Where are the promised new hospitals required to service Ontario’s population growth?

Will the Ford government step up and fund the services needed to support all these additional homes and all these additional people?

Thestar.com
April 11, 2023
Elizabeth Roy

Whitby council recently pledged to support the development of 18,000 new homes by 2031. Why?

The provincial government has committed to building 1.5 million new homes by 2031. To reach that goal, housing targets have been assigned to 29 municipalities. Elsewhere in Durham Region, Clarington and Pickering have each pledged to build 13,000 homes by 2031, Ajax has pledged to build 17,000 and Oshawa has pledged to build 23,000.

There’s no doubt that more housing is needed in Ontario. The question is, will the province step up and fund the services needed to support all these additional homes and all these additional people?

Services like hospitals.

Yes, we’re facing a housing crisis in Ontario. But we’re also facing a health-care crisis.

Here in Durham Region, the Lakeridge Health hospital system can’t keep up with current demand. How will we fare with the 84,000 additional homes our local councils have pledged to see built? Durham is currently the fastest growing region in Canada. The population is set to double from about 680,000 people to 1.2 million by 2041.

By 2041, the Lakeridge Health hospital system will need 1,793 beds, which is more than double the current count. Lakeridge Health is already operating at 105 per cent of the funded capacity of 886 beds.

Patients are being treated in spaces not designed for the volume of patients, or for patient care.

Days after our local municipalities approved their housing pledges, Ontario’s budget was released -- and did not include a $3 million planning grant needed to support a new hospital in Durham. This was both incredibly concerning and disappointing.

More than a year has passed since Lakeridge Health announced an independent, expert panel had selected a site in Whitby as the preferred location. This is now the second provincial budget to be tabled without funding for this grant.

A provincial task force first recommended a new acute care hospital for Durham back in 2015. Eight years later, we’re waiting with more questions than answers. It will take at least 10 years to build this hospital -- and every day we wait puts us further behind.

Whitby is willing to work with the province on housing needs and health care needs. We have the solutions, we just need the support.

Now that municipalities across the province have made their pledges and outlined the strategies they will use to support the development of 1.5 million new homes, maybe it’s time for the provincial government to make a pledge of its own.

A pledge that spells out how many new hospitals and health care services will be built by 2031 and the strategies to get us there. We can’t have one without the other.