Details scarce on plans to build new Stollery

Planning continues for a new, standalone Stollery Children's Hospital, but three years after the province first began exploring the idea there are still few details around when construction will begin, when it will be finished and where the new facility will be located.

The provincial budget released late last month included $3 million in funding spread across three years toward further planning for the facility.

That followed a July 2021 announcement of $1 million worth of capital planning that called for the hiring of a consultant and creation of a business case as well as a needs assessment study.

Health Minister Jason Copping told reporters at a government announcement Thursday that the next step in planning is to begin the budgeting process that he said would be finished by this summer.

“We need to see the actual budget. (That's) the next piece associated with that,” he said.

“Once we actually get a budget, the next step will be back to Treasury Board for approval ... and then you do functional planning.”

Copping acknowledged more funding would be needed and called the $3 million figure “a placeholder” while the final cost is determined.

“Ideally, we make it as quickly as possible,” he said of the planning process. “We need to go through the proper planning and make sure that it works now and in the future.”

The $3 million in government funding will be matched by a further $3 million from the Stollery Children's Hospital Foundation.

Copping said once the budget is complete a more detailed functional planning process will get underway that would outline timing and when shovels would be in the ground.

“We want it to happen quickly, but (it) also needs to be right ... so that we make an investment that's going to last for years to come,” he said.

The location of the new building remains undetermined.

“Our desire, of course, would be to have it co-located as close to the University Hospital as possible,” said Mauro Chies, president and CEO of Alberta Health Services.

“We are looking at areas on campus but as you can appreciate with many of our facilities across the province, we often get landlocked, but it is a focus to try to keep the two of them as close together as possible.”

He did not rule out co-locating the new children's hospital on the site of the forthcoming hospital in southwest Edmonton.

“We'll let the planning process kind of roll through and then determine if that's a viable option.”

Opposition health critic David Shepherd said he welcomed the funding for the Stollery, but questioned how quickly the UCP government would get the project done.

“We've seen no progress with the Red Deer Regional Hospital. We've seen them slow walk the south Edmonton hospital here,” he told reporters inside the legislature Thursday. “So frankly, I have my doubts about the sincerity of this government.”

The Stollery is the second-largest children's hospital in the country, with about 300,000 children going there each year, about 40 per cent of those coming from outside the Edmonton area.