A few questions for a few millions. – McGill University Health Center

The MUHC was built in PPP mode, and… in corruption and abuse of public funds mode.

The private consortium is responsible for the normal maintenance of the building for the 34 years of the PPP contract. But anything that the consortium does not consider “normal maintenance” is billed to the hospital, i.e. to the public treasury.

Barely 5 years after the opening of the New MUHC, all the facades of the Children’s must be redone. This is shameful in itself, but the real question is: WHO pays? The private consortium or our public funds?

The paved entrance in front of the hospital has also just been redone. Imagine your paved entrance that has to be redone after 5 years…. Would you be happy? At the MUHC who pays? The citizens or the consortium?

In this picture we see the huge lot in front of the MUHC with a sculpture. Underneath this huge space is the underground parking lot. Since the opening of the MUHC, the roof of the parking lot has been leaking and to date no solution has been found despite incessant work. We are told that the decision has been made to dig the whole thing out and even remove the artwork. Is this the case?

Who will pay for this gigantic excavation? Who is going to pay to redo the parking lot? The population or the private consortium?

Certainly the consortium has lawyers to argue that it is not “normal maintenance” to have to redo a façade, a pavement, a parking lot after 5 years, so will the P3 use this excuse to pass the bill on to the public purse? The question arises but the answer is difficult to find because the contract is secret.

The issues are pressing and important. The government needs money, he only offers “peanuts” to the guardian angelsof our health care system, but will he find, once again, millions to feed the P3 feast?

We have every reason to fear the answer to these questions because at the MUHC the consortium is doing everything it can to categorize even the smallest jobs as billable extras. For example:

Upon receiving the hospital, the MUHC found that the ventilation system in the operating room was inadequate and needed to be modified. GISM’s position is clear: modifying the ventilation system is not “normal maintenance”, therefore it is not covered by the PPP contract and will be billed as an extra cost^[1] of more than $5 million.
The MUHC has received a hospital with over 3,000 defects, so for certain problems that the consortium is not resolving, the MUHC is deducting money from its rent to compensate itself and the GISM consortium is responding with a $30 million lawsuit against the MUHC and a request for a permanent injunction for the MUHC to pay all the amounts due to GISM^[2].
The MUHC was billed extra for a whole series of minor jobs that, for the consortium, are not “normal maintenance“, but “modifications” that can be billed: $409 to move a hand soap dispenser in a bathroom by a few inches, $26,500 just to move 20 televisions sets, $20,442 to move a few “code blue” pictograms, $4,747 to install obscuring film in two windows^[3],

It’s not just the extras that cost a lot, there are all the legal battles that come with them: the MUHC against the PPP, the PPP against the MUHC, and there’s no end in sight.

The government has everything it takes to put an end to this sad festival of abuse of public funds.

Fraud and our civil code

We know that the contract was obtained with $22.5 millions of corruption money.

In our civil code, when a contract is obtained through acts of a criminal nature where the government has been deceived and abused, that contract can be declared void by the courts.

It is understandable that the Liberal government did not want to “rock the boat” in the courts, but the CAQ … Why don’t they start legal proceedings to have the P3 contract nullified and then recover the hospital’s property?

It is extremely troubling that the government has done nothing to get this secret contract cancelled. Had it not been for the facts revealed by whistle-blower journalists, no one would have known the facts exposed in this article and no one would have known that the consortium is constantly charging extras.

The money must be used to provide care, it must be used to pay the guardian angels of health, not to fatten private firms that have obtained contracts by paying bribes.