Unionized workers at the Ste. Anne's Hospital are urging Ottawa and the Quebec government to speed up the transfer of the facility.

With no official end date announced for the transfer to Quebec, the union says long-term care beds are going unused and jobs are being put at risk.

Yvan Thauvette is head of the union. He says many people are stressed.

"People are nervous," he says, "they are concerned about their future." 

He says the federal government has shut down about 100 long-term care beds so far, including 33 just this week, and close to 100 people have already lost their jobs.

"If they wait too long, there will be very few employees left at Ste. Anne's when the transfer is complete."

He adds there are all these beds now that are not being used. 

"So we'll have about a hundred beds in a couple of days that could be used by the citizens of the West Island and Vaudreuil-Soulanges area because there is a crisis for beds in that region." 

When the transfer was officially announced last year, the target date to have it finalized was March 2013.

A request to the Veteran Affairs office in Ottawa about when the transfer will be complete was not immediately answered.

photo courtesy of Veteran Affairs Canada