P3 makes deadline --but just (and owes $1 M in back taxes and penalties)

A Windsor developer met the requirements set by the Ministry of Health and LTC to proceed with turning the former Grace Hospital site into a long-term care facility, the Windsor Star reports.

That was the last day this public private partnership (P3) had to meet the Ministry's deadline, so the developer just made it.

As reported earlier, the 256 LTC bed P3 project has been stalled for years while the city has been desperately short of long term care beds, causing the local hospital to fall into a bed crisis. The new LTC facility was supposed to be completed in March of 2010.

Health Minister Deb Matthews said Friday, "We will be watching these developments very closely, given the challenges this project has experienced. As I understand it, workers were on site today to begin preparations for demolition. We know it's in everyone's best interest, especially patients and future residents, to get this project done as quickly as possible. I know how important this project is to Windsor residents."

City treasurer Onorio Colucci said the city is owed about $1,020,000 in back taxes, penalties and interest, and that the developer has not paid taxes since purchasing the property in 2005. “It has been going on for a long time,” Colucci said. “We have been trying to hold off, to not complicate the matter while the province tried to resolve the issue".

Backers of P3s justify their extra costs by arguing that they transfer risk from the public sector to the private sector.

Comments

Ford government fails to respond to 72% increase in COVID inpatient days, deepening the capacity crisis

COVID infections continue to drive up hospital costs and inpatient hospitalizations in Ontario. For the most recent fiscal year (April 1, 2022- March 31, 2023) hospital stays related to COVID cost $1.221 billion, according to new CIHI data. This is about 4% of total hospital spending, creating a very significant new cost pressure beyond the usual pressures of population growth, aging, inflation, and rising utilization. Costs for COVID related hospitalizations increased 22.2% in Ontario in 2022/23 from the previous fiscal year, rising from $999 million to $1.221 billion. That rise is particularly notable as the OMICRON spike of late 2021 and early 2022 had passed by the the 2022/23 fiscal year. The $222 million increase in COVID hospitalization costs came in the same year as the Ford government cut special COVID funding and, in fact, cut total hospital funding by $156 million. In total, there were 60,653 COVID hospitalizations...

The hospital crisis: No capacity, no plan, no end

While Canada has achieved universal public healthcare coverage, that does not mean conservative forces have given up trying to erode that coverage and expand corporate care where it does not currently exist. The battle has become particularly intense in Ontario under the Ford Progressive Conservative government, which is implementing serious cuts to the level of care and moving to bring in for-profit mini-hospitals. Inadequate Staﬃng. Less and less of hospital spending is on staff. Employee compensation as a share of hospital expenditures has consistently shrunk in Ontario. This is not some immutable law of hospital development. It is in stark contrast with the rest of Canada, where compensation has become a larger share and now accounts for 67.1%. Hospitals in provinces other than Ontario now have 18 percent more staﬀ per capita than hospitals in Ontario. Overall, if Ontario had the same staﬃng capacity as the other provinces and territories, there would be another...

The long series of failures of private clinics in Ontario

For many years, OCHU/CUPE has been concerned the Ontario government would transfer public hospital surgeries, procedures and diagnostic tests to private clinics. CUPE began campaigning in earnest against this possibility in the spring of 2007 with a tour of the province by former British Health Secretary, Frank Dobson, who talked about the disastrous British experience with private surgical clinics. The door opened years ago with the introduction of fee-for-service hospital funding (sometimes called Quality Based Funding). Then in the fall of 2013 the government announced regulatory changes to facilitate this privatization. The government announced Request for Proposals for the summer of 2014 to expand the role of "Independent Health Facilities" (IHFs). With mass campaigns to stop the private clinic expansion by the Ontario Health Coalition the process slowed. But it seems the provincial Liberal government continues to push the idea. Following a recent second...

Defend Public Healthcare

Search This Blog