New hospital should not house foundation
Dear editor,
In a recent advertisement soliciting donations, the Comox Valley Healthcare Foundation (formerly the St. Joseph’s Hospital Foundation) stated rather inconspicuously that the foundation would be establishing an office in the new Comox Valley Hospital scheduled to open in the fall of 2017.
Such an action must reasonably be viewed as a blatant intrusion on a secular facility by this foundation and appears to show bias by the Vancouver Island Health Authority and the new Comox Valley Hospital administration.
Moreover, allocating hospital space to a donation-seeking foundation reveals a planning flaw since this office space could have been better utilized by providing more acute care beds thus better serving the community at large. Both issues surely deserve intervention by the Ministry of Health.
The philosophy of the soon-to-be defunct St. Joseph’s Hospital is well known in the Comox Valley with its views clearly at variance with a patient’s right to choose their own medical intervention pursuant to the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Carter v. Canada and now enshrined into law.
With 84 per cent of Canadians cheering this legislation, the intrusive action of this foundation into the Comox Valley Hospital must surely be regarded as nothing short of an affront to the memory of Sue Rodriguez, Kay Carter and all patients and their loved ones who endured intolerable suffering in the past by denial of a fundamental right to choose their own medical intervention.
To cite the words of a retired Victoria area urologist on this matter, “these people should mind their own religious business.”
Mike Benson
Courtenay
