Sarah Mills: We came so close to the zipper merge
Three block of two lanes of traffic merging one by one, with everyone inching forward. It was the zipper merge in action...
BURNABY — Plans for a hospital expansion in Burnaby, B.C., are not dead, despite the provincial government announcing this week that the construction contract had been cancelled, Premier David Eby said on Friday.
Eby said Phase 2 of the Burnaby Hospital project, which was slated to add 160 beds and a cancer centre, “will go ahead” but that the plans need a reset.
“We will deliver this project. It was also equally clear to me that this project was off the rails,” Eby said at an unrelated event in Burnaby announcing funding for school playgrounds.
“It was overbudget. It had completely changed … the scope of the project in a way that key community members — whether the staff at the hospital, hospital foundation, key partners for us, did not feel included.”
He said the province needs to ensure that a billion-dollar project is done in a responsible way.
The Infrastructure B.C. website lists the Burnaby Hospital Phase 2 and BC Cancer Centre project as “in development” with a cost of $1.7 billion.
Eby did not provide details on Friday about when the project would be completed or what changes might be required.
Phase 1 of improvements to the Burnaby Hospital, a new health-care pavilion with expanded support facilities, opened in March.
Phase 2 of the hospital expansion was part of a handful of health-care projects that had their construction contracts cancelled by the government, including four long-term care facilities in Delta, Abbotsford, Chilliwack and Kelowna.
The B.C. government announced during the budget in February that it would slow down several health construction projects as it struggled with a deficit projected to balloon to $13.3 billion.
Infrastructure Minister Bowinn Ma said Friday that the projects were “re-paced or rescheduled” because they needed more work before they could proceed to construction but they remain approved in the provincial capital plan.
“What was announced over the last few days were the cancellation of specific contracts that health authorities had entered into in anticipation of proceeding to the construction phase of these projects,” she said.
“However, because more work has to be done at the design phase, the project-development phase, those contracts were no longer required.”
In a statement posted online Thursday, the Burnaby Hospital and Community Foundation CEO said she was “deeply disappointed” and that despite assurances the project had not been cancelled “a terminated contract with no confirmed start date sounds like a cancellation.”
Kristy James said the city has made the case for redevelopment.
“Burnaby has one of the lowest bed counts in all of BC and is the third largest city, serving over 500,000 residents between Burnaby and East Vancouver,” she said.
“We had gone through the approval process, the community stepped up and raised over $55 million for our redevelopment. It is time for the government to do what they promised and finish building Burnaby Hospital.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 1, 2026
The Canadian Press
