The Private Option

Three years ago a new hospital opened in Brampton, northwest of Toronto. Long awaited in this rapidly growing city, the Brampton Civic Hospital had barely begun operations before it was mired in controversy. Unfortunately, as sometimes happens in hospitals, two of its patients died. But it was not providence, or bad luck, or professional incompetence that in this case was decried. Instead, as an indirect result of a media campaign spearheaded by an alliance of political groups and public sector unions, the blame was laid squarely on the fact that the new Brampton hospital was a public-private partnership.

This assertion—whose speculative logic in relation to the two deaths was almost impossible for hospital officials to rebut—made headlines and the resulting tempest was whipped to a degree that led to dismay even in the highest echelons of Ontario’s Liberal government. The Brampton hospital had indeed been built by an arrangement that gave a private sector builder...