(Vaudreuil-Dorion) Dominique Anglade complains that he was blocked from accessing the site of the future Vaudreuil-Dorion hospital while the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) was able to go there to campaign.
Posted at 1:14 p.m.
The liberal leader held a press conference near the site on Friday, on the subject of health.
According to his explanations, the party had obtained authorization the day before to make its announcement directly on the site of the future hospital following discussions with the CISSS de la Montérégie-Ouest and the project office. Liberals had also gone there in anticipation of the announcement the next day.
Friday morning, the Liberals found that concrete blocks had been added, preventing the chief from going there. A plan B was found, and the press conference was held nearby.
The outgoing MP for Vaudreuil, Marie-Claude Nichols, noted that a few days earlier, “Marilyne Picard and Christian Dubé returned to the site with their literate minivans and they shot videos and photos” subsequently broadcast on their networks. social.
“Basically, there was access to a site for the CAQ and there was none for the Quebec Liberal Party. We will say it like that, OK, very clearly. And that is done during an election campaign! But the hospital is for all citizens. »
The Liberal leader maintained that “the contractor refused access”. This is Pomerleau. We were able to learn on site that the contractor installed concrete blocks after discussions with the Société québécoise des infrastructures (SQI), the organization responsible for the project.
“For security reasons, the applicant has been informed that it is not possible to access the site enclosure. The same instruction prevails for all”, confirmed to The Press SQI spokesperson Francis Martel.
Asked whether the SQI was aware of the presence of caquists a few days earlier, he replied that the organization had “no request from the CAQ” to access the site.
Marie-Claude Nichols accuses the CAQ of “appropriating the construction of the hospital” even though she has worked there for many years, first as mayor and then as deputy. “It’s a liberal achievement,” she insisted.
This 400-bed hospital, whose construction will begin this fall, costs 2.5 billion.
At a press conference, Dominique Anglade promised to add 2,000 more beds across Quebec at a cost of $6 billion. This would be added to the 2,000 additional beds already provided for in the Quebec Infrastructure Plan. Its objective: to increase the number of beds per 1,000 inhabitants from 1.8 to 2.5. This is the Canadian average.
The Liberal leader maintained that she is not underestimating the bill for the addition of 2,000 beds, saying that it would also be done by expanding existing hospitals and not only by building new facilities.
She recalled her promises in terms of health: to offer a family doctor to all Quebecers, to use private clinics at no cost to patients to carry out more surgeries, to abolish “compulsory overtime” (TSO) and to adopt a law on staff-patient ratios to ease the burden on workers while creating conditions conducive to recruitment.
A Liberal government would reopen the agreement with the Federation of General Practitioners in order to offer one to all Quebecers.
Dominique Anglade believes that his promises would not inflate state spending. They could all be realized from the growth in spending by the Ministry of Health forecast in the pre-election report on public finances tabled by the government last month and validated by the Auditor General. “We believe that we are able to fit into the envelope. We don’t need additional amounts,” she said.
She recalled the broken promises of the CAQ: not all Quebecers have access to a family doctor, the maximum delay of 36 hours to consult a doctor has not been respected, the average waiting time before seeing a doctor in the emergency room has not been lowered to 90 minutes, the TSO still exists and the ratio of patients per nurse has not been reviewed. The Legault government has already pleaded that the pandemic has prevented it from carrying out these commitments.