By Gurmukh Singh, IANS
Toronto : Canada’s first experiment with partially privatised healthcare has evoked big protests. The flag-bearers of these protests are mostly the Indo-Canadians of the Toronto suburb of Brampton where the first such hospital opened in October 2007.
Brampton is Canada’s fastest growing city of 435,000. About 30 percent the population is of south Asian origin.
Brampton Civic Hospital is Canada’s first big health project under the so-called public-private partnership or P3.
Fuelling people’s fury are not only the deaths of two Punjabi men due to the hospital’s alleged negligence in November and a wrong surgery on a Punjabi woman last month, but also service cuts, cost overruns and alleged government cover-ups.
Opponents of the private health system, banded under the Ontario Health Coalition and Brampton Health Coalition, Monday released a 32-page report to oppose the government’s new policy.
Released by Natalie Mehra of the Ontario Health Coalition, the report called for a moratorium on the policy till it was thoroughly reviewed.
It sought an audit of all the P3 deals the government has signed with a private consortium to partially privatise healthcare.
To drive home how the P3 system will deprive Canadians of quality medical care, the report highlighted cost overruns, service cuts and official cover-ups.
Speaking to IANS, a spokesperson for Brampton Health Coalition said people were presented a different picture when the Brampton Civic Hospital was mooted in 2001.
“We were told that we will get a new 608-bed hospital by 2005 at a cost of $350 million. It was to be financed, built and managed by a private consortium called the Healthcare Infrastructure Company of Canada. The public was to raise about 30 percent of the cost. To recoup its costs, the consortium would run all the non-clinical services for 25 years.
“But once work on the hospital started in 2004, the cost went up from $350 million to $500 million, and then to $650 million. Including equipment, it has now gone up to $800 million.
“The hospital was supposed to open by 2005, but it got delayed by two years. We were supposed to get 608 beds, but got only 469. It was supposed to be a three-building facility, but we got only two. Instead of the promised of 22 operating rooms, we got 12.”
Despite all this, the spokesman added, the government claimed that the hospital was completed “on budget” and “on time”.
Health Minister George Smitherman, who appointed a supervisor last month to look into the situation, shrugged off Monday’s report, saying the Ontario Health Coalition was “irrelevant”.