Hospital union opens awareness campaign
Organizers say focus on long-term care at Ste. Anne’s jeopardizes other services
The largest union representing workers at the Ste. Anne Hospital has taken its case to the public in the hope of pressuring the Quebec government on how the federally funded veterans’ hospital should be operated once it is handed over to the province.
Representatives of the Union of Veterans Affairs Canada (UVAE) — Public Service Alliance of Canada say they are worried that if the hospital is turned into a long-term care facility or CHSLD when the hospital is transferred in March, the facility’s medical and social services could be jeopardized.
The union is lobbying for the newly renovated and modernized hospital to be turned into a multi-vocational centre under the direction of the West Island CSSS, the provincial health agency that oversees the Lakeshore General Hospital, CLSCs and CHSLDs in the West Island.
“We are promoting a win-win scenario for veterans and civilians in the region,” said Daniel Allard, national vice-president of the UVAE, which represents close to 650 Ste. Anne employees, among them Xray technicians, laboratory technologists and occupational therapists.
“When the transfer takes effect, the potential of health care services that the Ste. Anne Hospital will be able to provide to the entire public will be immense,” Allard said.
“This tour provides an opportunity to discuss with citizens the issues and the advantages of the transfer for the public.”
Allard was speaking at a press conference held at Le Faubourg de l’Île, a shopping mall in Pincourt, where the union operated a kiosk last week as part of its public awareness campaign.
As Allard spoke, shoppers stopped to pick up the union’s flyer, in English, titled: For Better Healthcare Services in the West Island.
Last spring, federal Minister of Veterans Affairs Steven Blaney and, then-provincial health minister Yves Bolduc announced March 2013 as the target date for finalizing the transfer of Ste. Anne’s to provincial control.
At that time, government officials said the transfer would open long-term care beds to residents in the West Island and Off-Island, where a new acute-care hospital is to be built by 2018.
No new details have been announced since.
On Monday, West Island MNA Geoffrey Kelley said he shares some of the union’s concerns. This week, he said, he will ask for a meeting with Quebec’s new health minister, Réjean Hébert, and hopes to convince the new minister to visit the facility in person.
“We have to be ambitious,” Kelley said, in an interview at the Lakeshore General Hospital, where he was attending another event. “We don’t want to see (the hospital’s) personnel and expertise frittered away.”
Marie-Françoise Bouchereau, vice-president of the UVAE local 10008 at Ste. Anne’s, said the union has twice contacted the office of Quebec’s new health minister asking for a meeting, but to no avail.
“They say they only need us when we are going to be talking about the transfer of employees and work conditions,” Bouchereau said.
She said the union’s hope is that by going directly to residents of the West Island and Off-Island, the provincial government will take note of their position.
In 2009, Ste. Anne Hospital saw the completion of a $114-million modernization and expansion plan with 446 beds in private rooms for long-term geriatric care.
But there are now fewer than 400 veterans from the Second World War and Korean conflict being cared for at the hospital.
Bouchereau and Allard said the facility is ideally suited to become a multi-vocational centre, including clinics, that could relieve pressure from the Lakeshore General and save Off-Island residents from travelling to Cornwall, Hawkesbury and Alexandria, Ont.
Last year, Allard said, the provincial government paid the Ontario government close to $100 million for medical services it provided Quebecers.
Over the next two months, Allard said, a team of eight union delegates will be manning kiosks in other shopping malls as well as going door-to-door in the Off-Island and West Island.