New leadership takes over MUHC board of directors

After months of uncertainty, the MUHC has a new board of directors.

Ten members of the previous board of the English superhospital quit this summer after conflicts with Quebec Health Minister Gaétan Barrette.

At a press conference Monday, the future of the organization was in focus.

“This ship has been through a tsunami of challenges, but now we have a great crew in place and a great captain at its helm,” said the head of the MUHC Patients’ Committee Seeta Ramdass.

READ MORE: MUHC independent board members resign, cite conflict with health minister

The new board will be chaired by Peter Kruyt, known for his role as part of senior management at Power Corporation of Canada.

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Kruyt is joined by Deep Khosla, Dale MacCandlish‐Weil, James Cherry, Thomas Pitifield, Michal Piotr Kuzmicki, Kevin O’Farrell, Mary‐Anne Carignan, Samira Sakhia and Sarah Prichard.

One of their first tasks will be to choose two candidates as finalists for the CEO position at the MUHC.

The English superhospital has been without a CEO for more than a year.

READ MORE: Quebec Liberal Party losing voter support over MUHC

The process to choose a new director general for the hospital was delayed when the 10 independent board members quit en masse over funding and staffing disputes with Barrette.

Barrette didn’t want to talk about the past conflict and said that he “would be surprised” if the current board would react the same way to a similar conflict.

The head of the MUHC’s nurses union has her doubts about the new board.

“Honestly, I’m disappointed,” Denyse Joseph told Global News.

Joseph and the head of several other unions at the hospital lobbied the health minister in the summer for three permanent spots on the governing board, which didn’t happen.

READ MORE: Quebec health minister meets with MUHC unions following board resignation

They never heard back from the health minister and now Joseph says time is running out to make major management changes.

“Things get worse every day, there have been so many cuts, we are down to the bone.”