No money and government silence: PCs refuse to explain when construction will start on Peel Memorial Phase 2

Premier Doug Ford was elected in 2018 on a promise to end hallway healthcare. 

"Patients are frustrated, families are frustrated, and doctors and nurses are frustrated,” Ford said. “We told the people of Ontario we'd make our hospitals run better and more efficiently, and we'd get them the care they deserve. Today, we're keeping that promise."

He didn’t.

In 2024, the number of patients being cared for in hallways across the province reached a record high. 

In Ontario’s 2021 budget, the PCs committed to a new “inpatient wing” at Peel Memorial, an announcement celebrated by many local residents who were desperate for increased services at the Peel Memorial Centre for Integrated Wellness, which does not have a 24/7 emergency room or other vital services. 

In a post on X at the time, MPP Prabmeet Sarkaria vowed: “After years of neglect, Premier Doug Ford is going to be there for the people of Brampton.”

He wasn’t. The 2021 budget included no funding for the expansion of Peel Memorial. In the four years since, that hasn’t changed. 

Despite a widely publicized “groundbreaking” in March for the Peel Memorial Phase II project, the 2025 budget which came weeks later included no money for construction. 

The groundbreaking ceremony for Brampton’s second hospital proved to be nothing more than a staged show featuring Doug Ford, Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown and other local officials holding shovels for the photo op, even though the successful bidder for the construction had not yet been determined. In a newsletter sent out to Brampton residents earlier this year, Brown claimed the government has committed “nearly $2 billion towards this vital project”, it remains unclear where he got this figure from. There is no line item included in the recently released provincial budget for Peel Memorial Phase II. The misleading information from Brown is part of a long-standing pattern of unethical behaviour the Brampton mayor has followed since first being elected in 2018. 

The Request for Proposal (RFP) phase was closed on April 25. Four companies are currently bidding on the project, Progress Peel Health Solutions, Pomerleau Inc., EllisDon Corporation, and Bird Design-Build Construction Inc.

Infrastructure Ontario (IO) wrote in an April 25 press release that the project is in the development phase and IO, along with the William Osler Health System, will review the bids before awarding the contract.

The Pointer sent multiple emails to the media relations department of the Ministry of Health and Ema Popovic, spokesperson to Health Minister Sylvia Jones, about the construction contract for Peel Memorial Phase II, if one has been officially awarded to any company, and if not, when the public can expect a decision. 

The Pointer also asked if the provincial government has released any funds for construction to begin. No response has been received and there is still no timeline for the project. 

Osler, which manages Peel Memorial, Brampton Civic and Etobicoke General in Toronto, provided the following response: "The transformation of William Osler Health System’s (Osler) Peel Memorial into Brampton’s second hospital continues to move forward, with early construction now underway and the evaluation of Request for Proposals (RFP) submissions in progress," a spokesperson wrote in an email.

"The construction timeline and completion dates will be determined through the successful proponent’s schedule. As with all construction projects, dates are subject to change." 

It is unclear what is meant by “early construction”. No work on the actual building or the project included in the RFP has begun.

Chris Bejnar, co-founder of the local advocacy group, Citizens For a Better Brampton, questioned the Ford PC government and Osler over the lack of transparency around such a critical healthcare project.

"It's unacceptable. This is not a top-secret military project. This is a taxpayer-funded project that affects everyone in this community,” he said. “We're approaching a decade of planning and very slow progress in relation to other health networks. In other jurisdictions, this whole process has happened much quicker.”

Adding insult to injury, Bramptonians have been forced to stand by and watch as other cities receive funding and support from the PC government for new hospital projects. 

On June 25, the PCs announced the groundbreaking on the Peter Gilgan Mississauga Hospital; the government is investing $14 billion into the project that will triple the floor size of the existing Mississauga Hospital. 

“We've been taking almost a decade, and we still are in the RFP process,” Bejnar said. “I blame the will, and most are executive staff, because they keep dragging their heels."

The PC's reluctance to invest substantially in Brampton healthcare is not new, and the failure to allocate any funds for Peel Memorial Phase 2 in this year’s provincial budget reinforces that notion.

The Ford government revealed its financial blueprint for this year on May 12, 2025.

“A Plan to Protect Ontario” was presented by Peter Bethenfalvy, Minister of Finance, who outlined $56 billion over the next decade to enhance province-wide healthcare infrastructure, including $43 billion in capital grants to support 50 hospitals and the addition of 3,000 beds across Ontario.

The only mention in the budget document of Brampton’s long-awaited Peel Memorial Phase II expansion was disclosed in a section discussing the Province’s 10-year Capital Plan. It stated the government is supporting “the March 2025 start of construction,” but no contractor has been chosen to begin this work. There was no line item for 2025 indicating any money was being allocated this year, even though it was part of the PC election platform, which vowed to improve the city’s crumbling health infrastructure by increasing capacity.

Along with healthcare advocates and the City of Brampton, the Opposition NDP have been calling for years for Ford to expand Peel Memorial into an 850-bed full-service hospital with all the major clinical wards and services, including a 24/7 emergency room. Its current urgent care service is not open around the clock, and Ford’s scaled-back plan is to expand Memorial into a 250-bed facility that would relieve pressure from Civic (which has 645 acute-care beds), primarily by offering patient recovery with no acute-care beds. It would not be a full-service “general hospital”.

A “groundbreaking” announcement for Peel Memorial Phase II in March was done before the project even had a contractor to carry out the construction. One still has not been chosen.

(Government of Ontario)

Osler has repeatedly failed to provide an accurate timeline for when the expansion, which will not deliver the requested 850-acute-care-bed full-service hospital, will be completed.

Brampton was promised a completed full-service second hospital two decades ago. It currently has about one-third the capacity per capita compared to the provincial average (0.8 hospital beds per 1,000 residents, compared to the provincial average of 2.3 beds). Civic has long been described as the home of hallway healthcare in Ontario due to its lack of capacity in a city of 800,000 residents, many of whom are forced to go elsewhere for hospital treatment.

“When my husband went in, he was having trouble with his speech,” Mary McLeod, a longtime Brampton resident said while talking to The Pointer in February this year, recalling 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…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…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.

Bejnar expressed deep frustration about the inadequate critical services at Peel Memorial. He highlighted the absence of essential departments such as a maternity ward, a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), and cytology, hematology, pathology, microbiology, and point-of-care testing labs. He emphasized that, with the current service levels, it does not meet the standards necessary to qualify as a full-service hospital.

"And how do you get 250 beds? These are not acute beds. They're long-term, you know, rehab, care, kind of thing, right? So they're not normal beds for a full-service hospital,” he said, noting that even when the new expansion is built, serious cases will still be transferred to Civic.  

“Isn't that traumatic? Traumatic for a patient, let's say they are seriously injured and treated in the ER at Gilmor. Oh, we're not equipped to handle your case. You've got to go to Civic now and transport them to Civic. And stuff like that, is that the best healthcare system? No."

Bejnar criticized both the PCs and municipal government under Brown, saying the project has only been used for political stunts and promotional events.

"It's detrimental to the city, because I think that the provincial government, even the federal government, to date, because of the high immigrant population here, they use this as a photo op, basically, right? And they know that. I guess they just take advantage of the city to get the votes, but they don't come through with the promises.”

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