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“We are very sorry about any death that occurs,” a regional health board official said in response to the death of St. Mary’s patient Mark Blandford, who was denied potentially life-saving surgery in November, “but in hospitals, death occurs.”

Benoît Morin, CEO of the West Island Integrated University Health and Social Services Centre (CIUSSS West Island), is certainly correct about the occurrence of death at hospitals. However, the circumstances under which filmmaker Blandford, 73, died were not only unusual, but a frightening reminder of how Quebec’s self-perpetuating, oversized bureaucracies can be menaces to public safety.

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As tragic as Blandford’s death was, his case may not be so exceptional. Françoise Parent, 67, died of cardiac arrest in 2013 in a Longueuil hospital’s ER after waiting 13 hours to see a doctor; Thérèse de Repentigny, 78, died in 2010 after waiting six hours for care (when her daughter arrived at the hospital, she embraced her mother only to discover that staff hadn’t informed her of the death). Health-care horror stories are becoming part of the cultural fabric.