Brampton MPPs vote down funding for city’s new hospital expansion after ‘groundbreaking’ stunt

If the PC MPPs for Brampton wanted to send a message to their constituents that hospital expansion in their city is a top priority, they had no better opportunity than the one offered by NDP leader Marit Stiles on Tuesday. 

She introduced a motion requesting that the PC government commit funding for a number of critical healthcare infrastructure projects across the province, including a desperately needed second hospital for Brampton. 

In October 2023, staff at Peel Memorial were so overburdened, they urged parents to take their young children with medical needs elsewhere due to excessive wait times.

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"Across Ontario, people are doing their part. They're working hard to build a strong future here in our beautiful province, but when they walk into the emergency room, they are told to wait when they need surgery," Stiles said in her introductory speech at Queen's Park. "They are told they have to leave town. When they ask for help, they are told not yet. Hospitals are crumbling. Urgent care and emergency rooms are closing. Communities have been waiting for too long. That's why today we are putting forward a motion to build care and strengthen Ontario."

Along with Brampton’s second hospital, the motion also tried to secure funding in the 2025 Budget—being introduced tomorrow—for new hospitals in Durham, Brantford and Kitchener-Waterloo; reopening the Minden Hospital; and expanding, renovating or restoring a number of other healthcare facilities across other parts of Ontario.

The motion was quashed by the PC majority.

The Pointer reached out to all five Brampton PC MPPs after they all helped defeat the motion. They were asked about the decision and whether the full capital funding for Memorial’s expansion will be included in Ontario’s 2025 budget which will be released Thursday.  

Only Hardeep Singh Grewal (Brampton East) responded.

"Our government remains committed to strengthening healthcare infrastructure across Ontario, including in fast-growing communities like Brampton," he wrote in an email to The Pointer. "We continue to take steps toward expanding access to care and addressing capacity challenges through responsible, long-term planning and investment. We remain focused on delivering meaningful improvements that support the health and well-being of all Ontarians."

Alongside Premier Doug Ford, all of Brampton’s Conservative members voted against the NDP proposal: Amarjot Sandhu, Prabmeet Sarkaria, Charmaine Williams, Graham McGregor and Grewal. They defeated the funding request despite building their provincial election campaigns around the promise of healthcare expansion in Brampton, including the long awaited Phase 2 construction of Peel Memorial. 

All five attended a campaign-style “groundbreaking” event for the expansion at the end of March. The five Brampton PC MPPs were joined by Ford, Mayor Patrick Brown and other local representatives who tossed dirt into the air in a celebration meant to mark the beginning of the critical project. 

But it was little more than a performative gathering for a photo-op. The Government of Ontario and William Osler have yet to choose a proponent to carry out the expansion of Peel Memorial. The RFP to choose a contractor closed on April 25—almost a month after the so-called “groundbreaking”. 

A “groundbreaking” announcement for Peel Memorial Phase II in March was done before the project even had a contractor to carry out the construction.

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This is not the first time Conservatives have shot down the NDP’s attempts to secure funding commitments for Brampton’s healthcare needs. Similar motions were defeated in 2018, when former NDP leader Andrea Howarth’s effort failed–Ford, Sandhu and Sarkaria were absent for the vote–and in 2021, when the same pair of Brampton PC MPPs voted against the NDP’s proposal for an expansion with 850 acute-care hospital beds, the minimum needed to get Brampton closer to the provincial per capita average—the current proposal backed by the PCs only includes 250 non-acute care beds, for what would not be a full-service hospital; the PC plan instead calls for Peel Memorial to be a non-acute care facility meant to relieve some pressure from the city’s only hospital, Brampton Civic. It will not have surgical wards, cardiac treatment beds, cancer wards, trauma response units or any of the other primary acute features that a full service hospital offers. 

Sandhu and Sarkaria have failed to explain how the PCs' proposed plan with 250 beds largely for recovery will serve the medical needs of a city with about one-third the number of acute-care hospital beds compared to the provincial average. The government has refused to acknowledge that under its current plan the expansion of Peel Memorial will not qualify as a full-service hospital which is what local officials have demanded for decades. The City of Brampton’s healthcare emergency declaration called for a fully functioning hospital with all the major wards and 850 acute-care beds. The demand was ignored. 

When the RFP for the expansion project closed at the end of April, four companies qualified in the bidding process: Progress Peel Health Solutions, Pomerleau Inc., EllisDon Corporation, and Bird Design-Build Construction. The contract has not yet been awarded and it remains unclear when construction will begin or when the new healthcare facility will actually open its doors. Brampton was promised a second full-service hospital almost two decades ago. Instead, Civic has become known for hallway healthcare, because of the chronic capacity issues and long wait times, with patients often treated in makeshift spaces due to the lack of beds.

As part of any review process to qualify a successful bidder, the PC government and Osler officials will need to consider findings of an auditor general’s report last year regarding problems EllisDon is facing with another Peel hospital project. 

The Auditor General’s 2024 report found the redevelopment of the new Trillium Health Mississauga Hospital, which includes design, construction, financing and maintenance over 30 years, was already over its approved budget by more than $4 billion.

The AG concluded that EllisDon had not shown any interest in providing specifics of the project expenses that are contributing to the massive cost increases, which exceeds more than $2 billion for design and construction alone, before work on the 22-storey hospital with more than 950 beds has even started. The audit warned that if cost-saving measures weren’t found, the hospital’s ability to offer the full range of planned services would be in jeopardy.  

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