Sudbury regional hospital remains accountable to public: Bartolucci

BY LAUREL MYERS

The Ontario government’s plans for private-public partnership (P3) hospitals are under fire from NDP Health Critic and Nickel Belt MPP France Gelinas.

Her concern was spiked by the recent swirl of controversy surrounding the new Brampton Civic Hospital, which has been identified as a P3. The hospital shouldered significant cost increases of 186 percent, bed reductions of 22 percent, changes to the hospital plans from a three-building facility with 20 operating rooms to a two-building facility housing 12 operating rooms and more than two years delay in the construction deadlines, according to the Ontario Health Coalition.

“What’s going on in Brampton right now really shows the true colour of what happens when you have erosion of our public health care system for profit,” she said. “...Bits and pieces of the health care system are being given away to the highest bidder who wants to make a profit out of it. People are not going to be treated based on their needs, they’re going to be treated based on their ability to pay, which flies in the face of the central value of who we are as Canadians.

“If everything is gone to the highest bidder... then our health care system has gone to hell.”

However, despite Gelinas concerns, the new Sudbury Regional Hospital does not fall under the P3 development strategy, according to Infrastructure Ontario, a Crown corporation dedicated to managing some of the province’s larger and more complex infrastructure renewal projects, such as the new one-site hospital, ensuring they are built on time and on budget.

Jennifer Sclisizzi, communications adviser with Infrastructure Ontario, confirmed the new one-site hospital would remain publicly owned, publicly controlled and publicly accountable. She explained the hospital is being built under an alternative financing and procurement plan, which means the contractors, EllisDon Corporation, will finance the redevelopments and will be paid once the project is complete. It also means if the project goes over-budget, the contractors are responsible.

“With this alternative finance project, the people should know that we’re going to get our hospital built, it’s going to be on budget and it’s going to be on time,” said Sudbury MPP Rick Bartolucci. “The project, at the end of the day, is not a private hospital. It is a new facility that will remain, as has been in the past, publicly owned, publicly controlled and publicly accountable.”