I'm as non-religious as one can be yet I'm all for saving these buildings. In this case, it's beautiful, it's reasonably well preserved, it's 160 years old, why on Earth would you want to take it down? There are plenty of ugly buildings everywhere in Montreal, pick the surface area you need, raze them, and build your health complex there. (I haven't really been following the CHUM project that much but I'm nonetheless 100% sure they could manage to find contiguous room for the volume of buildings needed somewhere nearby enough without having to destroy anything from the mid-1800s)
If that demolition is allowed in 2007, I'm kind of losing hope for Montreal. I though the 60s were (thankfully) over?
Is the final decision taken yet? When is it supposed to be torn down?