Brampton’s ongoing battle for provincial health-care funding in the face of rapid population growth and chronic under-funding nearly resulted in city council declaring a “health-care emergency” at its most recent meeting.

Wards 9 and 10 Coun. Harkirat Singh raised the idea after council heard a presentation from William Osler Health System representatives at its Dec. 13 meeting asking for municipal funding to help fill the gap.

“Approximately 70 per cent of hospital campaigns in Ontario include municipal support, ranging from 14 per cent to more than 50 per cent of local share (funding) requirement,” heard council during the presentation.

Outgoing William Osler president and CEO Dr. Brendan Carr provided some sobering statistics on the state of provincial health-care funding in Canada’s ninth-largest city.

Brampton, with a population of more than 650,000, only has one full-service hospital, Brampton Civic Hospital, which is home to one of the busiest emergency rooms in the country and has become synonymous with “hallway medicine.”

The first phase of Peel Memorial Hospital, housing an urgent care centre, opened in 2017 and is already far over its intended capacity. And the second phase, including many much-needed additional services, isn’t expected to be completed for another five to seven years.

Carr added a third hospital will be required sooner rather than later, with Brampton’s population expected to reach 900,000 by 2041.

“The concern is that we know every day the greatest challenges that face our residents is access to health-care services — this notion of hallway medicine. Because we have such busy facilities, we have people waiting every day to access services,” he told council. “The challenge that we have is that we are a system that is under huge stress every day because of capacity issues.

“When we look at health-care funding in our region, we are the lowest-funded region within the province, and that translates to acute-care beds, but it also translates to resources in the community … that are fundamental to health. Things like support for social services and other programs in the community. We are also under-resourced from a provincial point of view,” he added.

While funding levels have improved at Brampton Civic, Carr said Peel Memorial is serving 75,000 patients annually but is only receiving provincial funding for 15,000.