‘Right away. It’s overdue’: Crombie pledges immediate funding for Peel Memorial to end Brampton’s hallway healthcare crisis

In September of 2020, when Brampton was still the epicentre of Ontario’s worst pandemic infection spread, Doug Ford called out the city’s distracted mayor, Patrick Brown – who had been more concerned with playing hockey during the lockdown and forcing staff to work on a federal Conservative leadership campaign – describing Brampton as “broken”.

Months later, in April of 2021, when COVID was still ravaging the city, far more so than any other part of the province, Ford’s health minister at the time, Christine Elliott, was forced to address angry criticism inside the legislature about a grieving Brampton family. 

She had just been asked by a Brampton NDP MPP how many more residents in the city would have to die before the PC government would finally provide desperately needed frontline healthcare to more than 700,000 citizens in the city.

Emily Viegas, a 13-year-old Brampton girl, had just died after succumbing to COVID-19. Her father was scared to take her to Brampton Civic Hospital because of the notorious reputation the overwhelmed healthcare facility had infamously gained, widely referred to as the place where the term ‘hallway healthcare’ was coined in Ontario. She passed away in her own bed, after her father had seen with his own eyes the state of affairs inside Brampton’s only hospital, where his wife had been taken after contracting COVID.

Elliott finally replied to the family’s grief, in the province’s public legislative chamber, after demands echoed through the cavernous hall to explain why her government refused to take care of Brampton residents: “There is no suggestion that they’re receiving any less than they’re entitled to.” Her shameless remarks left people in shock. Brampton, residents realized, was on its own.

For much of the pandemic the PCs gave the city 1 testing centre; Toronto, with about four times the population, had 17.

Ford called Brampton “broken” after he helped break the city’s healthcare system.

It was operating with about a third the number of hospital beds per capita, compared to the rest of the province.

Ford’s repeated claims of adding more beds and a second hospital in the city have not yielded any money committed in a provincial budget under his leadership to build a second hospital. To Ford, as his longtime health minister said of suffering Brampton families – they are not “receiving any less than they’re entitled to”.

The need to expand Peel Memorial into a full service hospital has been known for years as Brampton Civic routinely operates over capacity.

(The Pointer files)

When Brampton had reported five times the rate of infections during the pandemic compared to Ontario overall, The Pointer, after trying for months to get an explanation from the PCs about its failure to provide more testing capacity in the decimated city, asked why the Ford government refused to provide adequate resources to one of the worst hit parts of the country. 

The response: “If we find that there is a need for another testing centre in Brampton, of course, we will take a look at that”. 

Critics have questioned if the tragic neglect comes down to demographics. If Brampton looked more like Ford’s Etobicoke community or where his family cottage in the Muskokas is located, would it still be treated the same way?

Much of Ontario’s healthcare system is under immense strain, and nowhere is the crisis more evident than in Brampton, where the term ‘hallway healthcare’ was coined more than a decade ago when patients in need of urgent care, were left to be treated in hallways, closets and other makeshift spaces due to the scarcity of beds. 

In 2018, Ford promised under his new PC government, this would come to an end. Nearly seven years later, Brampton remains the poster child for a healthcare system in crisis; many residents are without access to a family doctor and critical surgeries are being delayed for months.

“When my husband went in, he was having trouble with his speech,” Mary McLeod, a longtime Brampton resident, recalls, describing a traumatic experience in 2022 when she took her husband to Brampton Civic Hospital. “I thought he had a stroke, and he was made to sit in a chair for…we were probably there six or seven hours in emergency, waiting for different tests and things. They did a brain scan and determined he had a brain tumour. But even though they knew he had the brain tumour, we still had to wait a long time for him to be able to lie down. By the time they knew, they had nowhere for him to lie down, so he had to sit in a chair in the hallway. He was obviously in discomfort because he had a very large brain tumour. They saw it in the brain scan, but they didn’t have any beds or even any cots for him to lie down because the emergency was so full.”

Even after being admitted, he was kept in a hallway overnight before being transferred to Trillium Hospital in Mississauga for neurosurgery.

Since Ford’s election in 2018, the services at Brampton Civic have only become more overburdened as it continues to operate far over capacity. 

Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie has made reforming the Ontario healthcare system a keystone of her campaign to become premier. She promises that if elected, funding to transform Peel Memorial into a full service hospital will be included “right away” in her first budget. 

“It’s overdue,” Crombie told The Pointer, noting that Ford and the PCs promised to alleviate many of the healthcare system pressures plaguing Brampton but have failed to deliver. “This is a commitment I would honour, of course, and get it done right away. It’s critical. Brampton needs more hospital beds. They need a third hospital. I think William Osler was built too small. We need those beds.”

According to the most recent data from Ontario Health, the number of inpatients being treated in hallways and other makeshift spaces reached a record high of about 1,800 in the summer, an approximately 125 percent increase since Ford promised to end hallway healthcare in 2018.

According to Statistics Canada, as of 2023, Ontario had only 2.23 hospital beds per 1,000 people, down from 2.25 in 2019, which puts the province 16 percent behind the rest of Canada and 84 percent below the international median, based on the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) health data. Meanwhile, the province faces a staggering hospital staffing shortfall of 34,292 full-time employees, including a shortfall of 15,396 inpatient nurses, 1,909 emergency room nurses, and 12,133 vacancies in essential support roles such as food and sanitation services, as reported by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI). According to Statistics Canada, hospital job vacancies have skyrocketed by 534 percent since 2015, causing Ontario hospitals to struggle to retain employees due to inadequate wages and increasing burnout—a situation exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Brampton has experienced a surge in population, now making it the third biggest city in Ontario—surpassing Mississauga. According to a recent StatsCan report from January 16, Brampton's population has reached 791,486, marking a 15 percent increase over the past four years. This growth is largely fueled by a wave of immigrants and newcomers, including seniors and children.

Brampton Civic Hospital only has 645 beds, not nearly enough to serve its growing population.

(Alexis Wright/The Pointer files)

This influx has put immense pressure on medical services. Despite the growing demand, Brampton still has only one full-service hospital to serve its residents. The long-awaited expansion of Peel Memorial is set to add 250 non-acute beds, but that's far below the 850 acute-care beds that are desperately needed, according to the Ontario Health Coalition. But that figure is based on previous population figures, and does not include as many as 100,000 residents in the city not represented in Census data (due to the large number of unregistered dwellings and the high number of international students in Brampton).

The lack of long-term care beds has exacerbated the crisis, leaving many hospital beds occupied by patients who should receive care elsewhere. Janine Hermann-McLeod, Co-Chair of the Brampton-Caledon Health Coalition, points out the devastating impact of the ongoing health crisis.

"My own grandmother faced hallway healthcare at the hospital in Brampton over and over again when she was in long-term care 10 years ago and for years before that," she tells The Pointer. 

“She was left in hallways for 8-10 hours at a time with brain damage from her strokes, dementia, delirium from bladder infections, having forgotten a lot of her English and struggling to communicate very loudly or in any language but German. It was scary and difficult for her to be left in the hallway with no dignity like that, and this happened over 10 years ago. She was confused, scared, in pain, and it's not the kind of care she paid taxes for years to receive at the end of her life."

Hermann-McLeod criticized the healthcare policies of the Ford government and expressed concern about the burden these costs place on residents.

"Since she (her grandmother) passed, it's only gotten worse. When she had her stroke that led her into long-term care instead of home care, the hospital tried to push her into a long-term care she didn't want, but my mother was able and knowledgeable enough to say no and stand up for her," she says. "Thankfully she ended up in the long-term care she wanted with good conditions, where we could visit her so she wouldn't be alone and scared. But these days she could be fined hundreds of dollars every day for staying there thanks to Ford's government's Bill 7, and we would have to choose between equality and dignity for seniors and disabled people who need long-term care and dignity and good treatment of people who also need hospital beds."

Despite Ford’s 2018 pledge to end “hallway healthcare” there has been no progress, as residents continue to suffer.

"Hallway Healthcare in Brampton has not improved as far as we can see. We hear endless horror stories: hallway healthcare for people in a mental health crisis," Hermann-McLeod says.

"We hear from a lot of people who are having trouble accessing primary care, which only worsens health and adds to the burden on our hospital system. Another huge issue is when people without OHIP coverage cannot go to a family doctor and end up needing emergency treatment for preventative diseases."

She describes the severe bed shortages in Brampton with just 645 beds at Brampton Civic and none at Peel Memorial, which is not an inpatient facility. With a combined official population of 882,117 in Brampton and Caledon, this equates to only 0.73 hospital beds per 1,000 people, which is about a third of the Ontario average of 2.23 beds per 1,000 residents.

Hermann-McLeod suggests that the planned 250-bed expansion at Peel Memorial would do little to narrow this gap since those beds are designated for long-term care, not for acute hospital patients. 

Brampton, she says, only has one full-service hospital, as Peel Memorial remains an urgent care facility without enough essential services to accommodate patients.

"Brampton currently effectively has one hospital, not two. The word hospital isn't even in the name of Peel Memorial Centre for Integrated Health and Wellness, because while they have a great urgent care with some extended capabilities like CT, it is still just an urgent care, not an emergency room," McLeod explains. "To be a real emergency room, it would need to be able to admit patients, and it will not have that even when it expands, for some reason expanding without full testing capabilities, fully capable surgical operatories, a trauma unit, and ICU, or a maternity ward. Brampton Civic Hospital was supposed to add on to Peel Memorial, not be a replacement, but they spent an extra $300 million building it as a P3 under William Osler Health System. Despite this unsuccessful experiment with P3s, the Ontario government has continued to build them over and over again."

She continues, describing that the strain on Brampton Civic has forced many residents to travel outside the city for care.

"The reason we are Brampton Caledon Health Coalition is that Brampton Civic Hospital is also supposed to cover Caledon," she says. "However, we hear over and over about people in Caledon, and even people in Brampton, choosing to go to Headwaters in Dufferin because the wait times in Brampton are so long. There are 86 beds at Headwaters, and they are supposed to be covering residents of Dufferin. Going to a hospital that is further away to avoid extended wait times is just dangerous, particularly if your condition is life-threatening or could suddenly escalate."

The situation in primary care is equally dire. Many in Brampton and across Ontario are struggling to find family doctors, with around 2.5 million Ontarians now without one—a stark increase from 1.3 million just seven years ago, as highlighted by the Ontario College of Family Physicians. It is estimated this figure will reach 4.4 million in 2026, according to the Ontario Medical Association. 

In 2021, Brampton’s local area health network only had 70 family doctors per 100,000 residents, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), compared to 124 family doctors for every 100,000 residents across Canada as a whole, a little more than half the national rate. 

In 2023 the Ontario College of Family Physicians reported that more than 430,000 Peel residents will be without a family doctor by next year.

The above projections are based on funding levels and policies under Ford’s PCs, who have made the doctor far worse than it was when they took over governance in 2018.

Doug Ford has, for years, refused to invest the necessary funding to improve Peel’s under-resourced healthcare system.

(Government of Ontario)

According to the Ontario Health Coalition (OHC), the healthcare system in the province has suffered as a result of the PC push to privatize large parts of the system. The OHC reported that public funding for private clinics has jumped to 212 percent since 2023, while public hospitals face growing deficits. Ontario now has the lowest per capita hospital funding in Canada, trailing 7.9 percent behind the national average, CIHI reported. If Ontario hospitals received funding at the same pace as other provinces, they would get $3.7 billion more annually. The funding cuts resulted in a significant shortfall in healthcare, leading to serious consequences, such as:

• Ontario needs 16,800 additional hospital beds by 2032, but the Ford government has only committed to 3,000 beds, which is just one-fifth of the required amount, according to the CUPE/OCHU 2024 healthcare report
• Hospital bed occupancy has climbed back to 93 percent, reaching dangerously high pre-pandemic levels, as per Ontario Health data
• The average emergency room wait time for hospital admission is now 19 hours, with 75 percent of patients not being admitted within the government’s target time, according to a report from StatsCan.

Amid all these heart-wrenching statistics, which paint a grim picture of the deteriorating healthcare system, Brampton residents are left questioning whether the February 27 election will bring a glimmer of hope or will prove to be another nightmare for a community stuck in the next four years of prolonged underfunding. They are looking to local candidates for answers, and a potential path forward to change what has been a long and troubling history of delays and neglect. 

Andrew Kania, Liberal candidate in Brampton West, said his Party’s strategy will overhaul the healthcare system and address the dire state of medical care in Brampton. Speaking on behalf of all Brampton Liberal candidates, Kania criticized the Ford government’s handling of healthcare and committed to tangible reforms.

"Doug Ford has had approximately seven years to solve these problems. Under Ford’s watch, our emergency rooms are closing, over 2.5 million people cannot find a family doctor, and wait times have ballooned," Kania told The Pointer. "Ontario’s public health care system should be the envy of the world, but instead, Doug Ford is dismantling it piece by piece to benefit for-profit health care companies. Including right here in Brampton, where Peel Memorial has been stretched to its limits."

Kania criticized the Ford administration, pointing out some  disturbing healthcare statistics under the PCs.

“Under Doug Ford and his Brampton Conservative MPPs, ER wait times have increased 48 percent. 2,000 people are treated in a hallway on any given day. 1,200 ERs were closed in 2023," he shared. "Eleven thousand people died waiting for surgery or a diagnostic procedure. 200,000 people are waiting for a CT scan or MRI. 11,000 people died from an opioid overdose since 2018. We need 33,000 nurses and 50,000 PSWs by 2032. $1 billion would hire 13,000 nurses. Doug Ford joked that if you need a CT scan or MRI, you should go to a veterinarian clinic.”

The Liberals, he said, have a plan to ensure every Ontarian has access to a family doctor within four years and will push for the immediate construction of Brampton’s second hospital to match the city’s surging population.

"If elected, Brampton’s new Ontario Liberal MPPs commit to ensuring that every person in Brampton has a family doctor within the next four years," Kania said. "As well, we will fight for the building of a second fully functioning hospital in Brampton now, without any further delay. Brampton has only one fully functioning hospital, despite the fact that Mississauga, where Bonnie Crombie was, of course, mayor, has three fully functioning hospitals, and Brampton has now overtaken Mississauga in population."

In a detailed healthcare manifesto, he briefed The Pointer that the plan includes expanding medical school capacities, integrating internationally trained doctors and improving digital healthcare infrastructure.

“Creating two new medical schools and expanding capacities in existing medical schools, doubling the number of medical school spots and residency positions," he added. "Deliver team-based care with evening and weekend support, integrated home care for seniors, and accessible mental health services for children, youth, and teenagers. Accelerate the process to integrate at least 1,200 qualified and experienced internationally trained doctors over four years through the Practice Ready Ontario program to first match and then exceed the capacity of similar programs implemented in other provinces like Alberta and British Columbia."

He continued.

"Eliminate fax machines, enhance virtual care, introduce centralized referral systems with patient portals, and implement interoperable electronic medical records to let doctors and other healthcare professionals in the circle of care focus on patients instead of paperwork. Incentivize family doctors to serve in rural and northern communities.”

The Pointer also contacted Conservative MPs and NDP and Green Party candidates regarding their plans to fix Brampton’s healthcare system. They have not responded.

Email: [email protected]

At a time when vital public information is needed by everyone, The Pointer has taken down our paywall on all stories to ensure every resident of Brampton, Mississauga and Niagara has access to the facts. For those who are able, we encourage you to consider a subscription. This will help us report on important public interest issues the community needs to know about now more than ever. You can register for a 30-day free trial HERE. Thereafter, The Pointer will charge $10 a month and you can cancel any time right on the website. Thank you