Veterans Affairs Committee on Dec. 10th, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Just a moment, Mr. Ferguson.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

I'm sorry. I can't hear anything Mr. Ferguson is saying. There are too many extraneous conversations.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Monsieur André, we're not able to hear, with the side conversation.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

I guess it is hypothetical, except that the government is planning a transfer of this facility, and yet it was chosen as the national centre. I have a great concern that if we don't have a federal facility, we would not have a place to study and have a centre for excellence for post-traumatic stress disorder. In your slides, you say that it won't be transferred. Will you then contract with a facility to do this, or how will it happen?

[Brian Ferguson]

In all likelihood we will contract. We would retain the expertise and the staff of that facility under the department's authority, and it would simply be a matter of housing it. So we could enter into an agreement—

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

But is it an issue of housing it, or do you have medical expertise there? You just said you had medical expertise there that you needed, and now.... Is it just a building, or is it medical expertise?

[Brian Ferguson]

I'm saying that there's a staff complement there of medical experts who would remain staff of the department.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Okay. So we're going to end up losing our ability to run a centre and we become a tenant there in two ways: we would contract with them for long-term care and we would contract with them for the national centre.

[Brian Ferguson]

Well, we haven't decided how we will.... We're looking at options as to where the national centre would be housed. I simply mentioned that as one option. But basically, if that were the option we would not transfer the management of it; we would simply, under that option, likely rent the space.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

We would rent the space.

Why wouldn't we take our state-of-the-art facility, our national centre of excellence, and rent out space to the province for long-term care for the community that they need? Why wouldn't that be the preferred option?

[Brian Ferguson]

Well, I think, as you can see, the national centre is a relatively small part of the overall hospital operations, and it's a part—

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

You have 255 active clients.

[Brian Ferguson]

That's right, but they're not resident clients.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Not resident, but 255 is a significant number of clients, I would think. I know you have only ten active beds--

[Brian Ferguson]

That's right.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

--but 255 active clients, and we have no other place in Canada to do significant research on OSI.

[Brian Ferguson]

I think that's one of the reasons it would be useful to have perhaps a more in-depth briefing on what the clinics are doing. Actually, the network is sort of the brain centre. The centre is operating one facility, and now a second residential facility will be developed, but they're managing and overseeing the other eight facilities across the country. They're sort of the guiding light for the full facility management. That will remain. All the other OSI clinics are in facilities near the hospitals and operate in a coordinated fashion.

I think it would be useful, sir, to give you more detail on that.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Thank you, Mr. Ferguson.

Now we'll go to the Conservative Party for five minutes. Mr. Storseth.

[Brian Storseth, Conservative, Westlock—St. Paul, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I have only a couple questions for you, Mr. Ferguson. Thank you for coming today.

I have to admit that whenever we meet with departments and talk to individuals such as yourselves, it always worries me when I hear things like complex strategies and decisions that are ongoing, because it generally means there's a fairly simple solution that oftentimes isn't being looked at. I just want to make sure that's not the case here.

What is your long-term policy vision when it comes to not only Ste. Anne's, but other hospitals of this nature?

[Brian Ferguson]

I apologize if I left the impression that it wasn't possible to boil it down. I was offering a briefing on the broader subject.

I will ask Darragh to give you in a nutshell the direction in which we're heading right now.

[Darragh Mogan]

Thank you, Brian.

The long-term care strategy that we have is based on the modern environment. If you look at when these hospitals were constructed, from 1946 to 1955, there was really no sophisticated long-term capacity in any province in the country. There is now, and more and more veterans want to stay closer to home. So our long-term vision is to capitalize on the expertise, particularly psycho-geriatric expertise, that we have in these contracted facilities in Ste. Anne's but allow those people who can stay in the community—and the majority of people we have in long-term care are staying in the community, either at home or in institutions—the choice of where they go.

When the veteran numbers wind down to a point where maybe the contract facilities aren't necessary, at least the care will be available in the community. Eight out of ten, or four out of five, veterans who approach us for long-term care want to stay in the community. But it's excellent in the long term to have a psycho-geriatric resource like Ste. Anne's either as a hospital that we own or as one we contract with.

[Brian Storseth, Conservative, Westlock—St. Paul, AB]

Did I get it right that there are eight other facilities of this nature?

[Brian Ferguson]

No, that was operational stress injury clinics.

[Brian Storseth, Conservative, Westlock—St. Paul, AB]

Where are they located?