The Ontario Budget brought good news in that more money is being spent on health care and new hospital beds across the province.

Ontario Finance Minister Peter Bethenfalvy’s 2021 budget on March 24 pledges an additional $5.1 billion to create 3,100 new hospital beds.

It is part of a $30-billion, 10-year expansion and renovation plans for Ontario’s hospitals.

He said new spending in major hospital projects are underway, or in planning, and includes a rebuild of the Mississauga hospital in partnership with Trillium Health Partners.

The redevelopment plan will involve a new acute care tower at the Mississauga Hospital and new post-acute complex at the Queensway Health Centre. There will also be a new wing to be built at the Peel Memorial Centre for Integrated Health and Wellness.

The proposed projects will free up a significant amount of capacity at the Credit Valley Hospital site.

There will also be an addition of inpatient beds and ambulatory care at London Health Sciences Centre and new hospitals are planned for Windsor-Essex and Moosonee and ambulatory care centre on Moose Factory Island.

He said Trillium will continue to address capacity challenges as a result of growing demand for health care services and aging infrastructure.

Bethenfalvy said construction is underway at new long‐term-care homes in Mississauga, Ajax and Toronto under the Long‐Term Care Accelerated Build Pilot Program. Completion dates are slated for early 2022.

The province announced a second round of Ontario Small Business Support Grant payments to eligible recipients. Approximately 120,000 small businesses will receive an additional $1.7 billion through this round of support in the form of grants of a minimum of $10,000 and up to $20,000, bringing the estimated total support provided through this grant to $3.4 billion.

They will spend $614 million to provide workers with employment and training support, with $117 million targeted towards women, youth, people with disabilities, racialized and Indigenous people. There will be $21 billion in funding over the next 10 years to expand and repair highways and bridges and $14 billion over the next 10 years to build and upgrade schools.

“You can’t have a healthy economy without healthy people,” said Bethlenfalvy. “For the past year, we have been focused on protecting people from COVID-19. Many challenges lie ahead.”

The spending includes $1.8 billion in 2021–22 to continue providing care for COVID‐19 patients, address surgical backlogs and keep pace with patient needs, he stated.

The province will spend $61.6 billion over the next 10 years in public transit, including the five priority transit projects, which are four subway projects in the Greater Toronto Area and the updated Hamilton LRT project), the GO Rail Expansion program and the Kitchener GO Rail Expansion project.

Trillium Health Partners is one of the largest community-based hospital systems in Canada. It is comprised of the Credit Valley Hospital, the Mississauga Hospital and the Queensway Health Centre.

The hospital in the last year received over 1.7 million patient visits and 276,003 visits to the hospital’s Emergency Departments and Urgent Care Centre. They at the same time  performed 65,520 surgeries and delivered 8,364 babies.