New multibillion-dollar hospital to be biggest in Canada when it opens in Mississauga

A new multibillion-dollar hospital being built in Mississauga that’ll be the biggest in Canada when it opens is expected to take its first patients in 2033.

With preliminary work at the Hurontario Street/The Queensway site set to conclude in early 2025, construction on The Peter Gilgan Mississauga Hospital will begin next spring, a senior hospital official told Mississauga city council on Wednesday.

Once the cost-sharing details are finalized, shovels will go into the ground in spring 2025, Trillium Health Partners president and CEO Karli Farrow said, adding it’ll then take about eight years to complete the state-of-the-art hospital she further described as set to become a “destination health centre.”

THP, the umbrella organization that oversees Mississauga Hospital and Credit Valley Hospital in addition to the Queensway Health Centre on the Etobicoke-Mississauga border, is in the midst of crunching the numbers related to the cost of the massive project.

Farrow told councillors there’s not yet a specific cost estimate attached to the hospital — “we can only say at this time it’s in the billions.”

She said the provincial government will pay for 80 to 85 per cent of the hospital, with the remainder picked up by Trillium Health Partners (via its own revenue in addition to fundraising/philanthropy) and the City of Mississauga.

Trillium Health Partners president and CEO Karli Farrow told city council the new Mississauga hospital, when completed, will be a game changer for health care in Mississauga and across the GTA.

Some $500 million will come from THP revenue with another $330 million from its fundraising initiatives. That leaves the preliminary “ask” of the city at around $450 million, Farrow told councillors and senior city staff, the amount payable in 2033.

Ward 6 Coun. Joe Horneck acknowledged the dire need for a new hospital, but also noted the city — and residents — must get a fair shake when it comes to paying for the health-care facility.

Since it’ll be a regional hospital offering top-notch care to those outside the city as well, it “may not be fair to (have it) sit only on Mississauga’s tax base,” the councillor said, suggesting council must ensure “the city gets the best deal we can get.”

He added the facility must be built on time and it shouldn’t be delayed “in any way … by moaning about the money.”

The city’s share of the cost must be known by January 2025 in order to meet project deadlines in advance of start of construction.

Ward 6 Coun. Joe Horneck says Mississauga and its taxpayers must get a fair shake in helping fund the new hospital.

In addition to significant improvements in health care the new hospital will bring for Mississauga (and people in surrounding regions), the facility is also expected to deliver some $1 billion to the local economy over 10 years, the Trillium Health Partners executive said.

The Peter Gilgan Mississauga Hospital will also expand the highly skilled workforce in Canada’s seventh-largest city by some 2,400 new health-care professionals and more than 400 doctors, Farrow added.

And at the peak of hospital construction, there will be roughly 3,000 workers on site.

When completed, the 22-storey hospital “will be Canada’s largest … right here in the heart of our city,” Farrow said during a 30-minute presentation/question-and-answer session at council.

She added The Peter Gilgan Mississauga Hospital will be triple the size of the current health-care facility that’s occupied the southwest corner at one of Mississauga’s busiest intersections since 1958. The new hospital will rise up at the same location.

Rendering of what The Peter Gilgan Mississauga Hospital will look like when completed in 2033. Story cover photo shows another rendering. (Images: Trillium Health Partners)

First and foremost, it will be a “destination health centre” that will provide much-needed care to the rapidly growing number of people in Mississauga and surrounding regions who’ll need it, Farrow said.

“… but the most exciting part of this nearly-1,000-bed hospital is how it will house so much leading-edge, highly specialized care, but also be interconnected through digital technology right into neighbourhoods, right into the health hubs” in the community where health care and related services are most needed.

Also noteworthy, she added, is that the new hospital “will expand neonatal intensive care, it will give us state-of-the-art surgical suites and we will have an emergency department with a very specially dedicated zone for kids because we know our city hospitals are busy and active and kids’ health care requires something different.”

New hospital for women and children

The Peter Gilgan Mississauga Hospital is named for the local developer/philanthropist who early in 2022 gifted $105 million to the project and it will occupy 2.8 million square feet when completed.

When it opens, THP officials say it will provide “more beds, shorter wait times and greater specialization closer to home for patients and their families.”

The new hospital will also include:

• the 200,000-sq.-ft. Shah Family Hospital for Women and Children
• 23 state-of-the-art operating rooms, up from current number of 14
• a new emergency department that will be three times the size of the current ER and one of the largest in Ontario
• more than 950 patient beds, an increase of about 350 over the current number
• many more private rooms