About fifteen years ago, the big bad healthy wolf wore the clothes of a PPP. Shirts have been torn apart around these public-private partnerships with their tarnished coat of arms. The slightest hitch – in fact or in principle – then sounded like a warning shot. It takes a lot more today to be outraged by the progression of the private sector as its activities are intertwined with those of the public.
The arrival of Geneviève Biron at the head of Santé Québec is the culmination of this logic that the private sector possesses an agility and boldness that the public has never been able to cultivate. The duo formed by the businesswoman with her number 2, Frédéric Abergel, embodies the yin and yang of a refoundation intended to “shake” the columns of the temple”. True, the network needs a high intensity electroshock.
Minister Dubé takes great pride in this two-headed formula. The symbol is no less strong, because it is a surface duality. It is the one who spent most of her career within the family business Biron Groupe Santé (800 employees) who will be at the wheel of the agency (330,000 employees). The career public manager will be in the sidecar. Together, they will have to make “more human and more efficient” a mammoth crushed by its shortages, its bureaucracy and its hospital-centrism.
Mme Biron has undeniable qualities for this position. We hear his intention to remain “focused on the public system”, but the step he will have to take to get there is high. The businesswoman has also undertaken to take the necessary measures to eliminate any potential conflict of interest. In addition to erecting a “Chinese wall” between her, her partner (who also has a career in health) and the members of her family, whose business has flourished in the gaps abandoned by the public network.
Virtue, however, does not cope well with the crudeness of everyday life. We are entitled to wonder where M’s allegiance will lie.me Biron when the time comes to put out his first fire, then the following ones. To humans or to performance? Public or private?
It will be necessary to closely monitor the dynamics that will take hold in the upper echelons of the agency. And act immediately if by chance the complementarity of yin and yang should give way to the repulsion of two poles condemned to replay the same worn-out score. Quebecers have already paid too dearly to listen to this old refrain again.
This text is part of our Opinion section. This is an editorial and, as such, it reflects the values and position of the Duty as defined by its director in collaboration with the editorial team.
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