Matthew McCully

Champlain campus director placed on temporary paid leave

Administration and campus operations under investigation by ministry of higher education

By Matthew McCully

Local Journalism Initiative

During a special meeting of the Champlain Regional College board of governors on Wednesday evening, a resolution was passed placing Nancy Beattie, campus director for Champlain College Lennoxville on temporary paid leave.

The resolution follows a motion of no-confidence filed by the Syndicat de l’Enseignement du Collège Champlain Lennoxville (SECCL), Champlain’s teachers’ union, on Dec. 18 to the board of governors.

Beattie will remain on leave, “until the conclusions of the different investigations are brought to the board of governors,” the resolution read.

Beattie is currently facing allegations of psychological harassment before the Tribunal Administrative du Travail.

The college is also under a Ministère de l’Enseignement Supérieur Investigation into, “Among other things, the administration, operations, and organizational climate of the Lennoxville Constituent College,” the resolution explained.

Wednesday’s meeting was held online and lasted over two hours with the bulk of the meeting involving an in-camera session exclusive to external members of the board.

Before addressing the single-item agenda, board chair Matthew Mazur read the letter and no-confidence motion submitted by the SECCL to the board of governors in December.

“Our aim with this communication is to highlight the urgent need for immediate action from the Board regarding critical issues affecting Champlain College Lennoxville,” the SECCL letter stated, calling it worrisome that the board, made aware of the SECCL’s concerns at an Oct. 27, 2023 meeting, chose not to take action until the conclusion of the ministerial inquiry and the Tribunal Administratif du Travail case. “This inaction is unacceptable to the SECCL membership,” the letter stated.

The SECCL correspondence went on to say its no-confidence motion stemmed from “a culmination of repeated unsuccessful attempts to internally address, through various communication channels and meetings, ongoing leadership failures, systemic mismanagement, and a profound lack of action in confronting critical issues that have plagued our institution for several years.”

Attempts to resolve those issues, according to the SECCL letter, “were met with unreasonable delays and or inadequate responses, contributing to the prevailing sense of mistrust and discontent among the faculty.”

The letter then pointed to recent media scrutiny surrounding Beattie’s work tribunal case saying, “The serious allegations raised against her have not only cast a shadow over the institution but also unearthed glaring deficiencies in governance.” The SECCL also wondered why Beattie wasn’t placed on investigative suspension pending the labour tribunal decision, a move they believed, “Would have mitigated workplace tensions, helped to maintain a healthy environment, and would have protected the high standards and reputation of the College.”

The letter went on imploring the board of governors to consider the gravity of the situation and take action in the briefest delays.

The letter was followed by the SECCL’s no-confidence motion, which referred to “failures in leadership, mismanagement, and lack of action in addressing the critical issues facing Champlain College -Lennoxville have been ongoing for many years,” adding that turnover of the management team indicated a systemic problem in the working climate and eroded trust. The motion also stated that the SECCL had communicated the lack of confidence of its members towards management on Dec. 15, 2022, that Beattie had provided insufficient strategic leadership and guidance regarding pedagogical matters, and that communication issues and the lack of governance transparency were evident.

The motion also pointed to an increasing financial deficit at the college, as well as a failure to update the harassment policy.

“The issues detailed above have been met with lack of adequate response by the College so far,

be it resolved that the above factors have caused an irreparable breach of trust leading to the SECCL to express a vote of no confidence in the Director of Constituent College, DCC, be it further resolved that the SECCL mandates the Executive to convey this vote of no confidence in the DCC to the appropriate stakeholders,” concluded the motion.

After the letter and motion were read, the external members of the board of governors broke off for an in-camera session.

Beattie was brought in at the beginning of the session and permitted to speak, and then returned to join the remaining board members and meeting guests in the main room as the external board members deliberated for roughly two hours.

When they returned, board chair Mazur read the following resolution:

“Whereas numerous articles have been published impacting the image of the college, and whereas the chair of the Board of Governors received on Dec. 18, 2023, a motion of non-confidence in the Director of Constituent College Lennoxville from the Saint-Isaac de l’Enseignement du Collège Champlain-Lennoxville, and whereas a number of allegations of psychological harassment are currently before the Tribunal Administrative du Travail, and whereas the college is presently under a Ministère de l’Enseignement Supérieur Investigation into, among other things, the administration, operations, and organizational climate of the Lennoxville Constituent College, and whereas it is the responsibility of the Board of Governors to ensure that Champlain Regional College and its constituent colleges fulfill their obligations to maintain a safe and healthy workplace for all, and whereas it is the responsibility of the Board of Governors to ensure the well-being of the community, the integrity, and the reputation of Champlain Regional College and its constituent colleges, be it therefore resolved that the Board of Governors will provide a temporary paid leave of absence effective immediately for the Director of Constituent College Lennoxville until the conclusions of the different investigations are brought to the board of governors, and be it therefore further resolved that the Director General will work with the Director of Constituent College Lennoxville to ensure a smooth transition during this time period.”

Champlain campus director placed on temporary paid leave Read More »

Health ministry pleas a tough pill to swallow

By Matthew McCully

Local Journalism Initiative

ER overcrowding isn’t new. Flu season isn’t new. Labour shortages aren’t new. And unfortunately, neither are the solutions to address these problems.

I think English coughing fits will have to spread across the province for the health network to get the attention it deserves.

Imagine poor Roberge on the streets of Montreal, bearing witness to an RSV-induced hack attack rounded out by a my god! instead of a mon dieu!

“Dubé, we’ve gotta do something, the pure laines are chocking in English, we can’t hear this out on the streets, open more beds, get more vaccines.”

This record-breaking broken record of a health crisis is scary enough without being asked to avoid the emergency room.

It is, by design, the only point of service available to a massive chunk of Quebecers, many of whom haven’t had the privilege of regular checkups from a doctor to know exactly how much their heart or lungs could handle before their need is urgent.

Adding insult to injury, 811 operators will often err on the side of caution and recommend a trip to the ER even if the patient on the line isn’t at death’s door.

And the GAP, designed to accommodate patients without doctors, has a disclaimer that takes longer than the over-the-phone triage.

You have the right to a doctor, anything you say can and will be used to treat you in a medical facility. You have the right to an appointment, but we will only try phoning three times, so if you are working, in the car, changing a diaper, sleeping, or for any reason unable to answer, you go back to the bottom of the list.

All of that sounds less like healthcare and more like a punishment for having the nerve to get sick.

And how sick is sick enough to run the gamut?

Let’s wait until people are at their most vulnerable–with brain fog, repeated sleepless nights, unable to work, unable to eat, unable to get a sentence out without coughing, too weak to walk across the room without being winded—to say hey, chin up, take two health recommendations and call me in the morning, just don’t come to the ER.

Meanwhile, good Quebecers are suffering in silence, managing chronic pain, nursing ailments that will inevitably evolve into diseases, waiting for the system to get better.

Any decade now.

Who could look at a system this broken and think, what we need is someone in Quebec City with a more expensive suit; they will surely be able to fit a square peg into a round hole.

A government is too disconnected from its constituents when it deems it appropriate to ask them to second-guess their own well-being for the sake of a mismanaged health system.

A government has lost touch with its population when the language of the downtrodden matters more than their needs.

Health ministry pleas a tough pill to swallow Read More »

A very different kind of Christmas

By Matthew McCully

Rolf Bentzen could really use some Christmas cheer.

He and his family have been through quite the ordeal in recent weeks, and the celebrated WWII veteran, who served as an Armoured Vehicle Group member during the D-Day landings, now 103 years old, has found himself in the hospital for the holidays.

Being on the 14th floor of Ste. Anne’s Hospital overlooking the grandeur of Montreal and its flickering lights might conjure up some sense of awe, but Bentzen cannot see. He also has trouble hearing. And most importantly, according to his daughter Carolyn Bentzen, he can’t seem to understand how a momentary loss of balance and a rash pulled him from his apartment at St. Francis Manor in Lennoxville.

The horror story started on Nov. 29, and Bentzen said her father’s health has been deteriorating ever since.

“From Nov. 29 to now, he’s nothing but skin and bones.”

Bentzen is still unclear about her father’s initial arrival at the hospital. Rolf was living independently in an apartment at St. Francis Manor. Her first indication something was wrong came when she received a call from the admissions desk of the Hotel Dieu on Dec. 1 saying Rolf was in the emergency room and needed to be admitted, citing a serious rash. Bentzen later heard that her father had lost his balance and fallen and was found by a neighbour.

According to Bentzen, the odds were stacked against her father the moment he was admitted.

It was a perfect storm of being a senior/visually impaired, being English, and being at the mercy of a healthcare system in the midst of strike action.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Bentzen said. Even during strike action, “You still look after those essential needs,” she said, “There’s a rotating essential shift. Where were they? I don’t know.”

During his time on the fourth floor of the Hotel Dieu, Bentzen said Rolf was underserved and often left unattended.

He was supposed to start physio immediately to stay active, Bentzen said, and a therapist came by and had Rolf up moving around well with a walker. But after the first day the therapist never returned.

Due to limited resources during the strike action, food was brought to him in sealed plastic containers (yogurt, apple sauce) with plastic utensils that he was unable to open.

Rolf, fully of sound mind, was distressed by people coming and going from his room without explanation. When he questioned his medication, the response was,” This is for you.”

“I know it’s for me, but what is it,” Rolf replied, aware of what his regular pill regiment normally includes. Bentzen believes a language barrier prevented staff from interacting with her father.

On a particularly unpleasant day, Bentzen arrived at around 4: 30 p.m. to find her father hunched over in a chair in his room. He had been put in the chair at 11:30 a.m. for lunch and told someone would be back later. His diaper also had not been changed, and he had not received any pain medication since 9 a.m. that morning.

Things got worse when Bentzen discovered with little notice that her father was being moved up to the fifth floor. She arrived to what she referred to as a cattle line of seniors in chairs wearing bibs facing a nurse’s desk protected by floor to ceiling plexiglass.

Her father was among the group of, from what Bentzen could gather, French seniors suffering from dementia. There was a vomit tray next to him, as well as a plate of cold food out of reach.

“They had him drugged so bad,” Bentzen said, “I thought, he’s never going to survive that.”

When Rolf was first admitted, Bentzen said she and her sisters were trying to coordinate 24-hour care so that he could return to his apartment for a few days, but his condition deteriorated to a point where that was no longer an option.

Fortunately, Rolf was already on a list at Ste. Anne’s Hospital in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, which primarily serves veterans of the Canadian Forces and is specialized in long-term and geriatric care.

Communication gaps delayed the move, but Rolf was finally transferred to Ste. Anne’s on Wednesday afternoon.

But it wasn’t all sunshine and roses, Bentzen said.

“I know it’s a good place, but it was so chaotic when we arrived,” she said, explaining that staff was busy because it was the dinner hour.

Her father would also have to quarantine for 10 days, and in the commotion of the last-minute transfer, his clothing was forgotten in Lennoxville.

But Bentzen and her sister Janet arrived prepared. They immediately posted signage in the room to highlight that Rolf was visually and hearing impaired. And she added she was pleased when one nurse walked into the room, immediately saying who she was and what she was coming to do. Bentzen insisted that protocol be passed on to the rest of staff to ensure Rolf doesn’t suddenly feel strangers tugging and poking at him.

Ste. Anne’s has rooms available for family, so Bentzen’s sister Janet was able to stay over last night to be close to her dad.

“Once he gets his lazy boy, CD player, he knows all the buttons, he will be more comfortable,” Bentzen said.

Bentzen said Legion Veteran’s officer Lyne Langlais has been keeping a close eye on Rolf and will help get his personal belongings to Ste. Anne’s in the coming weeks.

And Bentzen said Rolf’s eldest daughter, Deborah, will be coming to stay with him over Christmas, which should keep spirits high as the WWII veteran gets used to his new environment.

Bentzen hopes her dad will start eating and regain enough strength to start walking again.

“He always said he plans to live to be 105.”

A very different kind of Christmas Read More »

Scroll to Top