Dear Health Minister Josie Osborne:
We happily read in the Citizen newspaper about Duncan city council's recent decision to back saving our precious 100-bed Cowichan District Hospital (CDH) for public-health needs.
We have since read the letter sent to you jointly by Duncan and North Cowichan councils.
We urge you and both councils to recognize our petition signatories — now numbering some 5,000 names — expect and deserve to have meaningful input with you and Island Health (IH) leaders about future medical uses of our publicly-owned Cowichan hospital.
Our popular petition — not mentioned in this letter — stresses needs talks with IH in the coming months, before our new hospital opens in 2027. Talks would involve all locals spanning Cowichan Tribes, health-care providers, the CDH Foundation and other organizations, plus taxpayers.
The letter to you from mayors Michelle Staples and Rob Douglas mentions potentially installing addictions-, mental-health, and other housing types on our hospital site. Our petition does not include housing as a future site use.
Of course, councillors' ideas are welcome, as are everyone's.
Use of our CDH site for housing would run contrary to the wishes of neighbouring residents we have spoken with.
However, most folks widely recognize the dire need for affordable housing for homeless locals, and others, but not on our CDH site.
Basically, medical beds must trump housing needs.
Folks do recognize mental-health and detox care — plus other long-term care needs — may be future uses, among various others, at our beloved hospital.
We look forward to inclusive, constructive dialogue during meetings with Island Health concerning cogent future uses of CDH.
Yours in health care,
Peter W. Rusland
North Cowichan
