Dear Editors,
Kingston’s new hospital, replacing St. Mary’s and the Mental Health Services, will be constrained by thirty year contractual arrangements with multinational corporations. Its financing, maintenance, operations and probably various redevelopment opportunities will all be for-profit. If the hospital is built as proposed, it will be more for-profit that public.
The private sector has found that it can make the same profit, with less financial and political risk, through long-term contracts rather than formal ownership. According to Infrastructure Ontario, these long-term agreements produce profits in the12% range. In Kingston’s case, these international health services companies could take an extra hundred million dollars out of this community: money that would be better spent on local health care services.
Providence Care will own the hospital the way a homeowner owns a heavily mortgaged house. But this case is even worse. The bank will also manage your house and could charge you, the owner, to put up a picture or dictate how the house is to be cleaned as part of its 30-year maintenance agreement. The bank and its partners will likely also have a contractual right for more development on your property: for example, they could build a lemonade stand in your front yard and an auto body shop in the back. You could not unreasonably refuse these projects.
The specifics of the new hospital’s 30-year contracts are currently being negotiated behind closed doors. On one side are for-profit companies trying to maximize their gain and minimize their risk. On the other is Infrastructure Ontario, a crown corporation controlled by a board with strong ties to those same industries. The public has limited involvement in this process.
There is still time, without penalty or delay, to alter these hospital contracts. The government can remove these costly long-time finance, maintenance, operation contracts and any side development deals from the negotiations.
I am part of a public campaign to encourage an informed, vibrant and inclusive discussion on the type of hospital this city needs. Whether our new hospital is called a public-private-partnership, or public hospital using the “alternative financing and procurement method”, is irrelevant. The new hospital, as proposed, will be more for-profit than public. It will cost more, reduce services and limit future options.
On April 13, we are holding a community-wide vote to give people a voice. I would urge everyone to join the discussion and to vote on this important issue. An informed community is the basis of a strong democracy and good public policy.
Yours sincerely,
Ross Sutherland, Keep Our Hospitals Public Campaign Manger
