Picking Public Pockets

Carillion Plc, the parent company of Carillion Canada Inc., is a multinational specializing in the privatization of public services by offering support services, facilities management and construction.(1) Carillion Canada Inc is a member of the Healthcare Infrastructure Company of Canada, a corporate consortium that is the winner of P3 hospital deals in Brampton and Ottawa, Ontario. The Carillion consortium is also a bidder on a P3 hospital project in Abbotsford, BC. Carillion Plc is a major player in P3 hospital projects in the UK. The company is behind the consortium that built new private hospitals in Swindon and Dartford.

Bad for taxpayers

In 2001, The Wiltshire Evening Advertiser newspaper revealed that the private Swindon hospital cost $720 million to build - more than double the original estimate of $330 million submitted by Carillion Plc. Add in annual payments and the final tab for the private hospital is $1.05 billion over the 30-year contract. (2)With the Dartford private hospital, Carillion Plc and its partners claimed they would save taxpayers $40 million in construction costs. Britain's equivalent of our Auditor General conducted a critical review of the claim and at the end of the day the savings were only $11 million. (3)

Bad for Patients

The new Swindon private hospital has 80 fewer beds than the hospital it replaced. Almost immediately after opening, all beds were full, surgeries were cancelled and hospital administrators were spreading the word not to refer patients because there was no more room to examine them. It got so bad at the private Swindon hospital that one patient, Mr. Tony Collins, was contacted by the Guinness Book of World Records after he was left waiting on a trolley for 60 hours. But the record was shattered soon after by another patient at the Swindon hospital who was left on a trolley for 144 hours. (4)Of course, the government was left holding the bag for the bed shortages and had to spend $27 million more for a new 27-bed ward at the private Swindon hospital. As with the Swindon hospital, the new private Dartford hospital has 50 fewer beds than the hospital it replaced. Soon after Dartford opened, surgeries were suspended because there was no water in the scrub rooms for sterilization.

Bad for workers

Carillion Plc is facing serious labour strife in the UK as unions fight aggressively against poor pay - about $9.60 an hour - and terrible working conditions that are the hallmark of support services in Carillion Plc hospitals. Carillion Plc was recently fined more than $160,000 by the British government for health and safety violations that resulted in two serious workplace accidents.