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St. Joseph's Health Care in London got the provincial green light yesterday to move ahead with more than $20 million in rebuilding under Ontario's controversial private-sector financing program.

"We are just delighted that they are honouring their commitments," said David Crockett, integrated vice-president of St. Joseph's and London Health Sciences Centre.

The work will be done at St. Joseph's Grosvenor Street site, where about $45 million in construction has already been completed.

The new construction will be on the hospital's southeast side with renovation of about 7,200 square metres, including the urgent care centre, cataract suite, health care records area, urology department and diabetes centre.

"It is going to take us about a year to a year and a half to do it," said Crockett.

To finance the St. Joseph's projects, the government is turning to the private sector under a program it has dubbed Alternative Financing and Procurement.

Companies are being asked to bid on putting up the money and doing the construction work. In turn, the province will pay the companies back over a period of as long as 40 years.

Wilson Lee, spokesperson for Public Infrastructure Renewal Minister David Caplan, declined to release the ministry's estimated cost of the St. Joseph's projects.

"We are not sharing cost estimates. We have learned in the past that once we start floating our cost estimates, that becomes the floor from which everybody else starts bidding. What we want to do is maintain the competitive tension," he said.

The financing method has been attacked by critics who maintain it amounts to the privatization of health care.

Caplan has said it's not privatization because the public sector owns the hospitals.

Without the private financing, many hospital projects wouldn't be able to go ahead, Caplan has said.

Other projects approved to go ahead yesterday included expansion and renovation of the Bluewater Health Norman site hospital in Sarnia, Sudbury Regional Hospital, Quinte Healthcare in Belleville, Trillium Health Centre in Mississauga, and construction of a new youth justice facility in Brampton.