B.C. is cancelling construction contracts for several long-term care homes and a major hospital redevelopment project as budget constraints continue to impact the government’s ability to deliver on previous commitments.
Five projects will be impacted, including the Burnaby Hospital Phase 2 plan, as well as long-term care facilities in Chilliwack, Abbotsford, Kelowna and Delta.
The government had already said in its annual budget in February that timelines for the long-term care homes and other projects would be “repaced,” but did not reveal the cancelled contracts at the time.
“Because the projects are now operating on a different timeline, those contracts are affected, and in many cases, they’ve had to be cancelled,” Infrastructure Minister Bowinn Ma told reporters at the legislature on Thursday.
Ma disputes that the latest move means the projects themselves are now cancelled.
“We can call them deferred. We can call them rescheduled,” Ma said. “The bottom line is that those projects were not ready to go.”
She blamed cost overruns.
“Their estimated budgets were coming in at well over what was originally budgeted for those projects,” Ma said.
The government is facing broader budgetary pressures, with a projected $13.3-billion deficit this year and a soaring provincial debt.
Contracts for the long-term care homes in Kelowna, Chilliwack and Abbotsford were for pre-construction work, such as design and engineering. The Infrastructure Ministry said these contracts would have pushed the cost per bed to “unsustainable levels.”
These delays come despite repeated warnings from B.C. Seniors Advocate Dan Levitt that the province is falling further and further behind on long-term care, with growing waitlists and wait times.
Over the past six years, wait lists for long-term care have grown by 200 per cent, while average wait times have risen from roughly 144 days to more than 277. The average wait time has increased by 34 per cent in the last year alone, and the wait list for a bed has more than 7,000 people on it.
B.C. Conservative MLA Ian Paton called it “embarrassing” that the B.C. government can’t meet its commitments on so many projects, and said he is concerned it will ultimately mean they decrease the size, meaning fewer beds.
“These clowns are such a disaster with their finances,” he said.