GREENSTONE – The millions of extra dollars Premier Doug Ford announced for Geraldton District Hospital in November won’t go as far as expected, due to circumstances beyond local officials’ control.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff war on Canada has changed the market for a lot of the things hospitals need, and not in a good way, according to support services manager Ryan Wach.
The hospital’s plans for the $8.5 million in renovation money Ford announced last fall included conversion of a half-dozen rooms into long-term care rooms, as well as developing other space into a new lab, an outpatient facility and a diagnostic imaging facility.
The price tag for those plans has skyrocketed, Wach told Newswatch this week.
“We’re at the initial stages right now. We’re going through all the pre-capital submissions with the Ministry (of Health),” he said.
“But yeah, with the tariffs and all the pricing increases, the prices have really gone up exponentially.”
Wach said the hospital’s projects are still in the planning stages, “so we haven’t even put out for tender, so I don’t know exactly” what the prices are.
“Funding is always difficult,” he said.
“We did get a nice chunk from the government here recently, so we’re going to use that as efficiently as we can. And then from there, we’re always looking for donations.
“We do run our hospital 50/50, and we have other avenues that we’ll try.”
Daniel Blundon, the hospital’s chief nursing executive, offered an example of the startling escalation in capital costs.
A project to convert an overflow room into a room for mental health care was originally estimated at $150,000, he said.
But since it was recently put up for tender, he said, “prices are coming back around 350 (thousand) to 450 (thousand) due to tariffs and ongoing increased costs with goods and services.”
So the hospital is “looking for other avenues to fund this now, because we don’t have that kind of money lying around,” he said.
