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A two-word change to the lyrics of O Canada may be what Mauril Bélanger is remembered for, but 20 years ago the longtime Liberal MP was at the heart of a battle that may have altered the future of Canada.
Bélanger, who is to buried Saturday after his death Aug. 15 of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, was a newly elected MP when the Ontario Conservative government of Mike Harris announced they were closing Ottawa’s French-language Montfort Hospital. In the five-year legal battle that followed — one keenly watched by Quebec separatists — Bélanger used his backroom smarts, passion and political connections to play a key role in not just saving the hospital, but protecting minority rights throughout Canada.
“It was a huge victory. A monumental victory,” said Gérald Savoie, Montfort’s now-retired president. “The Montfort principles that flow from the judgment are used in every court across the country almost every day.
“I won’t say the anthem change isn’t Mauril’s legacy — it was important enough to him that he would take the last few days of his life to promote that change — but from a health care vantage point, and for minority rights, the Montfort decision is a huge accomplishment.”
In 1997, the Harris Conservatives were trying to cut spending and streamline health care. Across the province, hospitals were being merged, shuttered or forced to cut services. When the Ontario Health Services Restructuring Commission came to Ottawa with its recommendations, Montfort supporters were confident that the hospital, the only French-language hospital in the province, would be safe.
They were dumfounded to learn that Monday morning that the Montfort was on the list of three Ottawa hospitals to close. (Documents later showed political meddling: As recently as the Friday before, the commission had intended for the Montfort stay open.)
Even as the hospital’s green-and-white Franco-Ontarien flag was lowered to half-staff, planning to save the Montfort was underway.
“Mauril was right there at the very beginning,” Savoie said. “He said, ‘We have to fight this. We have to keep the hospital open’.”
A new group was formed — SOS Montfort — and Bélanger recommended its leader be Gisèle Lalonde, the fiery ex-mayor of Vanier.
”We’re not dead, we’re awakening,” Lalonde told a rally of supporters that week. “We invite all our fellow citizens, all Canadians, to express the same outrage they would in a similar situation affecting anglophones in Quebec.”
The hospital had two MPs on its board — Jean-Luc Pépin and Jean-Jacques Blais — who worked with Bélanger in the “war room” prime minister Jean Chrétien set up to handle the file. It was less than two years after the razor-thin federal victory in the 1995 Quebec Referendum and Chrétien knew Quebec separatists were watching closely. At the time, the only written guarantees of language rights in the Constitution was the right to attend school in either English or French.
“The federal government knew that if the province had won, if we only had the right to schooling … Quebec would have likely left Canada,” Savoie said. “It would have promoted exactly what the PQ government was saying a the time — that they had no rights in Canada.”
The Montfort team — among them Bélanger, Savoie, Lalonde, Le Droit journalist Michel Gratton and Madeleine Meilleur, a former Montfort nurse who at the time was on city council — went to work galvanizing public opinion and formulating a legal strategy to fight the closure. They filled the Civic Centre with 10,000 cheering supporters in one public rally.
“Mauril was a big supporter,” said Meilleur, who would go on to become Ontario’s attorney general. “We always worked in sync. We were a perfect match. We were an example of how all levels of government should work together for the betterment of the community and the citizens we serve.”
That June, Bélanger won re-election in Ottawa-Vanier, the second of his eight consecutive election victories. He took 62 per cent of the vote, nearly five times more than his closest rival.
But it was difficult for the federal government to have influence in the provincial responsibility of health care. Bélanger’s masterstroke was to set up a national umbrella organization for French-language medical training — Société Santé en français — through which federal money could flow — in the Montfort’s case, via the University of Ottawa medical school.
“The academic side of things — the teaching things — that was an opening,” Savoie said. “That gave us strength in many ways. We are the only French teaching hospital west of Quebec. This turned it into a national issue.
“It fit well with the passion and what Mauril was all about. It was the francophone language, the minorities. He comes from the Franco-Ontarien community. He was born in a minority. He understood that.”
Another key victory was the Montfort winning the contract to provide hospital care to the military, which was closing down the National Defence Medical Centre on Smyth Road. The arrangement meant military doctors could practise in a full-service hospital, while the Montfort staff could assist the military with its health care needs.
“I think he (Bélanger) had a lot to do with that,” said Lalonde, now 83. “It was very important to us. It gave us 20 years with the army. I think it was the best thing he did for us which makes us, today, remember him more than ever.”
Eventually, the province compromised — a bit. The Montfort would stay open, but only with limited services.
“An awful lot of the francophone leadership thought that Montfort had a solution,” Savoie said. “In my opinion it was not a solution. It was just a way of closing us down indirectly.
“The argument we made was teaching. If you make the comparison to a mechanic, it’s like having a car where you can change the tires and wash it and polish it, but you could never actually open the hood and look at the motor.”
The court battle continued. Savoie said the Montfort team hired historians to study every speech, every document written by the Fathers of Confederation for promises made to minorities. The sleuthing turned up the evidence they needed to argue that closing the hospital violated the Constitution.
“What it demonstrated is that there were obligations made at that time around the rights of the francophone minority in Ontario,” Savoie said.
In December 1999, a panel of the Ontario Superior Court finally ruled the Montfort must stay open. Bélanger lauded it as “a nation-building decision.”
In December 2001, the Court of Appeal upheld the decision, ruling that Franco-Ontariens have “unwritten constitutional rights” as a minority. In February 2002, nearly five years after the fight to save the Montfort began, then-Ontario health minister Tony Clement stood in the Montfort lobby and told an ecstatic crowd that the government had “turned the page” on its plans to close the hospital.
Savoie says the Montfort court decision had national significance, taking fuel from the Quebec separatist fire and protecting the rights of francophones in English Canada and anglophones in Quebec.
“That’s part of the court decision and it’s there for everyone,” he said. “What it means is that Franco-Ontariens have a constitutional protection and Ontario has a constitutional obligation and duty to not only maintain the francophone vitality, but to enhance it as well. That is huge.”
“We’re losing a great citizen,” said Meilleur. “He had a passion for the Francophonie, not just in Ontario but also in Canada and outside Canada. He was very generous, very humble. There was nothing too big or too small that he wouldn’t work on. It’s difficult for all of us to realize that Mauril is gone.”
bcrawford@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/getBAC
The funeral for Mauril Bélanger will be held Saturday at 10 a.m. at Notre-Dame Cathedral, 385 Sussex Dr. A private reception will follow. He is to be buried at Beechwood National Cemetery. A public celebration of Bélanger’s life will be held at a later date.
查看原文...
Bélanger, who is to buried Saturday after his death Aug. 15 of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, was a newly elected MP when the Ontario Conservative government of Mike Harris announced they were closing Ottawa’s French-language Montfort Hospital. In the five-year legal battle that followed — one keenly watched by Quebec separatists — Bélanger used his backroom smarts, passion and political connections to play a key role in not just saving the hospital, but protecting minority rights throughout Canada.
“It was a huge victory. A monumental victory,” said Gérald Savoie, Montfort’s now-retired president. “The Montfort principles that flow from the judgment are used in every court across the country almost every day.
“I won’t say the anthem change isn’t Mauril’s legacy — it was important enough to him that he would take the last few days of his life to promote that change — but from a health care vantage point, and for minority rights, the Montfort decision is a huge accomplishment.”
In 1997, the Harris Conservatives were trying to cut spending and streamline health care. Across the province, hospitals were being merged, shuttered or forced to cut services. When the Ontario Health Services Restructuring Commission came to Ottawa with its recommendations, Montfort supporters were confident that the hospital, the only French-language hospital in the province, would be safe.
They were dumfounded to learn that Monday morning that the Montfort was on the list of three Ottawa hospitals to close. (Documents later showed political meddling: As recently as the Friday before, the commission had intended for the Montfort stay open.)
Even as the hospital’s green-and-white Franco-Ontarien flag was lowered to half-staff, planning to save the Montfort was underway.
“Mauril was right there at the very beginning,” Savoie said. “He said, ‘We have to fight this. We have to keep the hospital open’.”
A new group was formed — SOS Montfort — and Bélanger recommended its leader be Gisèle Lalonde, the fiery ex-mayor of Vanier.
”We’re not dead, we’re awakening,” Lalonde told a rally of supporters that week. “We invite all our fellow citizens, all Canadians, to express the same outrage they would in a similar situation affecting anglophones in Quebec.”
The hospital had two MPs on its board — Jean-Luc Pépin and Jean-Jacques Blais — who worked with Bélanger in the “war room” prime minister Jean Chrétien set up to handle the file. It was less than two years after the razor-thin federal victory in the 1995 Quebec Referendum and Chrétien knew Quebec separatists were watching closely. At the time, the only written guarantees of language rights in the Constitution was the right to attend school in either English or French.
“The federal government knew that if the province had won, if we only had the right to schooling … Quebec would have likely left Canada,” Savoie said. “It would have promoted exactly what the PQ government was saying a the time — that they had no rights in Canada.”
The Montfort team — among them Bélanger, Savoie, Lalonde, Le Droit journalist Michel Gratton and Madeleine Meilleur, a former Montfort nurse who at the time was on city council — went to work galvanizing public opinion and formulating a legal strategy to fight the closure. They filled the Civic Centre with 10,000 cheering supporters in one public rally.
“Mauril was a big supporter,” said Meilleur, who would go on to become Ontario’s attorney general. “We always worked in sync. We were a perfect match. We were an example of how all levels of government should work together for the betterment of the community and the citizens we serve.”
That June, Bélanger won re-election in Ottawa-Vanier, the second of his eight consecutive election victories. He took 62 per cent of the vote, nearly five times more than his closest rival.
But it was difficult for the federal government to have influence in the provincial responsibility of health care. Bélanger’s masterstroke was to set up a national umbrella organization for French-language medical training — Société Santé en français — through which federal money could flow — in the Montfort’s case, via the University of Ottawa medical school.
“The academic side of things — the teaching things — that was an opening,” Savoie said. “That gave us strength in many ways. We are the only French teaching hospital west of Quebec. This turned it into a national issue.
“It fit well with the passion and what Mauril was all about. It was the francophone language, the minorities. He comes from the Franco-Ontarien community. He was born in a minority. He understood that.”
Another key victory was the Montfort winning the contract to provide hospital care to the military, which was closing down the National Defence Medical Centre on Smyth Road. The arrangement meant military doctors could practise in a full-service hospital, while the Montfort staff could assist the military with its health care needs.
“I think he (Bélanger) had a lot to do with that,” said Lalonde, now 83. “It was very important to us. It gave us 20 years with the army. I think it was the best thing he did for us which makes us, today, remember him more than ever.”
Eventually, the province compromised — a bit. The Montfort would stay open, but only with limited services.
“An awful lot of the francophone leadership thought that Montfort had a solution,” Savoie said. “In my opinion it was not a solution. It was just a way of closing us down indirectly.
“The argument we made was teaching. If you make the comparison to a mechanic, it’s like having a car where you can change the tires and wash it and polish it, but you could never actually open the hood and look at the motor.”
The court battle continued. Savoie said the Montfort team hired historians to study every speech, every document written by the Fathers of Confederation for promises made to minorities. The sleuthing turned up the evidence they needed to argue that closing the hospital violated the Constitution.
“What it demonstrated is that there were obligations made at that time around the rights of the francophone minority in Ontario,” Savoie said.
In December 1999, a panel of the Ontario Superior Court finally ruled the Montfort must stay open. Bélanger lauded it as “a nation-building decision.”
In December 2001, the Court of Appeal upheld the decision, ruling that Franco-Ontariens have “unwritten constitutional rights” as a minority. In February 2002, nearly five years after the fight to save the Montfort began, then-Ontario health minister Tony Clement stood in the Montfort lobby and told an ecstatic crowd that the government had “turned the page” on its plans to close the hospital.
Savoie says the Montfort court decision had national significance, taking fuel from the Quebec separatist fire and protecting the rights of francophones in English Canada and anglophones in Quebec.
“That’s part of the court decision and it’s there for everyone,” he said. “What it means is that Franco-Ontariens have a constitutional protection and Ontario has a constitutional obligation and duty to not only maintain the francophone vitality, but to enhance it as well. That is huge.”
“We’re losing a great citizen,” said Meilleur. “He had a passion for the Francophonie, not just in Ontario but also in Canada and outside Canada. He was very generous, very humble. There was nothing too big or too small that he wouldn’t work on. It’s difficult for all of us to realize that Mauril is gone.”
bcrawford@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/getBAC
The funeral for Mauril Bélanger will be held Saturday at 10 a.m. at Notre-Dame Cathedral, 385 Sussex Dr. A private reception will follow. He is to be buried at Beechwood National Cemetery. A public celebration of Bélanger’s life will be held at a later date.
查看原文...
