Liberal budget vows more hospital beds
Premier looks to turn corner on party’s low popularity with key health-care investments
The Trillium hospital system will get 650 more beds at its Mississauga and Queensway locations as part of the Ontario government’s $9-billion budget for new health-care centres.
Premier Kathleen Wynne said the projects at Trillium are desperately needed to meet demand as more and more people move into the area.
“The growth that is happening in this region is huge,” she told reporters after a campaign-style announcement about the redevelopment, which will include a tower for acutecare patients at the Mississauga site along with a new emergency room and more operating rooms.
Wynne, Finance Minister Charles Sousa — who represents a Mississauga riding — and Health Minister Eric Hoskins stood on a stage before more than a dozen hospital workers in a hot and crowded auditorium at the Mississauga site with cheering staff to tout Trillium as one of five new or redeveloped hospitals across the province in last Thursday’s budget.
She credited Trillium chief executive Michelle DiEmanuele with setting the positive tone.
“There’s a lot of energy in this place,” said Wynne, who has been running behind Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown in public opinion polls with13 months to go until the June 7, 2018 election.
“Most of the people in that room are not partisan . . . we can’t predict how they’re going to vote,” the premier added.
“It’s not an election for them. It’s about making sure they get the investment that they need.”
The Liberals have been hoping to turn the corner on their low popularity, promising to cut skyrocketing hydro rates 25 per cent by summer, bringing in rent controls on all residential buildings and a 15-per-cent foreign buyers tax to cool an overheated housing market.
In addition, last week’s budget included a $475-million annual pharmacare plan covering 4,400 medicines for everyone 24 and under starting in January.
DiEmanuele, a former senior civil servant at Queen’s Park, said the money for redevelopment at Trillium “really does set us up nicely.”
Aside from the 500 new beds at the Mississauga site at Hurontario and the Queensway, 500 existing beds will be replaced.
A new Queensway Health Centre near Sherway Gardens will get a renovated and expanded urgent care centre — to divert patients from emergency rooms for less serious health problems — and new beds for rehabilitation and complex continuing care, freeing up beds at the Credit Valley hospital site also operated by Trillium.
The Trillium system treats 1.6 million patients a year, including 273,000 in the emergency room, making it one of the busiest in Canada.
At Queen’s Park, New Democrat MPP John Vanthof complained that “operating funding for hospitals is $300 million short of what the hospitals say they needed.”
“That means that our community hospitals will continue to be squeezed, patients will continue to be treated in hallways and northern and rural hospitals will continue to be forced to cut the services that people count on,” said Vanthof (Timiskaming-Cochrane).
“Hospital budgets have been frozen for years. A 2-per-cent increase is basically inflation. That’s nothing to crow about. Giving inflationary costs to the base budget isn’t exactly a huge gift. So the people who are in hallways and the surgeries that are being cancelled are not going to be corrected by simply an inflationary increase.”
Hoskins, at the announcement in Mississauga, said some hospitals will get more than the minimum 2 per cent as part of a $500-million boost to funding for hospitals to cover dayto-day operating costs.