STE-ANNE-DE-BELLEVUE — Claude Martin is a retired soldier living in Laval who over the years has developed a unique side project – he helps veterans find space at hospitals around town.
“In Montreal, so far I’ve been successful in getting veterans into the Montreal General,” he said. “They have to take you.”
The need for veterans to find space in Montreal-area hospitals has come into sharp relief with the impending changeover in administration for the Ste. Anne de Bellevue Hospital, the last federally-operated veteran’s hospital in Canada.
The union representing veterans affairs employees has said that 113 hospital beds have sat vacant for months – fallout from the changing of the guard. According to the union’s national president, Carl Gannon Jr., with the transfer on the horizon, the federal government never updated its criteria for whom the hospital could admit as a patient.
“Instead of amending the current situation, what they’d rather do is just off-load it somewhere else, in this case the Quebec government,” Gannon said. The long-standing criteria meant that “you pretty much have to have served in World War I, World War II or the Korean War,” he said.
“It pretty much cuts off anyone the department doesn’t call a traditional veteran. It totally writes those guys off.”
Martin pointed to red tape as a constant problem facing veterans, something that the provincial health minister dismissed as the Quebec government moves to take over the hospital.
“The services that are provided to veterans will remain for the period of time that is necessary,” said Health Minister Gaetan Barrette, “and the rest of the resources that are not used as we speak will be integrated in our network.”
As the hospital becomes fused into the provincial system, a lingering question is where veterans fit in going forward. The transfer is scheduled to be completed by early 2016.
“One of my concerns is whether the guarantees given to the veterans can be enforced,” said Francis Scarpaleggia, the Liberal MP for Lac-St-Louis. “We’ll have to wait and see and follow that very closely.”
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