After saying no to $450M request City Hall considering $390M contribution to new Mississauga hospital

After receiving a “promise” from the Premier and Minister of Health that the PC government will assist Mississauga with some of its pressing financial burdens, Mayor Carolyn Parrish has introduced a motion for council to approve a $390 million contribution to Trillium Health’s transformation of Mississauga Hospital. 

In October, Trillium Health requested $450 million from the City of Mississauga to help with the local share portion the PC government expects from Trillium—$1.5 billion in total. The overall project cost that will triple the size of the existing healthcare facility has ballooned to $16 billion for design, construction, financing, maintenance and ancillary costs over 30 years, $4 billion more than what the provincial government initially approved. 

City council, citing the strain it would place on taxpayers, unanimously voted to turn down Trillium’s request for $450 million last year ahead of the City’s 2025 budget approval process.

According to the motion, the provincial government has agreed to reduce the local share to $390 million.

A spokesperson for Trillium Health told The Pointer the $60 million reduction is being made up through “other components of the local share plan including fundraising and incremental hospital revenues that Trillium Health Partners is accountable for.”

It appears the reduction from $450 million to $390 million for City Hall’s contribution had nothing to do with the provincial government, as Trillium is making up the difference, not Queen’s Park. 

“This revised plan reflects a strong, collective commitment by all partners to deliver on this vital health infrastructure project. We appreciate the continued collaboration with the City and Province and look forward to the discussion at Council on Wednesday,” the Trillium spokesperson wrote in an email to The Pointer Monday. 

A previous staff report, presented to council in October, outlined several options for City support of the hospital project, none of which included the $390 million figure. That report analyzed four options, three included contributions ($450 million, $300 million or $150 million). The outlier was option four: to not contribute at all, which Mayor Parrish had previously stated was her preferred choice.

A rendering of the Mississauga Hospital redevelopment project, which is expected to be completed by 2033 and will service 1.7 million residents.

(Trillium Health Partners)

In a recently released newsletter sent out to all residents in Mississauga, Mayor Parrish provides context to the 9.2 percent property tax increase for 2025 approved by council, something that many councillors noted prevented them from supporting the first funding request from Trillium Health. 

In the document, Parrish repeats the stance held by her predecessor Bonnie Crombie, that being part of the Region of Peel forces Mississauga taxpayers to subsidize services in Brampton and Caledon. 

“This year alone, more than $30 million of your tax dollars are going to fund Regional road services outside our city. Mississauga residents also fund Brampton’s share of the Peel Police Services budget by more than $90 million a year. The 2025 Peel Police budget approved in January 2025  was their largest increase in history.”

After initially supporting the police budget at the board level, Parrish later quit the police board in protest of a $144 million, 23.3 percent increase for 2025, which the Mayor said she could not criticize if she stayed on the board. 

After stepping down she immediately began to vocally oppose the unprecedented increase to the Peel Police budget which she described as unsustainable. 

It remains unclear how the provincial government will assist Mississauga with costs such as the nearly one billion dollars for policing annually (an increase of $200 million in just two years). Mississauga has for decades lobbied to have a standalone police force and the wish appeared to have finally been granted when Ford announced the Region of Peel would be dissolved, a promise he said was made to the late iconic mayor of the city, Hazel McCallion, who for decades pushed for Mississauga to become a single-tier municipality like Toronto and Hamilton, with its own services.

But in 2023, the PC government abandoned the plan to dissolve the Region of Peel, despite Ford’s promise to the City of Mississauga that its longstanding issues with being tethered to Brampton and Caledon would finally be resolved. 

The provincial government has a history of neglecting commitments to Mississauga and the Region of Peel—which remains underfunded to the tune of nearly $1 billion annually for vital social services. 

Mayor Parrish has been heavily critical of the lack of funding. 

Last summer, following a meeting at Ford’s home, Parrish said she was optimistic the Premier was committed to addressing the lack of fair share funding for Mississauga. But when she met with his ministers at the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) conference later that summer, Parrish said her concerns “landed with a thud”, suggesting previous commitments to consider Mississauga’s funding inequity were eventually ignored. 

According to her motion being presented Wednesday, the municipal contribution “not to exceed” $390 million, is to be paid by January 1, 2033. To assist in covering the cost, council will implement an annual 1 percent hospital levy and issue debt to cover the remaining amount. 

Under Parrish’s proposed motion, property tax payers could begin to pay for a portion of the $390 million through a levy as early as 2028.  

Parrish made it clear last year that in a high-inflation economy, and with other significant financial pressures at the municipal level, primarily an additional $200 million annually for policing approved by Peel regional council over two years, it was not the time to add hundreds of millions more for the new hospital. She had suggested negotiating for a lower amount, and now $60 million has been taken off the requested City Hall contribution, while taxpayers will not have to immediately start paying for the massive new hospital. 

The City’s provisional financial contribution, if approved by council on Wednesday, comes as the Mississauga Hospital redevelopment effort is facing many questions about its overall budget. 

A report by Ontario’s Auditor General revealed the estimated costs for the redevelopment are more than $4 billion higher than the approved budget. If cost savings are not found, the audit warned the hospital’s ability to offer the full range of services could be in jeopardy.

The total project cost has not been finalized, but the rebuild and maintenance through the period of the contract is now projected to cost more than $16 billion, exceeding the current Treasury Board-approved budget by more than $4 billion according to the latest estimates in October. 

Among several findings, the AG reported EllisDon, the construction company behind the expansion, has been reluctant to provide details about what is driving the alarming cost overruns, which have exceeded the Provincial treasury board’s approved budget threshold for the project by more than $2 billion (40 percent) for design and construction costs alone.

This is all before construction of the massive 22-storey hospital with more than 950 beds has even started.

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