The Editor,
Re: “Union & FHA clash over filming at ERH” (The Tri-City News, Feb. 8).
The Fraser Health Authority argues that 1) patient care has not been compromised by losing 20 beds and a large rehab room to a movie company and 2) the 20 beds have not been needed for over a year. In Trump-speak, those are “alternative facts.”
I was in one of the “unneeded” beds up to Aug. 6, 2016 and I had my rehab in the room that is now leased.
It is obvious that hospital beds are needed and that rehab is being compromised. The therapists are wonderful and should not have to work in such conditions.
The day after the movie company took over the wing, the therapy was moved. And that is a fact, not an alternative fact, as spun by FHA.
Statistics Canada reports that Canada’s senior population now outnumbers young people (those 15 or less) and that the number of seniors is expected to increase at a rate four times that of the population at large. As well, there are people in pain and suffering waiting for surgery and constant line ups in emergency spilling out of the inadequate space.
There has been too little funding from the Federal and the provincial governments for a decade or more. FHA should not put a spin on what everyone knows is a national disgrace.
Yvonne Harris, Port Moody
