Grab A CanDuring the 2003 provincial election campaign, Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty denounced the Conservative government's decision to strike public-private partnerships to build several new hospitals, saying he was "against the Americanization of our hospitals." Once elected, though, McGuinty removed some of the worst features of what turned out to be essentially done deals, and allowed construction in Brampton and Ottawa to go ahead.
But making bad deals better doesn't necessarily make them good.
Since then, McGuinty has embraced private-sector financing of public infrastructure projects. He has done it while dropping the tainted public-private partnership, or P3, label in favour of a model the Liberal government calls "alternative financing and procurement." Hospitals built under this model must be publicly owned and controlled, and adhere to a handful of broad principles aimed at protecting the public interest, and ensuring transparency and accountability.
Still, valid concerns persist about enlisting the private sector to help finance public hospitals. These worries were only heightened yesterday with the release of a report by the Ontario Health Coalition that raises troubling questions about the new Brampton Civic Hospital, which has been plagued by controversy since its inception.
The report by the pro-public-health-care activist group calls into question one of the main justifications used to support private-sector involvement in bankrolling public hospitals, namely that such agreements deliver new infrastructure on time and within budget.
According to the coalition, the capital cost of the new hospital, which opened in October, nearly doubled from an estimate of $350 million to $650 million. It also opened two years later than scheduled
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