This is the story of two public CHSLDs in eastern Montreal. One is called Pierre-Joseph-Triest and the other, Jean-Hubert-Biermans. Even in the kitchens described by exterminators as unsanitary, they are infested with vermin – cockroaches, flies, ants, rats, etc.
• Read also: Cockroaches, mice, rats and even a squirrel at the CHSLD
Supporting photos, our Investigation Office published all the details on Monday. This is how we treat the 467 “old people” who, very fragile and poorly off, live there. Because it is not “beds” that we find there, but humans.
Vermin, as we know, is a vector of diseases and parasites. Imagine the impact on people suffering a serious loss of autonomy.
Eh yes. Sick “old” people.
The very people that elected officials and senior managers of CIUSSS called “our” elders and “our” wise men while at the start of the pandemic, more than 5,000 men and women residing in public or private CHSLDs died there alone in conditions unworthy of an advanced society.
Old”. We love them, but especially when they are in good shape or rich enough to pay for mass home help privately. We love them less when we park them for days in “our” emergency rooms or when they are all crooked and poor.
And then, in the east of Montreal, between the condos, there are still plenty of poor people. Have you also heard of HLMs infested with bedbugs? However, letting fragile people live with vermin, if this is not institutional mistreatment, we wonder what it is.
Pontius Pilate
Unsurprisingly, according to the report from the Bureau of Investigation, the authorities of the CIUSSS de l’Est-de-l’Île-de-Montréal, responsible like all the other CIUSSS for ALL health and social services establishments on its immense territory, defend themselves against it.
Instead of apologizing and moving quickly and efficiently, the CIUSSS is passing the buck to the exterminators. Pontius Pilate syndrome afflicts all bureaucracies.
These hundreds of “old” and “old” people nevertheless contributed to building Quebec. They worked hard and paid their dues to the state. The same State which, in return, owes them decent, respectful and humane care and a “living environment”.
How can public managers let such vulnerable people live in such conditions? How do they sleep at night?
Where is their accountability? And what does the ministry to which they report say about it, at least until the arrival of the Santé Québec agency and its top guns?
In the two CHSLDs, according to multiple reports obtained by the Bureau of Investigation, the infestation problems have been going on for a long time. The latest notes reporting a “significant” presence of rats, cockroaches “captured in the men’s locker room” and rats “sporadically active” date from December 2023.
There are of course decent, respectful and humane CHSLDs. Just like there are good managers. However, no reason justifies the obvious failure of some to be so.
Ageism
Ageism, let’s talk about it then. Indifference towards the poor, too. Because these two problems are political and social in nature. We all carry a piece of it buried deep in our pockets. However, managers are paid by public funds to take care of it.
And U.S? In the midst of a pandemic, while hordes of ordinary people cried out for oppression by demonstrating against wearing masks and vaccines, who took to the streets to denounce the scandalous massacre in Quebec’s CHSLDs? Cricket noises…
So, even behind the scenes of the CIUSSS and governments, to paraphrase Minister Bernard Drainville’s formula on GHGs: let go of us with “our” elders and “our” wise people.
Instead of infantilizing them with “our” this and “our” that, treat them with all the respect they deserve. And that includes the poorest.
Because all these “beds” that we count mechanically like disembodied statistics are in fact occupied by humans.
No one in good health knows whether or not they will end up being part of it. Even less if he will be neglected in turn. Not even today’s managers.