We won’t cancel superhospital deals: McCann
superhospital has sought to bill $20,700 — including “$4,000 in management fees” — to convert a small conference room into a work space for nurses. The work was to include adding frosted glass, a counter and eight phone lines. However, McCann told reporters that the new CAQ government, elected on Oct. 1, is not considering cancelling the PPP contracts. “We’re not there at all,” McCann said after a news conference on Nuns’ Island to inaugurate a new satellite blood-testing centre that will be part of the Verdun CLSC clinic. “We are not at all at the stage to consider buying back the PPPs,” McCann added. “We would like the (projects) to come to term, and to be carried out according to the highest standards.” McCann noted that the “CHUM file is evolving well. We have a very experienced team, and I received a report recently that confirmed for me that we have things well in hand. For us, the CHUM is an institution that’s very important. We will follow the situation there very closely.” The Quebec government won’t buy back Montreal’s two superhospitals from its private partners despite new revelations of exorbitant repairs, Health Minister Danielle McCann said Monday. The previous Liberal government had long supported public-private partnerships, known as PPPs, to finance the construction of the city’s superhospitals, predicting that the private partners would assume the risk of any cost overruns. However, both the McGill University Health Centre project and the one for the Centre hospitalier de l’université de Montréal resulted in overruns, with the government compensating the private partners for an additional $233 million. Critics of the two PPPs have warned that Quebec taxpayers will ultimately pay a total of $8.6 billion in leasing and maintenance fees for the two superhospitals over the course of the 30-year contracts. And on Monday, La Presse reported that the private consortium in charge of the Nouveau CHUM
In an interview Monday morning on Radio-Canada, the head of the French-language CHUM defended the PPP contract with a private consortium that’s headed by Innisfree Ltd., a British investment firm. The consortium is known officially as Construction Santé Montréal. “We pay great attention to the contract, which was well drafted, and which permits us to include all the renovations that are necessary,” Dr. Fabrice Brunet told radio host Alain Gravel. “Because as you know, medicine evolves very rapidly.” Brunet would neither confirm nor deny the figures reported by La Presse. “We have to examine these figures. These are hypotheses and we have not yet paid for these things.” “Yes, we are in a situation of a partnership,” Brunet added. “We are negotiating in the correct manner that’s polite but firm” to ensure these costs do not become exorbitant. Asked whether the government should buy back the superhospitals by paying a penalty in the contracts, Brunet responded: “It’s not up to me to decide. For the moment, I don’t think so. We have to analyze the totality of elements, but we must demand that this partnership be conducted to the benefit of the two sides and not one side.” McCann did not allude to the MUHC, which for the past six months has been overseen by executive director Pierre Gfeller. The private consortium that’s responsible for the MUHC contract is the McGill Infrastructure Health Group, headed by engineering firm SNC-Lavalin. A group of Montreal researchers has urged the provincial government to buy back the superhospital contracts. The researchers observed that in 2014, France paid a penalty to cancel its PPP contract for the management of the Centre hospitalier Sud Francilien after concluding that it was too expensive. Even with the penalty, the French government estimated that it would ultimately save up to $982.4 million over the long term. In Europe, the enthusiasm for PPPs in the 1990s has given way to wariness following revelations that a British consortium charged more than $500 to replace a single electrical outlet. In Quebec, the Journal de Montréal reported two years ago that the McGill Healthcare Infrastructure Group billed the MUHC $409 to replace a soap dispenser.