Lakeshore General’s New Emergency Department Still Has No Construction Date

POINTE-CLAIRE, Que. — Eight years after Quebec first placed a new emergency department for Lakeshore General Hospital in its infrastructure plan, the project remains in the planning stage, with no current public date for construction to begin.

The proposed new emergency department is a major expansion of Lakeshore General, one of the busiest emergency departments in Montreal and a key hospital for residents across the West Island. Plans call for a new three-storey, 8,300-square-metre building with 38 stretcher spaces, a 12-bed short-term physical-health unit and a six-bed short-term mental-health unit.

The project would also add examination rooms, pre-triage and triage areas, medical imaging facilities and a 10-seat rapid-assessment area. The CIUSSS de l’Ouest-de-l’Île-de-Montréal says the new facility is intended to improve patient flow, reduce wait times and replace infrastructure that has become outdated.

The project itself isn’t new.

It was added to Quebec’s infrastructure plan in the spring of 2018. Cabinet approved its opportunity case in July 2023 and authorized development of the project’s business case, the detailed planning stage that includes architectural plans, cost estimates, resource requirements and construction planning. Quebec allocated $14.5 million to that phase.

At the time, the CIUSSS said completion of the permanent emergency department was expected in the fall of 2027.

The timeline became less clear afterward.

When a temporary modular emergency department opened at Lakeshore in May 2024, the CIUSSS described it as a transitional facility that would operate while the permanent department was being developed. Its announcement said the permanent project was slated to begin in 2025, and contemporary reporting also identified 2025 as the expected start of construction.

Later that year, however, a CIUSSS interview with a senior nursing adviser involved in the modular relocation described construction of the permanent emergency department as being slated to begin in 2027.

Now, in August 2026, the CIUSSS’s current project timeline gives no date at all.

It lists only two completed milestones: inclusion in the Quebec infrastructure plan in 2018 and approval of the opportunity case in 2023. Approval of the business case remains among the “next steps,” followed by the start of construction, completion of construction and opening to patients. None of those four stages has a published date.

The French-language project page also says a public information session will be organized once the business case has been approved by Cabinet, indicating that approval has not yet occurred.

In the meantime, Lakeshore continues to operate from the modular emergency department that opened on May 15, 2024. The temporary facility provides more modern surroundings than the emergency department it replaced and also houses a university-affiliated family medicine group and a Rapid Access Clinic.

The permanent project remains important for reasons beyond the age of the hospital’s infrastructure.

Figures released by Santé Québec earlier this year showed that Lakeshore patients spent an average of approximately 26.5 hours on a stretcher before being admitted or discharged during 2025-26. The Quebec average was 16 hours and 46 minutes, putting the Lakeshore average more than 60 per cent above the provincial figure.

The pressure comes as the population served by the hospital continues to grow and age. The CIUSSS specifically identifies those demographic changes as part of the reason a larger and more modern emergency department is needed.

The existing emergency department was already considered to have reached the end of its useful life years ago. A 2021-22 CIUSSS annual report described the original emergency facility, built in the 1960s as a temporary structure, as suffering from functional and technical problems and failing to meet current building standards.

The modular facility has addressed some of those immediate physical problems, but it was never presented as the permanent solution.

The permanent replacement remains on Quebec’s infrastructure agenda. What has disappeared from the current public information is a firm schedule for delivering it.

The Canadianist has requested an updated timeline from the CIUSSS de l’Ouest-de-l’Île-de-Montréal, including the expected approval date for the business case, the current target for the start of construction and whether the previously stated 2027 completion timeline remains achievable.

This story will be updated when a response is received.