‘OPINION

October 12, 1994

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sd eur Wieewty OY Seng Newmpapars and

at 465 Cohumbla Ave. prerena/ novit vii Wane Onodeger Sun
ts politically independent and 2 connes oo Cee wee eee
Canadian C:
Assocation, and 19 8.0, Pree Coe Established
26, 1990.

PUBLISHER MARILYN STRONG

HEADS UP.GUYS
YOUR LINES OUT NEXT.

Forensic audit not good enough

At long last, Premier Harcourt has decided
to hang the “Boys from Nanaimo” out to dry,
albeit not far enough.

For months now, the NDP has been under
siege from bots the opposition and the media
for ping the
toldi ing Society scandal soi the rug. Last

editorial comment

Dying for dollars in
Closer to Home joke

‘uman emotion, family, and the health care of our
elderly has been shamefully reduced to strictly
dollars and cents.

The mentality appears to be “If the budget doesn't bal-
ance, lighten the ele fcr erga ae ecanicaiy on
istry of Health exp
Closer to Home, when in may its agenda <acncy:
money, money—leads the elderly and dying down a dark
and lonely path further away from home?

We all know that health care costs have to be reigned in,

‘that the-moving

dents from Mountain View Lodge might well be their
death thanks to fundi

believed when they entered the facility that it ‘osaa be
their last move, but now they have to face an upsetting
emotional and physical move. And it’s clear facility offi-
cials are also upset about the move. Somehow they’ve
become the Ministry's unwilling henchmen.

Making the heart-wrenching decision to give up your
independence and move into a care facility is devastating
enough. It takes a long time for patients to become accus-
tomed to their new surroundings. They've learned to trust
their caregivers, they look forward to visits from
family They've resi
imevitable. It’s not home, but they know they're going to
die in the comfort of their own rooms. They know what
they can count on.

But thanks to an ill-conceived, and hastily implemented
mandate, these six people, and many others in time to
come, will be forced to spend their final days staring at the
walls and wondering if today is the day their family can
travel to visit them.

If this is the direction health care is going in B.C. you

after

done

knives. The least they could do is kill our system cleanly

and humanely—after all it’s only sporting to do so.
British Columbians are sick to death of hearing the tired

refrain, Closer to Home. But most of all, we're sick to

death of watching our elderly wonder where they will lay

their heads. When will the craziness stop?

ERRORS:
that the publisher shall not be liable for

approval.
date. No contingent orders accepted. Printed in Nelson, B.C...

week, Harcourt finally caved in and ordered a
“forensic audit” of the society's records.

The Nanaimo Commonwealth Holding
Society is that ignoble organization which
pleaded guilty earlier this year

to criminal of having
BEWARE

charges
misappropriated $200,000
Hubert

Beyer

the donation of $1,000 a
month by the Nanaimo Com-
monwealth Holding Society to

andi i found that the
organization had to “refund” $900 of the dona-
tion to the society, leaving an actual donation of
only $100.
The woman who revealed that little scam to
the investigators was Sister Margaret Rowe
Isn't that a kicker? A front ion for the

into the pile of morass is understandable. The
Nanaimo Commonwealth Holding Society isn’t
just any old organization. It has been joined in
common-law marriage to the NDP ever since it
was established several decades ago. Its stated
goal was, in fact, to further the aims of the New
Democratic Party.

But if the premier was hoping that the con-
viction of the societies would be the end of the
scandal, he was mistaken. The demand for a
public inquiry has been unrelenting, because

“The premier knows that from 1988 to
1991, there was no money that I can see, or
very little, that went to the party or to political
campaigns. All that took place pes to 1988
when there was no control by the B. .C. Gaming
Commission,” said. “It will be very
safe to cover only that period of time. The
scandal really occurred prior to that.”

Harcourt's decision to order a forensic audit
into the society’s books came shortly before 75
boxes of evidence, gathered by the RCMP dur-

the court case and sub
conviction of the societies had
addressed only their misap-
propriation of charity money.

The big question remained
unanswered: did any of the
money the societies skimmed
off charitable bingos find its
way into he pockets of NDP
candidates, particularly those

who ran in Nanaimo?

The Liberal opposition maintained, and right-
fully so, that only a public inquiry could answer
that crucial question. Harcourt, acutely uncom-
fortable by now, met them half-way by ordering a
forensic audit, which is the most detailed and far-

hing auditing p dure possible.

party that claims a monopoly on honesty and
integrity, defrauding a nun.

Ace Henderson, the special prosecutor who
had charged the society and two associated
groups, told the court at the time that no foren-
sic audit was conducted during the police
investigation because of the cost involved in
such an audit, and because the societies had
such strange bookkeeping methods that it
might be impossible to trace the money.

The premier’s reluctance to dig any deeper

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Far from being satisfied by the premier's
announcement, the opposition continues to
clamor for a public inquiry. So do I, because
Harcourt has limited the audit to the years
between 1988 and 1991

The “good stuff,”’the opposition says, is to
be found before 1988. Jacques Carpentier,

id of the Nanai ( & y Bingo
Association, Says the same thing. He is the man
who' originally blew the whistle on the
Nanaimo Commonwealth Holding Society.

MD coal EV

ing its ‘igation, were to be d to the
society.

Society director and accountant Dave
Stupich, a former NDP MP and MLA, had
already stated that he would likely destroy
some of the documents if and when he gets
them back. Had he succeeded, he would have
effectively erased any trail of who did what
with the money the society stole from charities.

But while the forensic audit ordered by the
premier saved the evidence from destruction, it
falls short of laying the issue to rest. Only a
full-scale public inquiry can do that.

Everything the premier has done so far is
damage control. Every step of the way, he had
to be beaten into taking the next one. Does he
really believe the forensic audit will silence the
demand for an inquiry?

It’s time the admits that the NDP is
not exempt from human folly. It’s time he
stands up and takes his lumps, just like the
Socreds had to.

We already know that a so-called charitable
organization to which the NDP was intimately
linked did crooked things to obtain money. Now
let's find out whether any of that money ended up
helping elect NDP candidates. Order the inquiry
now, Premier. You'll have to sooner or later.

Wednesday, October 12, 1994

The Castlegar Sun

Page 7A

Letters to the Editor

Castlegar’s pioneers deserve much better

Dear Editor:
It is with c

remain for the more costly

that I note the worried c :

of Linda Moorlag, direct
Resident Care for Mountain
Lodge - in Karen Kerkhoff's arti.
cle “No Home is Closer to
Home?” of September 28, 1994.

The people of Castlegar must
strongly protest this failure to
uphold the essential “Closer to
Home” policy - for which Moun-
tain View Lodge was designed.

Surely this humanitarian
approach is the key to all success-
ful geriatric care. We must not
accept anything less for our
beloved seniors.

And what about the under-
staffing which Ms. Moorlag says
is “dangerous to both the patient
and the caregiver” - due to the
exhaustion of her staff? What an
irony that the declared purpose of
our multi-level facility was to
avoid this very thing - the dread-
ed relocation of patients as their
level of care increases.

Why is our Continuing Care
Division of the Ministry of
Health refusing to pay the differ-
ence - as arranged - when patients

Pass the
demeans

Dear Editor:

Bureaucratic abuse of seniors.
who have no ability to fend for
themselves is hastening the pro-
cess of death and reaping havoc
with families and relatives.

I have never been, nor do I
ever intend to become the kind
of individual that jumps on
every band wagon and carries a
banner for every crusading
cause that comes along.

But I openly confess to 4 high
level of concern over what
could be described as abusive
treatment of some of our senior
citizens in our community . My
role as a counselor, as a member
of the executive of our local
hospice society and as a pastor
of a local church keeps me in
constant contact with those who
are struggling with process of
aging and the journey towards
death.

But it’s my position as a
friend of one of our seniors
caught in the middle of poten-
tially lethal policy that has moti-
vated the writing of this letter.

Let me preface everything
that I will say from this point on
by stating that this is not an
attack on any of our local health
professionals or our local health
facility administrators, many of
whom are caught as unwilling
players in a deadly game of
“pass the patient”.

My concer is the inflexible
and unbending administrative
policies and budget constraints
combined with governmental
regulations and bureaucratic
procedures that seem more con-
cerned with dotting the Is and
crossing the Ts than they are for

9:00 am to 6:00 pm

399-4131

Extended Care?

For the sake of a few dollars
difference are we going to take
away what little comfort these
helpless people have?

Are we going to betray them
for a paltry “forty pieces of sil-
ver” at the very time they need us
most - as a man named Judas did?
I should hope not!

T am well aware that the Min-
istry of Health requires an ever-
increasing part of our provincial
budget to do its job. But surely
we are not going to short-change
these helpless souls who depend
so much on frequent visits from
their loved ones in the very last
days of their lives. According to
the recent quarterly report, our
provincial finances are in fairly
good shape.

Everyone knows that there are
two times in the spectrum of life
when we humans are totally help-
less - in infancy and in old age.
No person on earth - whether tin-
ker, tailor, king, queen or Minister
of Health - can escape this reality
- unless he or she has the dubious
advantage of an early death from

patient
life itself

the welfare of the patients.

We are favoured in this com-
munity to have one of the nine
of 10 multi-level care facilities
in our province. It is my under-
standing ( from verbal com-
ments» made by hospital
administration) that the original
hope, perhaps the original pro-
posal, was that this multi-level
of care within the same facility
would allow patients to move
form one level of care to anoth-
er as their condition deteriorated

‘See SENIORS =~ ~6A_

some cause other than old age.

Those who would pack up
these frail beings - and put them
through the insurmountable trau-
ma of adjusting to a strange facil-
ity in a different town - had better
be prepared to accept similar
treatment when their own time of
reckoning comes along - far
sooner than they think.

Mount St. Francis must be a
wonderful place for those most
senior of citizens of the Nelson
area, but surely we must let our
own beloved folks live out the
last days of their lives among
friendly faces in the communities
where they belong.

Which other citizens of Castle-
gar have done so much for their
community? Have these aging
mothers not paid their taxes,
raised their kids and cooked
enough meals to feed every man,
woman and child in Castlegar?

How often have they extended
a helping hand to less fortunate
people struggling on the road of
life? And what about the scores
of children they’ve held on their
knees - and changed their diapers

and dried their tears? And have
those aging fathers not built their
houses and worked their land and
risked their lives for us in times
of war? Have these time-hon-
oured citizens not followed the
Ten Commandments and lived by
the Golden Rule? Indeed they are
more honourable and meek and
uncomplaining than many of us
younger people are. What more
do we expect of them?

As a member of a large pioneer
family of Castlegar, I've seen
quite a few beloved seniors off on
the late bus to Heaven.

Indeed I've been surprised on
Plenty of occasions at the
courage, honour and meekness
with which these cherished elders
made their exit from the stage of
life. Let's not expect them to do
their encore among strange faces
in some city that is foreign to
their cherished memories.

I appreciate that our local
authorities are trying hard to
make their budgets go around.
But they had better re-assess their
priorities if they intend to make
up their shortfalls by imposing

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ip on our

hereon elders.
In conclusion, I strongly urge
the Honourable Paul Ramsey,
Minister of Health, to take the

ry action to that this
vital Closer to Home policy is car-
tied on the way it was intended.

ELF. Killough

———

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