EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared on The Trillium, a Village Media website devoted exclusively to covering provincial politics at Queen’s Park.
A massive new privately funded surgical centre in Richmond Hill, Ont. plans to open and begin conducting diagnostic scans and endoscopies in the fall, after receiving long-sought approvals from Premier Doug Ford’s government.
The provincial government will provide the Schroeder Ambulatory Centre with $14 million in taxpayer funds to pay for 115,000 patients’ MRIs, CT scans and gastrointestinal (GI) endoscopy procedures over the next two years, it announced on Friday.
Ford, Health Minister Sylvia Jones and other provincial officials visited the centre at the end of last week to announce the funding commitment, and its licensing as part of their government’s expansion of private health-care facilities in Ontario.
The Schroeder Ambulatory Centre intends for its “phased clinical launch” of its services to start in the fall. The private — but “charitable, non-profit ambulatory centre” — is the product of years of planning and hundreds of millions of dollars spent by The Schroeder Foundation, a charity of billionaire philanthropist couple Walter and Maria Schroeder.
“Our purpose-built state-of-the-art facility is designed to offer high volume, accessible, OHIP-covered services in full alignment with Ontario's health-care strategy,” Raj Kothari, member of the Schroeder Ambulatory Centre’s board, said at the news conference on Friday. “We're here to work alongside our health partners and ensure that patients receive the care they need and when they need it.”
Walter Schroeder is a Manitoba-born self-made billionaire, who founded the Dominion Bond Rating Service (DBRS). He and his wife have given upwards of tens of millions of dollars through the Schroeder Foundation to causes supporting hospitals and other public health care.
By spring 2021, Schroeder was in touch with Ford’s office about his plans to finance the construction of a private ambulatory centre — something he would later describe as “a fancy name for (a) same-day surgery (centre).”
Premier’s office records, obtained by The Trillium using the freedom-of-information system, show Ford and Schroeder had a call scheduled on April 15, 2021 to discuss the philanthropist’s plans.
Schroeder purchased the 9355 Leslie Street property in Richmond Hill, where a medical facility had been partially built, for $55 million in October 2021. In an interview around then, he told TVO that one of his organization’s overarching goals is “to improve the efficiency of health and to help a lot of people get surgery that otherwise they wouldn’t get.”
About a year-and-a-half later, facing pressure to address backlogs in Ontario’s beleaguered health-care system, Ford’s Progressive Conservatives unveiled plans to allow a bigger role by privately operated facilities. As the Ford government announced then, in early 2023, it would allow more OHIP-covered diagnostic scans, endoscopies, and orthopedic surgeries at private facilities, in a phased approach. Its goal was to remove more surgeries from public hospitals to relieve pressure on them.
Bill 60, introduced and passed by the Ford government that spring, set the plan in motion.
In early 2023, as well, one of Schroeder’s companies enlisted a lobbying firm with close ties to the Ford government to advocate to provincial officials on its behalf.
John Tory also joined the group’s cause later that year. In November 2023, Toronto’s former mayor joined the board of a new foundation set up by Schroeder to manage operations at its ambulatory centre.
The Schroeder Ambulatory Centre’s construction was well on its way to completion by the end of 2023. Its most recently published financial statements show the Schroeder Foundation was set to spend about $350 million to finish the facility.
A news release provided by the Schroeder Ambulatory Centre on Friday said that although its facility “is not yet operational,” its “public launch” will be in a few months.
“Our goal is simple: reduce pain, increase mobility, and ease pressure on hospitals by providing high-quality, same-day care in partnership with the public system — all following a strictly not-for-profit mandate that keeps the focus on patients, not profit,” Kothari, the Schroeder Ambulatory Centre Foundation board member who spoke at Friday’s event, was quoted as saying in the organization’s news release.
The Schroeder Ambulatory Centre promises as well that its physicians will also work in public hospitals, “ensuring continuity of care and avoiding shifting of resources.”
On Friday, Ford praised the Schroeders as “two very generous people,” calling the completed centre “just absolutely remarkable.”
The premier and health minister also both said the government hadn’t guaranteed the Schroeder Foundation that its centre would be licensed.
“This facility truly is, and was, a leap of faith for them to show their commitment to Ontario and our community and the health-care system, and there were no promises made,” Jones, the health minister, added. “They made this gift to Ontario and to our health-care system because they saw the need, and now we are working together.”
“I always ask (that) the process (is) 100 per cent transparent, done by a third party — (they) look through with a fine tooth comb … I think the choice would be pretty easy, but there’s a criteria,” said Ford of its potential to be licensed for orthopedic surgeries.
The provincial government hasn’t yet launched its call for applications for community surgical and diagnostic centres to apply for licensing to perform orthopedic surgeries. Being able to perform these types of surgeries, which include hip and knee procedures, has been a priority of Schroeder’s since the early-goings of his group’s planning. In his interview with TVO in 2021, Schroeder pitched the centre’s “aim” as including conducting “8,000 surgeries a year, which is equal to most of the Toronto hospitals in orthopedics.”
The Ford government also announced on Friday, that “starting this summer” the province will be issuing 57 total licences to new private community surgical and diagnostic centres, including 35 to centres conducting MRI and CT scans, and 22 for GI endoscopy services. The province also intends to spend $155 million over the next two years paying for 828,000 MRIs and CT scans and 420,000 GI endoscopies at these centres.
“These new centres will connect over 1.2 million more patients to publicly funded surgeries and procedures, helping reduce hospital wait times in every corner of the province,” Ford said.
Reacting to the announcement on Friday, official Opposition health critic France Gélinas decried the government’s plans as “alarming and unfair.”
“Instead of strengthening our public hospitals and addressing the staffing crisis, this government is handing over our health care system to private companies,” the NDP MPP said in a statement. “Enough is enough. This government received a new mandate to protect Ontario, but what they have been showing Ontarians is that they are willing to choose profits over people, every time.”