After being refused access to the Centre d’hébergement Yvon-Brunet in June, Guillaume Cliche-Rivard, the Québec solidaire (QS) MNA for Saint-Henri-Sainte-Anne, will finally be able to visit the CHSLD in his riding on Wednesday.
The MNA will take a two-hour tour of the facility. “We’ll be able to talk to the residents, see the whole site – including the interior, exterior, basement and rooms under renovation – and then we’ll be able to talk to the team of workers,” he says in an interview with The Canadian Press. Conditions he considers acceptable.
Last June, Guillaume Cliche-Rivard told The Canadian Press that he wanted to visit the Centre d’hébergement Yvon-Brunet after a citizen expressed her concerns about the dilapidated state of the facility.
At the time, the CIUSSS du Centre-Sud-de-l’Île-de-Montréal – which oversees the Centre d’hébergement Yvon-Brunet – indicated that it had refused the MNA access to the CHSLD, citing reasons of privacy, confidentiality and political neutrality.
On July 3 – two weeks after the publication of an initial article on the subject – the QS MNA met with CIUSSS CEO Vincent Lehouillier. “I was expecting to make some kind of plea (…) In the end, from the outset, I didn’t have to say much, they told us they were ready to offer us a visit,” says Cliche-Rivard, who says he was surprised at how quickly CIUSSS changed its tune.
On the CIUSSS side, they insist that “the situation hasn’t changed”. “From the outset, it was agreed that we would be happy to welcome Mr. Cliche-Rivard to our facilities and answer his questions. We first had to establish the objectives of his request for a visit in an initial meeting with our management, which was done as quickly as possible,” said CIUSSS spokeswoman Marianne Paquette in a written statement sent to The Canadian Press.
“We spoke with Mr. Cliche-Rivard and his team to explain our reality before organizing the visit,” she added.
Last June, in response to allegations of dilapidation at the CHSLD, Ms. Paquette pointed out that the “facilities are subject to visits by Accreditation Canada to evaluate the quality of our care and services” and that the Ministère de la Santé et des Services sociaux (MSSS) “regularly evaluates the quality of the living environment for people housed in nursing homes”.
Although the QS MNA will finally be able to visit the facility as he wished, he believes that all the efforts he and his team made to get there should not have been necessary. “We have to put in a full work week, a good 40 hours of work, to visit a CHSLD in my riding. It just doesn’t make sense!” he says.
“When I make a request (…), it should be granted to me within a reasonable timeframe without us having to put in considerable effort and mobilize the press to get things changed,” adds the MNA for Saint-Henri-Sainte-Anne.
Not the first time
A similar situation occurred a few months ago with Christine Labrie, the QS MNA for Sherbrooke, who was refused access to the Val-du-Lac youth center. At the time, she had tabled a bill to facilitate access to public establishments for elected representatives
The issue had provoked debate in the National Assembly. A few weeks later, she was finally able to visit the youth center with the Minister of Social Services, Lionel Carmant.
The Minister’s press attaché, Lambert Drainville, said at the time, “We agree that MNAs should be able to see the resources in their ridings, especially those of a social nature.”
–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews