With an expected $45-million deficit next year and the future of the Lachine hospital still in doubt, audience members at the MUHC's board of governors meeting were loudly dissatisfied with the project's top brass.

Former Montreal Children's board member Geoffrey Chambers says stakeholders, including unions, practicing doctors and other ex-board members, are seriously disturbed by the superhospital's sloppy management and lack of transparency.

He and others believe the ongoing controversies surrounding the MUHC is making life difficult and stressful for the hospital's workers.

"There's a case being made by the government that it's financially less well managed than other hospitals, and we haven't answered that case well at all," he charged.

The project has been dogged by controversy for years, with its former boss Arthur Porter now the subject of an arrest warrant.

Photo:  Patrick Lejtenyi