A Richmond opposition MLA is calling the February provincial budget a “fudget budget” given that the rebuilding of Richmond Hospital has now more than doubled in cost.
The Ministry of Health recently announced that the estimated cost had increased to $1.959 billion.
But in February, during the provincial legislature’s budget estimates, the budget for the hospital was stated to be $861 million.
This $1.1 billion increase since the business plan was developed in 2020/21, was due to escalating construction costs related to "market conditions across all sectors," the province explained in a statement to the Richmond News.
Wat said she thinks the provincial government, heading into a fall election, wanted to keep their finances looking better than they are.
“They didn’t want to bump up the budget deficit,” she said.
Wat said she was advocating for rebuilding the Richmond Hospital long before the NDP government came into office in 2017, and while she’s “all for it,” she wants to see a detailed breakdown on what costs have increased.
“We have to get experts to crunch the numbers about why the numbers have gone up,” she told the News.
But the Ministry of Health clarified there was “notional funding” for the increase in the 2024 budget, and the updated budget will be released in the next reporting update, expected in the summer.
While there won’t be any community benefits agreement with the project – which would specify which trade unions can work on the project - “project partners will still be considering ways to provide opportunities for local participation, apprenticeship and skills training and to increase opportunities for Indigenous peoples and traditionally underrepresented groups.”
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