NDP MPPs Andrea Horwath and France Gélinas expressed outrage today after members of a government committee blocked an NDP motion calling on the Auditor General to investigate the McGuinty Liberals privately financed hospitals.

“Premier McGuinty is showing his government to be the great imposter. Liberals pretend to subscribe to openness, transparency and full disclosure. Meanwhile they block access to information that’s vital to the public interest and refuse to have light shed on their numbers,” Horwath said after Liberal committee members blocked the NDP’s call to probe the P3 North Bay Regional Health Centre project (NBRHC).

Horwath’s motion lost by a 5-3 vote at the Standing Committee on Public Accounts this afternoon after the Liberals used their majority to kill it.

“Even the Tories voted in favour of our motion. The Liberals’ actions demonstrate they clearly have something to hide. New Democrats believe it’s crucial to have the Auditor General report on the real cost of McGuinty P3s and the amount of money they divert from patient care. It is well known that privatizing health care costs more and delivers less patient care,” said Gélinas, the NDP Critic for Health and Long-Term Care

Recently the Auditor General said he would to audit the P3 hospital in Brampton, a deal of the Harris Conservatives. But no independent audit has ever been conducted on the North Bay hospital – a wholly McGuinty Liberal P3, one of 30 the Liberals have planned. The NDP submitted a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to obtain a government-commissioned value-for-money audit by PricewaterhouseCoopers. In response, hundreds of pages of documents were provided – but all relevant financial information was blacked out.

“The fact that the public is being denied the right to know the full cost of P3 hospitals is cause for even more concern,” Horwath said. “If McGuinty’s P3s were good value for money, the government would not be blocking our attempts to see the figures. They wouldn’t be hiding anything if they didn’t have anything to hide.”

“Most Ontarians agree – every health care dollar should be going to health care, not to the shareholders of a private corporation. Health care should be publicly funded and publicly delivered,” said Gélinas.