Veterans Affairs Committee on Dec. 10th, 2009

[Darragh Mogan]

Yes. The issue here for the modern veteran is the capacity for in-patient care for OSIs. That can be headed at Ste. Anne and networked into the OSI clinics. It's something we would maintain after transfer.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Okay, but my concern is that one of our colleagues in Newfoundland is working on a particular case of a gentleman who's 71 years old. He can't get access to hospital care because he does not meet the current eligibility. Mr. Mogan said quite clearly that any change in this has to be government policy, and I agree with that. That doesn't come from the department.

My concern is not right now; it's ten years from now. Starting in January, as you know, we're going to lose 100 World War II and Korean veterans due to the aging process. In about ten years we're talking about a handful of them will be left. My concern is the future of our veterans who are here with us now and also for their spouses.

As you know, the Maybee case of Sheet Harbour was a classic example of where two governments, provincially and federally, completely dropped the ball, had one person--the veteran--in a hospital, and his spouse of over 60 years had to be somewhere else. They couldn't get it together to put them together.

I'd just like you to elaborate. Has the department made the suggestions at all to government, that instead of transferring Ste. Anne's to the provincial one, to keep it a federal responsibility, to set up what I would call an RCMP veterans centre of excellence, and allow a furtherance of people—RCMP veterans, military personnel, and their individual spouses—access to these beds in the future? In ten years there will be no veterans at Ste. Anne's. They will all be under the provincial guidance, if I'm not mistaken, unless the criteria change quite rapidly to allow more access to our modern-day veterans and their families.

I'd like your view on that, sir.

[Brian Ferguson]

I'll say a couple of things. One is that we are constantly looking at the long-term care strategy that the department has within the current eligibility framework. It might be useful for the committee, at some point, to have a more fulsome briefing on that particular aspect. Part of that is looking at needs down the road. Without commenting on specifics today, we have been looking at the needs within the current eligibilities. We've also considered the fact that when new hospitals were built, the social safety net in Canada was relatively non-existent. Basically now there are hundreds of thousands of beds across the country for which the department pays for various types of eligibilities. So it's a fairly complex environment, and I'd like to make that suggestion in response to your comment. You're quite right about the government policy.

The other thing is, if Ste. Anne's opens its beds to civilians.... Whenever we run into a case and learn about a case where there's a spousal separation, we do our level best, working with the provincial authorities, to try to fix that. If Ste. Anne's had beds available, that would give us another option in that community to make a co-location. So there are a number of factors there.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

My bottom-line thinking is that a veteran is a veteran is a veteran. All veterans should be treated equally, whether they served overseas or whether they did not. Their spouses, as you know, are the best friends the government has in looking after them. The best thing to do is to keep them in their own home, if possible, to allow them to die in their own home, if that's their choice. But in the case where they need that institutional care, we shouldn't have to be putting them on lists.

I know at Camp Hill, for example, there's a three-step thing that you have to be able to meet before you can get in there. It is quite frustrating for a person who's 89 years old and doesn't understand the complexities of the bureaucracy.

Perhaps I can just leave this with you. Perhaps you can take it back to the department to look at the future eligibility of our modern-day veterans who are now in their seventies. They're going to come up the ladder and they're going to be requesting this type of care. We're going to need to work on it fairly quickly.

[Brian Ferguson]

Thank you for those comments.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Thank you, Mr. Stoffer. You're quite punctual.

We're now on to the Conservative Party for five minutes. Mr. Kerr.

[Greg Kerr, Conservative, West Nova, NS]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I will welcome our guests. I'm still in shock that we stopped in time with the previous speaker.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

I'm happy to allow the parliamentary secretary enough time.

[Greg Kerr, Conservative, West Nova, NS]

I'm just going to make a comment and pass it along to Ben for a question.

I think what we're hearing is no surprise. There are some very legitimate points being put out. I do say, having done a lot of looking at this and research, including on the previous transfers, I understand why it's a three- to five-year process. The last thing we want to do is speed it up. We've heard the other is to make sure that we cover off all of the responsibilities. But I do agree with you. One of the best things we can do is not only visit Ste. Anne's, but go and visit and talk to those who are running one of the transferred facilities, to give us a better understanding. The last points made by Peter are concerning ongoing policy challenges, regardless of whether it's in-hospital or just direct department care. I just want to get on record, from our perspective, that the last thing we want to do is to speed up what is a very important transfer, and what for the most part has been a very successful start.

Ben, I think you had a question.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Thank you again for coming before the committee.

Could you comment a little to the committee on the $114-million investment on slide 13 and explain a little more about the work that was done and where this sets up Ste. Anne's in relation to other facilities in the province of Quebec?

[Brian Ferguson]

If I may, I will refer that to Madame Gravel, who has been managing that project since its inception quite successfully.

Rachel, I'll just refer this to you, if I may.

[Rachel Corneille Gravel]

Thank you, Brian.

That was a big endeavour, I have to admit. We started this project eight years ago. It was a major planning exercise.

All the plans and specifications were done in compliance with provincial standards. The environment now is secure, not only for the residents but for the employees as well. In the old infrastructure, some of the private bathrooms in private rooms, for instance, were so narrow that a patient could not wheel himself into the bathroom, so there were many manipulations that employees had to do, and we had a lot of work accidents at Ste. Anne's.

Now the environment is secure and it's also well adapted to the changing needs of the clientele, considering that more than half our patients are in wheelchairs. What we did was build a new power plant. We then built a pavilion for residents who have cognitive impairments such as Alzheimer's disease. It's a pavilion that is only two storeys high and has 116 private rooms with semi-private bathrooms.

Then we transferred 116 patients from our main pavilion to that adjacent pavilion and started renovating the main pavilion. We did it in four phases, and now it's completed. We have 330 private rooms with semi-private bathrooms in the main tower. We also improved the outside area and we have a new security system.

In a nutshell, that's really what we did at Ste. Anne's. The project is not completely finished yet. They had to redo all the outside of the building and remove the concrete panels. Right now, they're finishing the external envelope of the building, and hopefully by the beginning of the new year the whole building will be completed.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

So it's definitely a modern or near-modern facility that would potentially be transferred; it isn't an outdated relic of a building that the province would be getting.

The other part I want to explore just a bit in the time remaining is this. In southern Ontario, where I'm from, and in particular rural Ontario, one of the issues we have in our health care system concerns availablility of beds and the ability to let patients stay in the hospital until they are well. The other concerns long-term beds and the treatment they get. Another issue we have is to have a facility for those with mental health problems or cognitive problems to be in a safe and secure environment.

With the projections we've seen in your data today, can you comment on the potential benefits the province of Quebec may have with having a state-of-the-art facility with open and available beds for civilians?

[Brian Ferguson]

Our feeling is that this is really an alignment of the needs they have with the issues we're facing with the declining number of veterans. It's actually lining up very well. We think this would solve some of their issues in the area around Ste. Anne's for access to long-term care beds. It's probably the reason why the talks have begun from both sides: that we both see that opportunity. It really would provide, I think, an increase in capacity in the area. It therefore gives, as other transfers have done, an injection back into the community of the value of the infrastructure.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

I can certainly—

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Your time is up.

Thank you, Mr. Ferguson.

Now we go on to the Liberal Party, to Mr. Oliphant for five minutes.

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

Thank you, and thank you to all the witnesses.

These are some relatively short questions, with, I hope, relatively short answers.

First, would there be a significant difference in the H1N1 protocol at Ste. Anne's compared with that at the George Hees Centre at Sunnybrook Hospital, a contracted facility?

[Brian Ferguson]

Rachel, would you respond, please?

[Rachel Corneille Gravel]

I wouldn't know; I don't know what their protocols are. What I can say is that at Ste. Anne's we have been following the protocols of the provincial network.

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

I express that question because we had hoped to visit the hospital today, but weren't able to because of the H1N1 situation. Yet two weeks ago the minister and 150 outside visitors went to George Hees, a contracted facility, for a major event. We did that event, and I have been in five contracted facilities in the last four weeks and have not had a problem. I'm just wondering why it is we weren't able to go there today.

[Rachel Corneille Gravel]

I think the demand may have been made at the beginning of some of the protocols we were enforcing. I know that if the demand had been made, for instance, last week, now that we know that this second phase of H1N1 is almost over, the answer would probably have been different from when it was made.

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

Thank you; that's good.

The second question is why was Ste. Anne's chosen to house the national centre for OSI?

[Brian Ferguson]

I can answer that. The reason is that we recognized the need to have clinical expertise in managing the developing network of OSI clinics that we wanted to create across the country, and Ste. Anne's offered a logical place to develop that expertise, because of the doctors who were there. It was just the best place for us to begin.

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

If we don't have one facility operated by the federal government, where would you have put that centre?

[Brian Ferguson]

That's a hypothetical sort of question. If we had the opportunity to put it with ourselves, sir, we would have had to create a capacity somewhere—