Hôpital Maisonneuve-Rosemont has a reputation for delivering good care, but the facilities are old and disgracefully dilapidated.Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press

Earlier this month, Quebec Health Minister Christian Dubé donned a hard hat and brandished a shovel for the groundbreaking ceremony for a new parking garage at the Hôpital Maisonneuve-Rosemont.

A 678-car and 76-bike parking garage hardly seems like a newsworthy announcement, even for a government barely clinging to power. But what this was really about was a long-delayed $5-billion hospital expansion project, and the political rot in the province that keeps health care from improving.

First, some context.

Hôpital Maisonneuve-Rosemont is a sprawling facility in Montreal’s east end, one of the poorest parts of the province. It has a reputation for delivering good care. But the facilities are old and disgracefully dilapidated.

The hospital was created in 1971 with the merger of two existing hospitals: Hôpital Maisonneuve, founded by the Grey Nuns in 1954, and Hôpital Saint-Joseph-de-Rosemont, a tuberculosis sanitorium established by the Sisters of Mercy in 1950. (The history is a reminder that, prior to medicare, most hospital care was provided by religious charities.)

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