to be a lot louder and stronger that just ours.”
