New Montreal Inuit patient home on life-support

Allison Irqumia, president of the Montreal Inuit Association, attended the Sept. 7 Villeray borough meeting, ready to act as a liaison between Inuit in Montreal and other residents of Montreal. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

Joey Flowers, a McGill University law student from Kuujjuaq, and Geneviève Beaudet, member of a Villerary residents group, shown here at the at Sept. 7 borough meeting, say they’re frustrated by the attitude of Villeray borough mayor Anie Samson. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

This former Chinese hospital, proposed as the site for a new, 150-bed Nunavik House and northern module centre, is a stolid-looking, three-storey brick building on the corner of St. Denis Street and Faillon Est, about six kilometres east and north of the Montreal Children’s Hospital. (FILE PHOTO)

MONTREAL — A plan to renovate a former Chinese hospital in Montreal into a hostel for Nunavimmiut receiving heath care in Montreal now appears to be on life-support.

By the end of the year, the proposed renovation of the long-empty hospital at the corner of Faillon and St. Denis streets may die a natural death, if Nunavik’s health board decides not to proceed with a set of costly studies that the Villeray-St-Michel-Parc-Extension borough wants to see.

At a Sept. 7 meeting of the borough’s council, mayor Anie Samson said she can’t recommend lifting a zoning freeze for the former hospital, imposed earlier this summer, without more information.

Samson said, among other things, that she wants to see social, economic and cultural impact studies, plus a list of alternative sites, all within four months, before lifting the moratorium on new development at the hospital site.

Samson also told the meeting that she received a letter from the Montreal Health Authority at 5:00 p.m. on Sept. 7.

The letter said the Nunavik Regional Board of Health and Social Services will now be in charge of promoting the project, Samson told her council.

Nunavik’s regional health board only learned about this letter from radio reports on the morning of Sept. 8.

Gilles Boulet, the assistant director of the health board, said the board will likely make a decision on whether to proceed with studies in early October, when its board of directors hold their annual general meeting.

At a public meeting in June, the Montreal health authority’s director, David Levine, promised to set up an implementation committee and hire consultants to prepare studies on the project.

But Samson said she heard nothing more from Levine until shortly before the Sept. 7 borough meeting, despite two requests for information.

“It’s a mess,” said Joey Flowers, a McGill law student originally from Kuujjuaq who attended the Sept. 7 meeting.

There, he asked Samson to apologize for portraying Inuit as “party animals.”

“When you bring in 125 people who are away from their familiar environment, it’s new, it’s the big city, it’s a party. Incidents are sure to occur. To tell me there won’t be any problems, that’s lying to us,” Samson told Radio-Canada May 10 about the plan for an Inuit patient residence in her borough.

But, at the Sept. 7 meeting, Flowers didn’t hear the apology he hoped for.

“We can’t apologize more than we have,” Samson said, noting that asking for more information isn’t a sign of prejudice.

“The door is open” to the project but now it’s up to health board to step forward with information, she said.

No one from the Montreal health authority or the Nunavik health board attended the evening council meeting.

Geneviève Beaudet, spokesperson for the group that collected more than 650 signatures on a petition in favour of the hospital renovation, presented the petition to the council.

But Beaudet left the meeting at 9:00 p.m., before it finished, saying she’s discouraged with the council’s reluctance to lift its zoning freeze.

It’s now time for Yves Bolduc, Quebec’s health and social services minister, to get involved in the file, Beaudet said.

Allison Irqumia, present of the Montreal Inuit Association, also attended the borough meeting, ready to act as a liaison between Inuit in Montreal and others.

Samson told the approximately 100 people attending the borough meeting that she’s “been accused of a lot of things,” but maintained the borough is “very sensitive” to ethnic differences, pointing to the make-up of her council, which includes a Greek-Canadian and an Haitian-Canadian.

Samson made a visible effort to show Villeray as an ecologically-concerned, ethnically-open borough at the Sept. 7 meeting.

She posed with promoters of new composting project and with a bearded Greek Orthodox priest to celebrate the transformation of land owned by his church into a park and new church complex.

Despite a meeting agenda that contained more than 60 items and nearly 40 speakers, Samson took 15 minutes to deliver her mayor’s report for 2009, highlighting the borough’s achievements and goals.

Nowhere in its objectives for 2011 was there any mention of the hospital renovation project.

During the question period, during which three ordinary residents could ask one question each on any issue, Beaudet asked Samson to end the zoning freeze.

Andres Fontecilla, the coordinator of the anti-poverty group, Solidarités Villeray, told Samson the freeze prevents Inuit from receiving their basic right to health care.

No matter what happens to the hospital project, Nunavimmiut will continue to be dependent on health care in Montreal, Boulet said.

“We have to find a solution” to the cramped and inadequate boarding homes now used for Nunavik patients, escorts and support services.

Even if “we had all the money in the world,” the situation won’t change because there will never be enough patients in Nunavik to draw specialists to the region on a permanent basis, Boulet said.