MUHC Superhospital in Deep Trouble

Though nobody over at McGill is ready to admit it, the English super-hospital project, to be located at the Glen Yards is in deep trouble.

Both projects, the MUHC (McGill University Health Centre) and the CHUM (Centre hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal ) are supposed to be financed by the private sector with leaseback agreements. This arrangement is already falling apart for both projects. The private lenders who were lined up before the current financial crisis are balking at undertaking the projects without additional financial guarantees by the government. If that's the case the government doesn't need to involve private enterprise at all and can build and finance the projects itself, thus avoiding the go-between. The government has committed to go the private route but now with the private sector demanding guarantees, it could be a convenient way out and an opportunity rethink both projects.

The need for these super-hospitals is questionable, especially on the English side.
While McGill University does want a super-hospital, it is clearly unneeded and an extravagance that we can't afford either financially or socially.
We have quite enough anglophone hospitals, in fact more than we need, thank you very much.

Without getting overly emotional, let's review some facts. The island of Montreal has at least five important anglophone hospitals and as well as bunch of smaller institutions. The Montreal General, The Royal Victoria, the Jewish General Hospital, The Children's and Lakeshore General are more than enough to serve the needs of the anglophone community. When I say more than enough, I mean MORE than enough.

Let’s look at just one Anglophone hospital, who’s story serves to explain the reality in all our anglophone hospitals.
The Jewish General Hospital was built back in the thirties to assure Jewish doctors and patients fair access to the health system. Through the generosity of the Jewish community, the hospital has grown into a monster and continues to expand every year. Recently the spanking new Segal Cancer Centre was added and today the radiation-oncology department is reinventing itself down in the basement. The front entrance to the hospital is presently undergoing a massive and expensive renovation. When all these projects are completed, the Jewish community will build more.
Good for them, good for everyone.
The hospital of course, serves more than the Jewish community, everyone regardless of colour, faith or language is welcomed. In fact, it is an imperative that the hospital serve more than the Jewish community,(not only because it is obliged to by law), but because it is far, far too big for the Jewish community itself, who ironically lost 30% of their number over the last 40 years.
In fact, the hospital is so big, it needs to reach out past the anglophone community and past the allophone communities, into the Francophone community to fill it's beds and that doesn't make sense.
The hospital runs bilingually of course, but let's be realistic, the common language is English. Patient care is primarily offered in English and records are kept in English as well. Of course the hospital offers services in French, but let's call a spade, a spade.
Treating anglophone (and even allophone) patients in an English hospital makes sense.
Treating Francophone patients in an English institution does not.

The same truth goes for every other English hospital on the island.

TOO MUCH CAPACITY!!!!

There, I've said. It feels good to get the unpleasant truth out.

It's quite simple. If we really wish to preserve these institutions as English, we need to pull back, not expand.

So how should we go forward?
Well, we need a plan that not only makes sense for our anglophone community but for the Francophone community as well and we need only one plan, not two.
We need a plan that allows English hospitals to evolve, modernize and thrive, but a plan that realistically tailors the size of the institutions to the size of the community. We need to work hand in hand with Francophone neighbors to realize a socially acceptable compromise.

So what should we do?
Here's my two cents. Now hold your breath.

• The English super hospital should be scrapped.
• The Royal Victoria hospital should be converted to a long-term care facility, for both English and French patients. The hospital can be easily recycled and it's new role will serve to free up hospital beds, citywide. By dedicating itself to just long-term care it can regain it’s status as a premiere institution and we can preserve an important part of our collective heritage.
• The Montreal General Hospital should become the anglophone super-hospital. Already slated for expansion it can take over some of the load from the Royal Victoria. Expanding and modernizing it will cost a fraction of what a new super-hospital would.
• Ultimately, the Children's hospital should be slimmed down and absorbed by the General, or better still, attached to the Jewish General Hospital,(given the Jewish community’s generosity and penchant for putting up buildings), enabling the institution to survive by sharing expensive diagnostic equipment and infrastructure.
  

Of course all this will mean less capacity, but that is probably a good thing. The new French super-hospital can recover the Francophone patients now served by English hospitals and the English institutions can return to a familiar role of serving it's own community.
Where should the French super-hospital be built?
On the Glen yards property, that's where. McGill management chose very well when they secured this jewel of a property.
It's wonderfully located with direct metro and bus access. It can become a fantastic campus for the Université de Montréal which is not that far away. The Shriner's Hospital which operates independently can share the property.
Within this scenario, the new French super-hospital (CHUM) makes more sense.

Instead of blowing two or three billion dollars on an unneeded English super-hospital, perhaps the government can commit to modernizing those English hospitals that remain, so that we can concentrate on quality care and not quantity.

I know many of you who are reading this are shaking your head in disbelief and perhaps my plan is not workable.
But the one thing that I am certain of, is that we need a new plan, so let’s get talking.

Montreal Skaters Out of Luck.

Saturday, I was watching the 6PM newscast on CFCF (Channel 12) in Montreal when this story caught my eye. It seems that the Ahunstic arena has been closed due to mechanical problems. The story goes on to tell of a similar situation at the L'Acadie arena.

Check out the sign (at the very end of the video) pasted on the front door of the L'Acadie facility advising users where they can use an alternate facility?

Yup.... the Ahuntsic Arena

Henri-Paul Rousseau's Shameful Departure from the Caisse de Depot

The opposition has been hammering Premier Charest over the massive loss at the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) and there's no doubt that the government bears responsibility for letting CDPQ mangers run amok.
The real culprit however, is the ex-president and CEO, Henri-Paul Rousseau.

Despite being the chief architect of the CDPQ’s failure, Mr. Rousseau has shamefully tried to distance himself from the fiasco by abandoning ship last year.

A little history...
The CDPQ was created in 1965 as a vehicle to invest Quebecker's pension money. The money deducted from workers is sent to the CDPQ where it is invested, much as as an RRSP.

Between taxpayer contributions and the investment income earned, the CDPQ grew to become very powerful, controlling over $155 billion dollars (0r about $25,000 for each Quebecker) at it's peak.

Henri-Paul Rousseau came to the CDPQ in 2002 to clean up the mess created by his predecessor, Jean-Claude Scraire. (in retrospect, the mess wasn't so bad.) The CDPQ had made a variety of ridiculous and un-focused moves that included amongst other things, investments in Quebec based clothing store chains and fashion houses.
By all accounts, Mr. Rousseau did a good job in re-orienting the CDPQ towards a more traditional investment strategy.
But then Mr. Rousseau and the CDPQ grew cocky and it is he, who is ultimately responsible for the two decisions that changed the future of the CDPQ and set it on it's course towards disaster.

The first decision was to eliminate the policy of investing in Quebec companies as a priority. The new CDPQ goal was to seek the highest investment returns possible, wherever they were found. It abandoned the practice of using pension money as an instrument of nation-building. When the CDPQ did invest in Quebec companies, it used the same criteria as when it invested in Canadian or foreign companies. Subsequently, the CDPQ's investment in Quebec itself, fell to just 16% of its assets and most of these investments were in the form of risk-free government or quasi-government bonds.

The second decision was the one that really proved calamitous. The CDPQ decided to pursue higher yields by placing money in riskier investments. For a couple of years, it worked out well for M. Rousseau and the CDPQ's earnings were impressive.
However, as they say, 'If you live by the sword, you're going to die by the sword' and the risky investments that made the CDPQ such good returns in the past, turned toxic in 2007 and led to utter disaster in 2008. The CDPQ reported a $39 billion loss which represented a 25% drop in value of the whole fund.

It should be noted that all Canadian pension funds have been clobbered in the current word-wide economic meltdown, but none like the CDPQ. Aside from taking a bath in the stock market, the CDPQ invested heavily in the disastrous US housing market, buying up billions of dollars of re-bundled mortgage packages that collapsed in value when home owners defaulted en masse.

The idea of investing the 'nest egg' or as they say in French 'bas de laine' in these risky ventures has made the opposition furious and blame is being directed at the government who sheepishly admits to adhering to a hands-off policy in terms of giving direction to the CDPQ.

There is no doubt that the government and Henri-Paul Rousseau hid this disastrous situation from the public for many months. Because the CDPQ is only required to report results once a year, neither the government nor Mr. Rousseau felt it was in their best interest to come clean. However, the results couldn't be hidden forever and would have to be made public by the Spring and so Mr. Charest called the December provincial election in part to avoid having to face a hostile electorite, likely to be angered by the revelation of the losses. Even so, during that electoral campaign, Mario Dumont of the ADQ warned the public of the disaster at the CDPQ, but was roundly ignored.

Back to Henri-Paul Rousseau.
In 2007, when he saw the unfolding disaster (which the public as yet did not know about) he decided to jump ship and he did so quite shamelessly.
Leaving the CDPQ early, without any reason, would have sparked uncomfortable questions and so he accepted a job, either offered or solicited, from his good friend, Power Corporation's Paul Desmarais, one of Quebec's wealthiest and most powerful tycoons. By the way, CDPQ holds investments in Power Corporation and other Desmarais companies to the tune of over $500 million.

At any rate, it is fair to ask Mr. Rousseau if he told Mr. Desmarais about the impending disaster at the CDPQ before he accepted the job. If he did, he would have breached confidentiality. If he didn't he would be accepting a job under false pretenses. Hmm...

Mr. Rousseau was so determined to distance himself from the CDPQ that he quit his job last May, fully eight months before his job at Power Corporation was scheduled to begin, in January of the this year!

The public and the press was so oblivious to the reality over at the CDPQ at the time of his departure that the fawning media praised Mr. Rousseau for his fine work.
"His shoes will be hard to fill" opined Isabelle Hudon of the Montreal Board of Trade.

To top off the arrogance, Mr. Rousseau had the audacity to accept a golden parachute payment ($350,000) from the CDPQ despite the fact that he was leaving of his own choosing and at a time when the CDPQ desperately needed an experienced and steadying hand.

The departure was so unexpected that CDPQ was caught totally unprepared. The temporary succesor Richard Guay was so stressed by the situation he was forced to take sick leave and wasn't replaced for several months. The CDPQ spent the second half of last year flailing about, without any meaningful leadership, all the while desperately holding onto it's secret. Mr. Rousseau's permanent replacement, Robert Tessier was finally named last week, nine months after his departure.

Mr. Rousseau promised that this week, he would shed some light on the affair.
Don't expect much, he is a wonderful speaker, confident, articulate and quick on his feet. The last time I saw him report on the CDPQ, he was condescending, sneering and arrogant, telling the audience that the CDPQ was under good management and run by professionals who knew what they were doing.(So bugger off, with your moronic questions!)

I don't know if it is a case of hubris or self-delusion, but I predict that he will take little responsibility for the fiasco. He will say many things, but nothing much.
Ultimately he will blame forces beyond his control or perhaps the infamous "Black Swan."

I hope someone in the media asks Mr. Rousseau to comment on his shameful and selfish exit.

Henri-Paul Rousseau led an impresive cast of fools over at the CDPQ where senior management suffer from a disastrous case of group-think, caused by the inbred nature of the organization. It is one happy little investment club where everyone is friends and outside oversight in eshewed.

McGill Français

It's hard to believe that this March 28, will be exactly 40 years since the infamous 'McGill Français' demonstration. Most of you weren't even born back then, when between 10,000 and 15,000 demonstrators marched to the school to demand that the institution convert to become a French language institution (really).
The marchers were met at the school gates by hundreds of police and security guards, but the demonstration was nonviolent and broke up peaceably.

Ten years ago, on the 30th anniversary, the McGill News Alumni Quarterly wrote an interesting retrospective concerning the event.
You can read the article HERE.

Forty years later you would think that things would have evolved, but as they say in French-
'Plus ca change, plus ca reste la meme chose.'

For radical nationalists, McGill continues to be a thorn in the side. What seems to gall them the most is McGill's success and it's worldwide reputation, which they believe comes at the expense of the Univeristé de Montréal.
For nationalists, McGill's very existence is a humiliation, a constant reminder that Montreal is home to one of the finest English universities in the world and that there is no French institution in Quebec that comes remotely close it, on any level.
McGill is also uniformly reviled in the French press and nary a week goes by without a 'done me wrong' story about McGill or the MUHC, it's affiliated hospitals.
Last September the dedication of the new $73 million "Life Sciences Complex" was the subject of a particularly nasty rant by the Mouvement Montreal Francais which complained that the Federal and provincial governments shouldn't have helped fund the project. They complained that the money should have gone to a French institution and that the donation to McGill insured that the biotech industry remains an anglo domain.

My favorite negative story about McGill is the one told by Jean-Philippe Pineault of Le Journal de Montréal where in an article he describes a program whereby students from France are subsidized to come to Quebec to study in our universities. The idea of this exchange is forge strong links between the two Francophone nations. The only problem is that some six hundred of these students use the subsidy to study at McGill and in English! Quelle horreur!
"C'est une perversion..." according to Jean Dorion, president of the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste.

Amusing as that may be, there is a real and emerging threat to the future McGill superhospital. Radical nationalist organizations are forming into a coalition and are gearing up for a fight. Buoyed by their success in the cancellation of the Plains of Abraham battle re-enactment, they have firmly set their eyes on getting the project cancelled. They already have started a website Unseulmégachu.org and a petition.
Given the new economic reality and the mood in Quebec in light of the massive losses at the Caisse de dépôt, I'm not sure that a concerted effort will not be successful.

Watch Out!

Campaign fizzles

The l'Office Québécois de la Langue Française has launched a $400,000 campaign consisting of poster that says 'ICI on commerce en francais' ('HERE, we shop in French.')
The plan is to get stores to post the sign in their front windows as a sign of the business' commitment to serve customers in French.

If you haven't seen any of these signs you're not alone. The radical Mouvement Montréal français MMF also hasn't seen many signs and complains to the OQLF in a moronic exchange of letters .

Georges Le Gal of the MMF writes; (my translation)

"...I must inform you that several board members regularly visit downtown stores and rarely or almost never see the posters 'ICI on commerce en Francais!' "

Duh!

Do they really think stores want to alienate customers by taking sides in a political issue?

Anyways, it's a helluva way to spend 400k!