Federal funding needed for health infrastructure

Facilities in desperate shape, writes Paul-Émile Cloutier.

Former prime minister Kim Campbell is famously quoted as saying during the 1993 election campaign that “an election is no time to discuss serious issues.” With apologies to

Ms. Campbell, election campaigns are excellent ways for Canadians to hold their politicians’ feet to the fire on the issues that matter to voters.

Case in point: Canadians will be going to the polls in just over a month and it is high time we heard, from those who seek to represent us in Parliament, how they would support innovation and transformation in Canada’s health system in a meaningful way.

That Canadians want federal leadership in health care is a fact proven in poll after poll for decades. The latest evidence is an Angus Reid poll released Aug. 26 that found 71 per cent of uncommitted voters consider improving access to health care their top election issue, a figure that jumps to 80 per cent among Canadians over age 55. But where to begin?

As a first step, candidates could correct the long-standing oversight of Canada’s federal government to not invest in health care infrastructure or in innovation led by health institutions.

In 2018, the government of Canada set out an ambitious infrastructure plan calling for investments of more than $180 billion over the course of 12 years. These investments will fund transportation infrastructure, water and waste water facilities, as well as education and social infrastructure.

Not included on that list? Health care infrastructure. In fact, hospitals have been explicitly excluded from accessing Infrastructure Canada’s funding programs for more than a decade. Canada’s innovation programs — whether administered via Innovation Canada or through the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) — select against leadership by health care providers.

Canadian voters must hold the federal government responsible for the ... the hospitals it helped to create.

Innovation Canada favours industry leadership, both in its Innovative Superclusters Initiative and through its Strategic Innovation Fund and tends to relegate health care organizations to a supporting role. Meanwhile, CFI requires that any hospital application have sign-off from the president of a university, whose priorities are likely to lie elsewhere.

Why do we do this? Why do we design these programs in ways that make it either difficult or impossible for hospitals, researchers and patients to benefit?

Some may argue federalism stands in the way; that anything that happens in a hospital is outside the scope of the federal government, but that is incorrect. In fact, the federal Hospital Construction Grant Program that ran from 1948 to 1970 was the financial engine that built the current hospital infrastructure. Unfortunately, that engine has sputtered to a halt.

Canadian voters must hold the federal government responsible for the care and maintenance of the hospitals it helped to create. Many of these institutions are now desperately in need of renewal even as demand increases due to our growing and aging population.

Nearly half of Canada’s hospitals are more than 50 years old and it is impossible to expect 21st-century medicine in a building designed for care models of a half a century ago.

Our aging hospital infrastructure also has the unfortunate side effect of consuming approximately 11 per cent of total public energy and accounting collectively for more than five per cent of Canada’s greenhouse gas footprint. Not only is modern hospital infrastructure important for providing better care, it is also a much greener solution.

In late July, among many other similar announcements, the federal government pledged $1 million to provide much-needed upgrades to 46-year-old Blackburn Arena in Ottawa’s east end. Fair enough, but during this election campaign, let’s put the puck in the net where it really counts: innovating health care for all Canadians.