TORONTO — The Ontario government is spending $154.8 million to finish unused floors at Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital and add 111 beds, Health Minister Sylvia Jones announced Thursday in Oakville.The beds will go on floors left empty when the hospital opened in 2015: 19 on the third floor, 20 on the fourth, and 72 on the eighth. Officials said construction should wrap up by the end of 2027, with patients moving in during spring 2028. About 80% of the new rooms are planned as private. At peak construction, the project is expected to support up to 200 jobs.Milton District Hospital will get 12 more beds in the same package. Together, the 123 beds were listed in the 2026 budget for Halton Healthcare, which serves almost 400,000 people in Oakville, Halton Hills, Milton, and nearby communities.Halton Healthcare asked the province for this expansion in 2021. The 2015 hospital was built with unfinished “shell” space so it could grow later. That space was used during COVID-19 to take patients from other parts of the Greater Toronto Area..The $154.8 million does not cover everything. Halton Healthcare still pays a share of construction and all costs to furnish and equip the wards, including beds, computers, medical equipment, about 40 ventilators, and pharmacy units.Jones said the project is part of a $64 billion provincial hospital plan. She also said funding to Halton Healthcare has risen more than 50% since 2018.Halton Healthcare CEO Melissa Farrell said finishing the unused floors is cheaper than building a small new hospital. “By the time these additional beds are built, it will be the same as a small hospital, but for the fraction of the cost,” she said.Local reports and wait-time trackers have shown Oakville’s emergency waits often topping an hour. The government did not say how many extra nurses, physicians, or support staff will be funded to run the 111 new beds.Oakville families will not see those beds in use until 2028 — seven years after the hospital asked for them, and more than a decade after the building was designed with this expansion in mind.
