Mr. Speaker, the Chedoke-McMaster Hospitals Foundation in Hamilton has expressed dismay that the recent $818,000 severance package awarded by the hospitals to a former administrator will hurt fund raising.
Indeed it might, especially if the public were to realize that according to its 1994 annual financial information return, the foundation raised $1.03 million in donations at a cost of $783,000 in fund raising expenses. In other words, out of a little more than $1 million received from the public, only $247,000 was available as a gift to the hospitals.
A bit of simple math shows that it could take more than three years of fund raising by the foundation and $3.3 million in donations to raise enough money to pay off the $800,000 severance package.
This is scandalous. Hospital beds are disappearing, nursing staff has been cut and the sick suffers while hospital directors squander the public money entrusted to them.