A Burnaby councillor is pleased a senior government has stepped up on housing but is disappointed Tuesday’s provincial budget did not include money for a new Burnaby Hospital.
During the 2017 election campaign, Premier John Horgan held a press conference just outside the hospital grounds to announce if elected an NDP government would fix up Burnaby Hospital and then spend $2.1 million to build a new one elsewhere in the city.
But when Finance Minister Carole James handed down the 2018 budget Tuesday, Burnaby Hospital was not included in its long-term capital plan.
“We’re very concerned with that,” said Coun. Sav Dhaliwal. “One of our major asks of this government is to start the building of the new hospital, or at least tell us what their plans are.
“We met with the MLAs a few weeks ago, and regrettably that didn’t get into this cycle of the budget announcement. But I believe the message has gone through. We heard back from a couple of MLAs that, yeah, the (health) ministry is working very seriously at some of the priorities they are making they haven’t finalized yet. So we’re keeping our fingers crossed on that one. We’re not going to let that go. We’ll be back at our MLAs. Burnaby Hospital is important and we need to get that rebuilt.”
But, he admitted, the city will remain concerned until something definitive is announced.
Former B.C. Liberal Burnaby North MLA Richard Lee said not including the project is an indication the party has gone back on its election promise.
“I believe so, otherwise the new hospital should have been in the three-year plan,” said Lee. “The list of the hospitals included Royal Columbian Hospital (New Westminster), also Peace Arch (White Rock). All those hospitals are there, so I don’t think they have any intention of fulfilling those promises for Burnaby Hospital.”
In 2016, the B.C. Liberal government announced a concept plan to rebuild key facilities at the hospital. It was supposed to be the first step toward funding the first phase of its master site plan, which was completed more than five years ago and pegged the cost at $622 million. The Liberals re-announced the plan just before last year’s election campaign, and at the same time added an $8.8 million upgrade of various important parts of the hospital.
Lee believes the Liberals’ plan would have been a more cost-effective solution.
“That master plan has been studied by Fraser Health in detail, and they actually proposed that (upgrades). This is the most effective use of that particular funding,” said Lee.
The NDP’s commitment, he added, was unrealistic. “It’s $2.1 billion. I still remember when I saw that (in April 2017). ‘Wow, that’s a big investment. It’s good that they can do it.’ But since then it has vaporized. It’s not there.”
After serving four terms, Lee was ousted by the NDP’s Janet Routledge in last May’s election. He’s not sure if the NDP’s promise swayed the electorate in Burnaby but he doesn’t dismiss the suggestion.
“It’s difficult to do the assessment,” said Lee. “The people saw the news, and they probably made some decision regarding the hospital believing that they actually promised to deliver a new hospital, so that could have impacted their decision to see which candidate to support.”
On the housing front, Dhaliwal liked the province’s commitment of $1.6 billion over three years as part of a 10-year, $6.6 billion plan.
Burnaby has long maintained housing was within the jurisdiction of the provincial and federal governments, so Dhalwal was happy to see the province deliver on that front.
“Local governments do not have the capacity to make any meaningful change to the housing crisis,” said Dhaliwal. “The best solution was for the other two levels of government to get together and really spend massive amount of funds, so to hear they’re going to at least try to build over 100,000 units over the next 10 years, that’s pretty good. That’s wonderful news.”
Dhaliwal said Burnaby intends to get its share of those units.
“Our staff is trying to identify land in the city. We’ve already started on a couple, but I’m sure there’s a fair amount of interest on the part of the city to say, yes, we can make available land to them for social housing, and also work with the private investors in terms of working with the zoning and so forth,” said Dhaliwal.
He also praised the province for saying it will introduce legislation to empower municipalities to zone for rental use only, something Dhaliwal said the city for years has lobbied for.
“Previously, we never had that ability. Even if there was land available and people willing to come in, we could never say you must go rental homes here. Now we can start planning to say areas, parts of each town centre must be dedicated to rental zoning. That would be a big help because we recognize entry into housing is mostly through renting first for a few years before you take on ownership,” said Dhaliwal.
