BARRETTE VAGUE ON HOSPITAL TIMELINE
While Quebec Health Minister Gaétan Barrette acknowledged the need for a hospital in the Vaudreuil-Soulanges region last week, he gave no time frame as to when the long-awaited project might start.
Barrette, while inaugurating a dialysis centre at Lachine Hospital on Feb. 12, was asked to comment about the promised VaudreuilSoulanges hospital, a project initially pledged by a previous Liberal health minister in 2010 and then backed by Philippe Couillard just months before he became Quebec’s premier in 2014.
“In my mind, there is no doubt that we need one additional hospital in that area. In my mind, a hospital will be in that area. Exactly when? That has to be determined,” Barrette responded.
Residents of the VaudreuilSoulanges MRC are designated to be served by a hospital in Valleyfield. However, many Off-Island residents head to the Lakeshore General Hospital in Pointe-Claire, while others travel to a hospital in Hawkesbury, just across the Ontario border, for medical services.
“There has to be a hospital based on the fact that in that area we are funding Ontario. I like Ontarians, and we have very good relations with Ontario, but I think that Quebec’s population has to receive services in Quebec,” Barrette said.
Off-Island municipal officials have long been proponents of building a hospital in VaudreuilSoulanges.
Pincourt Mayor Yvan Cardinal said he was encouraged by Barrette’s statement last Friday about the Vaudreuil-Soulanges hospital, adding the ministry noted a site selection is forthcoming.
“He didn’t say when, but he said the government has to make a choice of land,” Cardinal said.
Meanwhile, St-Lazare Mayor Robert Grimaudo said the Couillard government has so far only paid lip service to a campaign promise made heading into the 2014 provincial election.
“It has been since the last provincial election that the Liberal government has been saying that an announcement is imminent, but we have heard nothing. It is a file that is taking far too long and, to be perfectly honest, I am very displeased. Our residents deserve better in the case of medical services. We are truly being ignored in our territory,” he told the Montreal Gazette.
“Our MRC is over 140,000 in population and we are still waiting for a decision that should have been taken 10 years ago,” he added.
Vaudreuil-Dorion Mayor Guy Pilon said the Quebec Liberal government is taking Vaudreuil-Soulanges voters for granted by not delivering on the stalled hospital project for the booming region.
“I don’t know what more could be done (to lobby Quebec to build the hospital),” he said. “It’s always the same answer, ‘Yes it will come.’ It’s been years now. At one point, it’s better not to ask anymore so we don’t have any more deception.
“We’re the only place in Canada where you don’t have a hospital with a population like us,” he added. “It’s kind of ridiculous.”
Pilon pointed out the ministry has yet to decide on a site to build the hospital.
John Kinnear, a former Pincourt city councillor and a longtime advocate for a new hospital, anticipates it will be several more years before a site is selected and construction might begin.
“The costs keeping going up the longer the delay,” Kinnear noted. “If it doesn’t get done in the next couple of years, then we’ll be in another election year.”
In late 2010, then health minster Yves Bolduc made a public announcement that Vaudreuil-Soulanges will be granted a new hospital.
The following year, the local health agency filed a strategic presentation document, the initial stage for major public infrastructure projects. In early 2012, a regional health official told residents of the area during an information meeting in St-Lazare that the targeted completion date for the Off-Island hospital is 2018.
In fall 2013, Liberal leader Phillippe Couillard made a campaign promise to fast-track the construction of a 300-bed hospital for Vaudreuil-Soulanges.
Later that same fall, hundreds of citizens rallied in Vaudreuil-Dorion to demand the province select a site for the hospital and start its construction.