It’s not just Patrick Lagacé who has the meaning of the title. I caught your attention, didn’t I? A billion dollars is exactly the amount we want from the government1 at the end of this first Sustainable Health Summit, which took place in Quebec City from January 25 to 27, 20232.
We were 1000. It’s not trivial, 1000. With luck and good referencing, we expected 150… 200 people, at most. Thousand ! It is also the number of kilometers that we pedal with Pierre Lavoie, year after year, for better individual and collective health in Quebec.
In short, this is the challenge that I launched to Thomas Bastien of the Association pour la santé publique du Québec (ASPQ) during the launch of Minister Christian Dubé’s health plan in March 2022: “Thomas, it’s up to us to turn the wind in health in Quebec! Go! Organize it for us! »
With Pierre Lavoie, the Canadian Cancer Society, Heart Stroke, the ASPQ, the Francophone Network for the Promotion of Health (REFIPS), Active Girls, Public Health Doctors of Quebec and many others, we took up the challenge! However, we were far from suspecting that so many actors of health change in Quebec would respond to this call.
Through a diverse panel of community organizations, stakeholders, initiatives, from 0 to 120 years old, from Nunavik to Gatineau via our cities, we were able to observe, once again, that in Quebec, it is not the ideas and innovative solutions in preventive health and health promotion that are lacking, but the cashcursed cash…
A small billion dollars, these are peanuts out of 54 billion, the budget of the Ministry of Health. Yet this is just what we need, minimally and annually, to hope to see the iceberg melt (the 54 billion) in the not too distant future, hopefully.
Why return to preventive health, the promotion of health, you will say to me? Yet it is so simple. When the pipes burst, I know few plumbers who plug the hole downstream… When the haemorrhage bleeds, the blood is cut upstream. It makes sense, right? It is therefore necessary, in health as elsewhere, to invest upstream. Sorry my dear Thomas, our healthcare system hasn’t reached breaking point, it has already literally collapsed. Not right here. In France, in Denmark, in England, in the United States, everywhere! While we are barely emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic, our chronic diseases are exploding, our seniors are suffering from having been so neglected, our emergencies are exploding… From crisis to crisis, from government to government, from minister to minister… all have lost sight of my health, your health, our health.
Produce sick
We have never been better at detecting, diagnosing and treating the worst diseases, with technologies that are among the most efficient in the world, and which sometimes belong almost to the future. In return, we produce as a society thousands of patients each year by our modern way of life, by the past neglect of the aging environments of our elders, by our unbridled globalization which is making our planet and its inhabitants increasingly sick.
Beyond the billion dollars, we must also deposit ourselves and reflect on the values of our healthy society. In 2022, with my friend the Dr Fabrice Brunet from the Quartier de l’innovation en santé (QIS) and other “visionaries” in the field of health, we went to study the Danish health system. As Denmark is the happiest country in the world, I gave myself a personal objective: to study Danish happiness, the hygge. What is that ? Everyone laughed at first and then we discovered this amazing thing: happiness is a state of complete satisfaction characterized by its stability and durability. It is not enough to feel a brief contentment to be happy. Intense joy is not happiness. A fleeting pleasure either. Happiness is a global state. And when you are healthy, happiness is also a kind of end in itself.
THE hygge, this Danish happiness, is made up of five essential components: the generosity of the State, that is to say, to make sure to provide good services; the quality of institutions; incomes that are as equitable as possible; freedom of life choice; social cohesion and mutual trust.
And all this through education and confidence, taught from early childhood. With this billion dollars, let us aspire to individual and collective happiness.
In closing, Minister Dubé, thank you for taking the time to understand the importance of cultivating our health in Quebec. Defend this budget request with ardor and heart as we know you can. This will be by far the most beautiful legacy you will leave in the Quebec of tomorrow. Prevention rather than cure. This is really what I would like my children and grandchildren to read about you one day in the history of our beautiful Quebec!
* Author of Restore health to the whole family (Edito, 2021)