The inaugural speech of Prime Minister François Legault, who presented his priorities for the last year of his mandate, brought back an old and pious dream that we have been hearing for 30 years: a family doctor and a daycare for all.
A utopia similar to greenhouse gas reduction targets, promises to make the richest pay their fair share in taxes or the return of the Nordics. We talk about it and we talk about it, but as Sam Hamad would say, history will tell if the lips have both feet in the same boot.
Our public health care system may be egalitarian and progressive, but finding a family doctor can be an exercise in patience. In fact, “patient” has never lived up to his name so well as in the Quebec health system. I don’t know if you will believe me, but I have already reached such a point of discouragement that I placed my hopes in my son who expressed the desire to become a doctor. He was 6 years old at the time and I told him that the last chance to find a doctor for our family now rested on him.
No more jokes, let’s get back to François Legault’s very ambitious statements. In addition to wanting to find a doctor for all those who so desire, Mr. Legault is committed to creating 37,000 new child care spaces. A colossal path in front of which many of its predecessors ended up withdrawing.
A little anecdote on this subject. When the daycare age arrived, we put our son on this famous waiting list to find a place in a childcare center. I don’t know if you’ll believe me again, but my son had time to go to high school without the phone ringing. It is for this reason that I now advise young people who want to become parents to get ahead. To give yourself a little more luck, why not register the sperm and egg a few years before conceiving the baby? But be patient, young parents, there will soon be room for all the children in our daycare system that Justin Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh dream about. In question, Legault decided to take the bull by the horns and to tackle these two societal pitfalls. If we understand correctly, he will not hesitate to force the hand of general practitioners to increase the number of people in their care book. It is a strong company, because we must remember here that doctors have a great power in our societies.
We have given them a power commensurate with their role which, it must be remembered, is essential. We collectively decided that long before education, the environment, the fight against poverty and all the rest, finding a doctor to protect us from death and investing more and more in the health system were our main priorities. Thus, from $ 22 billion in 2004, the health budget in Quebec rose to $ 45 billion in 2020. This represents 43% of all the money in our annual spending.
It is nearly a dollar of the budget that is eaten by the Department of Health. Yet, gigantic as this lion’s share of the budget allocated to health is, it is far from sufficient.
Across Canada, health is always asking for more. That is why the premiers must, with good reason, incessantly harass Ottawa in order to feed the beast. With the aging population and the sedentary lifestyle so catalyzed by the digital industry, the health budget will become more and more a bottomless pit, even without funds, despite the billions. Will we have to put more and more money into it to the detriment of other sectors of activity in our societies? Will we have enough resources left to make education and environmental protection, which are just as important in a so-called global health vision, priorities?
The problem of the health system is much more complex than the simple fact of finding a doctor who agrees to take care of us. Anyone who goes to hospitals knows that finding a family doctor is the first step in an obstacle course that gets complicated when an emergency makes us want to see that doctor quickly. It’s when adversity arises and you need to see your beloved doctor, talk to him or receive his response to your email, that things get tough. What do you want ? When you have over a thousand people on your patient list, it’s not easy to respond to all emergencies quickly.
Where is the solution? I do not know. But, to take the bull by the horns, it will one day have to attack a few sacred cows and dare to talk about user fees and the transfer of more power to nurses and pharmacists.
But we also all know that in addition to being very high, the wall that separates doctors from the rest of health workers is jealously guarded. It will take more than wishful thinking and prayers to shake the pillars of this sacred temple.
Although Mr. Legault’s speech might be felt, filled with hope, sprinkled with nationalism and inhabited by a sincere desire to create wealth and restore pride to the people here, it could quickly come up against major obstacles. The aging of the population is accelerating, the lack of labor is criticized in all sectors and the government does not want to increase immigration thresholds because, he says, of an integration constraint and of francization. As if these obstacles weren’t big enough, there is also this housing shortage that is hitting all over the place. Which means that even if we immigrate a lot of skilled workers, finding affordable apartments for them to put down their homes will be another obstacle?
What should we do when many general practitioners today prefer to work part-time? How to keep the promises of 37,000 places in daycare when it would be necessary to train 17,800 educators? How to carry out this gigantic promise without reducing services and alienating part of the population?
History will tell us if Mr. Legault is going to deliver the goods or if, like the Chinese containers which will hardly manage to bring us our bébelles in time for Christmas, he will have too much difficulty in getting this big liner turned to carry out his project. port, even if it is carried by a wave of popularity.
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