A majority of city council has approved spending $5 million towards the $1.3-billion redevelopment of Burnaby Hospital.
But not everyone is happy about it.
On Monday night, council voted in favour of a financial management committee recommendation to authorize the use of money in the gaming reserve in the amount of $5 million towards the project – with $1 million paid out annually over a five-year period.
The caveat is the money will only come “once casino revenue starts to be received by the city again.” The city gets approximately 10% of the net provincial proceeds from Burnaby’s Grand Villa casino, which has been closed for a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. No announcement has been made about when the casino will be allowed to reopen.
Couns. Dan Johnston and Colleen Jordan both voted against the motion, with Johnston saying this funding should come from the province – not cities.
“I want to make it clear, I did not support the #Burnaby Council report this evening to donate 5 Million to Burnaby Hospital,” Johnston tweeted Monday night. “Healthcare should be funded by Provincial Govt not by Municipal budgets.”
Jordan agreed with Johnston in a message to the NOW, adding the funding should go elsewhere in the city.
“It seems this current version of council is hell-bent on spending all of the reserves previous administrations have built up, which should be going towards needed projects in Burnaby, not subsidizing a provincial project,” Jordan said.
Jordan says the city is overestimating how much revenue will be flowing from the casino to the city coffers.
This isn’t the first time city council has approved a large amount of money to buy hospital equipment. Back in 2019, the City of Burnaby announced it would help pay for a second CT scanner at Burnaby Hospital.
City council approved a $1-million grant to the Burnaby Hospital Foundation to partially cover the cost of the medical imaging equipment. At the time of the funding approval, the hospital only had one CT scanner and it had been breaking down. Jordan told the NOW the scanner hasn't been installed yet.
“This is not what should happen in the third-largest community in B.C. This is a very, very important thing we're trying to do here and it can affect every family in our city at any time,” Mayor Mike Hurley said at the time.
I want to make it clear, I did not support the #Burnaby Council report this evening to donate 5 Million to Burnaby Hospital. Healthcare should be funded by Provincial Govt not by Municipal budgets.
— Dan Johnston 🌈 柯崇德 (@BurnabyDan) March 9, 2021
Michael Keller, spokesperson for the hospital foundation, said at the time that it’s “quite unusual” for a municipality to give such a large grant to a hospital foundation.
Johnston and Jordan opposed this motion as well.
“There are lots of organizations and institutions in this community that the government should fund more quickly and we can't afford to take on all of that as our responsibility,” Jordan said in 2019. “I think it's horrible that our hospital has gotten to the situation that it's in now and this is just one example of it, but I don't think, as a city, that we can afford to pick that up.”
Jordan’s objections prompted an impassioned speech from Coun. Sav Dhaliwal.
“Many will say it's not our responsibility. You know? That's what got us into this mess,” Dhaliwal said, noting Burnaby had used the same excuse to avoid acting on housing affordability.
For the hospital redevelopment, the two new patient-care towers will offer new wards and operating rooms, a total of almost 400 beds – the majority in single rooms – and a new cancer treatment centre.
Burnaby Hospital, built in 1952, currently has 297 beds and hasn’t been upgraded in more than 40 years.
The redevelopment begins with a new six-storey, 78-bed tower that will include an upgraded mental health and substance use inpatient unit and a new maternity ward. According to the city staff report, construction is supposed to begin in 2021 and be complete by 2024.
The foundation has raised about $12 million so far out of a $30-million campaign, said the staff report, with $8 million of that coming from Burnaby’s Beedie family.
- With files from Kelvin Gawley, Burnaby NOW
