The federal government will provide $1.24 billion in new funding to replace an aging hospital on the James Bay coast in northern Ontario, according to a government official.
Indigenous Services Minister Patty Hajdu is expected to make the announcement in Ottawa on Monday.
The 74-year-old Winnie Baco General Hospital on Moose Factory Island is the oldest unconverted medical facility in Canada and was originally built as a tuberculosis sanatorium.
In 2007, Ottawa committed to building a new $2.7 billion hospital on the Moosonee mainland in Ontario, cost-sharing with the province.
Ontario earmarked $1.3 billion for the program earlier this year, but Ottawa’s share was not included in the last federal budget.
The new hospital is already under construction and is being funded with $158 million in federal funding announced in 2019.
But First Nations leaders and the Winniebyko Community Health Authority, which runs health services in the area, have pleaded with the Canadian government to fully honor its commitments, saying failure to do so risks indefinitely halting construction on the long-delayed project.
Hajdu told the House of Representatives last month that the hospital would be built, but no financing details had been released until now.
“From the beginning, it was clear that we would support Indigenous people in the region,” a government official told CBC News. “That promise has been kept.”
A building considered a symbol of colonial heritage
The hospital provides health services to thousands of patients, primarily in Indigenous communities along the western coast of James Bay.
Because Moose Factory is on an island, patients must arrive by water taxi or be transported by helicopter to receive treatment.
The three-story building has only one bathroom for patients, no elevator and the original wooden roof regularly leaks.
It was originally built in 1950 as a tuberculosis sanatorium, where children were isolated from their communities, cultures and families.
Winnie-Baiko District Health Board chief executive officer Lynne Innes said the building was a symbol of the colonial legacy that Indigenous people are forced to face every day.
