A coffee with… Gaétan Barrette | Your reactions to “I was the Voldemort of health”

Many readers have commented on the interview given by former Minister of Health Gaétan Barrette to our editorial writer Alexandre Sirois, published in the Context section of March 19⁠1.


The same person ?

Is it really the former Minister of Health under the Couillard government that you are presenting to us here? As much as he was antipathetic to me when he was Minister of Health, the portrait that you make of him here makes me like him. Does this mean that political organizations, with the “party line”, depersonalize people who engage in politics?

Suzanne Blackburn, Blainville

Lost sense of belonging

Take a walk through the network and you will see that Gaétan Barrette has caused employees to lose all sense of belonging! If an employee does not identify with an employer, then goodbye motivation and mobilization. Without these two criteria, how can an organization evolve? It is said !

Pierre Lavergne

From the seed of a chef

I find him very eloquent, intelligent, humble, I would like to see him as leader of the Liberal Party.

Ginette Bouffard

Horror

Barrette has made a monster of the health network and Dubé is making the monstrosity worse by adding the Santé Québec agency to the job. How awful ! Misery…

Roger Gobeil

The frank word

I have always loved this politician and the human behind it. Certainly, he has frank ideas and direct and frank speech; people are too cautious and reckless to admit that sometimes it has to go through rigor to achieve big changes. Always exciting to hear!

Yvonne Gaudreau, Lachine

Not the language of wood

Mr. Barrette doesn’t have a wooden tongue and that’s what I like. He is always very interesting to listen to on the show The game.

Rejeanne Cote

We’ll never know

The very evening of the PLQ convention, in November 2021, where the party’s Youth Commission had just passed a resolution aimed at separating politics from administration in the field of health, i.e. the very idea of ​​​​creating a health agency Quebec as the CAQ has taken over now, Mr. Barrette had replied to the journalist that it was not a good idea, that it would not work because politics would always be in control of the budget. What does Mr. Barrette mean to Mr. Dubé? Does he want to tell him that he would now be ready to leave the political side to join the administrative side of health? Does he want to send a message to Mr. Dubé suggesting that he would be ready to take the reins of Health Quebec if asked? We will never know, but what is sure and certain is that Mr. Barrette had ample time and means to create Santé Québec if he had really wanted to do it when he was Minister of Health and he never did.

Claude Gaudet

A rare integrity

Bravo, Mr. Barrette. You are a man of integrity, and that is rare. I admire you in your discipline and for all that you have achieved. The coffee is drunk black as the starless night, full-bodied as hell and with a glass of water to chase away the bad taste. Thank you for your discussion with The Press.

Pierre G. Pouliot

Paving the way to private

He made the public health system dysfunctional (I would even say demolished), to pave the way for the acceptance of the private sector. It started with Couillard and it accelerated with Barrette. This was evident from the first mergers, not to mention their trip of power and the disappearance of the influence of communities on the services they receive. They eliminated any resistance expressed by the local elected members of the boards of directors.

Pierre Shebib

A personality that didn’t fit

I am not a liberal, far from it, but I have always admired his audacity and his apparent imperviousness to criticism. He is very confident. For him, I have the impression that his vision and the means to achieve it are more important than the resentment that his actions can cause on others. In fact, more exactly, I have the feeling that he doesn’t give a damn about the opinion of others. It’s not necessarily a flaw when you want to turn things around, but you shouldn’t let it show too much and that’s where his personality didn’t fit his role.

Marielle Vaillancourt

Crocodile tears

Of course, the old croc still has his tears and a lot of regrets, he says. But when it passed, when nothing was done, when 15 years of immobility have impoverished and damaged Quebec and the people who live there, I have only one regret, and that is to have lost my health to hear these fake crowd leaders shouting. Without services and without doctors, hospitals devaluing staff and pushing them into retirement, the inhuman management of health care has harmed us all.

Gilles Laplante

Lack of introspection

Introspection is certainly not a practice with Mr. Barrette. He would do well to take off his own glasses, but from what I read in this interview, he never will.

Dany Foster


source site-58