Huge UK company that (owns the company that) does Sault hospital's maintenance forced into bankruptcy

EDITOR'S NOTE: The headline on an earlier version of this story said UK company Carillion does Sault Area Hospital's maintenance. In fact, Carillion subsidiary Carillion Canada does SAH maintenance.

Carillion, the United Kingdom’s second largest construction firm, was forced into bankruptcy Monday.

The company, which has 23,000 workers around the world, including 6,000 in Canada, provides a wide range of services for Sault Area Hospital.

Sault Area Hospital’s maintenance/service contract is with Hospital Infrastructure Partners, which contracts with Carillion Canada to provide facilities management services at SAH.

“We have been in contact with Hospital Infrastructure Partners and have been advised that the overall impact of the liquidation on Canada will be modest,” stated Rose Calibani, SAH public affairs officer, in an email to SooToday Tuesday.

“For SAH, we have been assured that it’s business as usual and we do not expect any interruptions in service. We look forward to a continued positive partnership with Hospital Infrastructure Partners and our current facilities management staff,” Calibani wrote.

According to Carillion’s website, the company provides SAH with building management operations such as overseeing all plant and utilities management, grounds maintenance and landscaping services, security and surveillance, central dispatch, general management services, parking services, retail management and non-patient food services.

Carillion Canada is also the largest road service contractor in the country, responsible for plowing and maintenance 40,000 kilometres of highways in Ontario and Alberta.

In Sept. 2017, the Ontario Ministry of Transportation ended an 11-year maintenance contract with the company, which involved maintenance for highways in Muskoka-Parry Sound, five years before it was due to expire, as clouds gathered on Carillion’s horizon.

Meanwhile, Unifor and the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU/CUPE) issued a joint call Tuesday for the provincial government to end privatization of contracted hospital services in the wake of the Carillion collapse, to protect patients and hospital staff.

"In Britain the hospital staff employed by Carillon have been given guarantees by the British government that they will continue to be paid. The provincial government needs to make the same assurances to the hospital staff working at Carillion's Ontario P3 hospitals. It is also time for these projects to be brought back into the public sector. The folly of private ownership of the hospitals is exposed fully by this bankruptcy," stated OCHU president Michael Hurley in news release Tuesday.

OCHU, the hospital arm of CUPE in Ontario, along with Unifor,  represent nearly 50,000 hospital staff in hospitals across the province.