Convinced that Health Minister Christian Dubé is preparing to impose a gag order on Bill 15, the opposition parties in Parliament and around fifteen civil society groups are urging him not to proceed “in haste » and to extend the work until next January.
The minister must “take a step back,” argued Nathalie Déziel of the Coalition Solidarité Santé during a press briefing Thursday at noon alongside deputies André Fortin (Liberal Party), Guillaume Cliche-Rivard (Québec solidaire), and Joël Arseneau (Quebec Party).
Around fifteen representatives of civil society groups came to denounce Minister Dubé’s Bill 15 and the creation of the Santé Québec agency, including the Regroupement d’enseignement populaire en action culturelle de Québec et Chaudière-Appalaches (REPAC), the League of Rights and the Coalition for Midwifery. These days they are launching a new mobilization campaign against the reform.
Not only did they denounce a possible use of a gag order, but they reiterated their opposition to the reform as a whole on Thursday.
The bill “is not of good enough quality” to justify the use of a gag order, MP Fortin argued in particular. He and his colleagues indicate that the minister has tabled too many amendments to the initial bill since they began studying it in August.
Impossible to finish before Christmas
The oppositions are convinced that Minister Dubé intends to force the adoption of the bill through a gag order because there are not enough days left in the parliamentary session to do all the work.
For MP Guillaume Cliche-Rivard, “when we do the mathematical calculation”, this turns out to be impossible. Of the 1,180 articles contained in the bill, between 400 and 500 remain to be adopted.
In addition, the deputies deplore, it is not “normal” that the minister has once again added 175 additional pages of amendments which make the process even more cumbersome.
During the question period on Thursday, they tabled a motion demanding that Christian Dubé undertake not to impose the gag order, but the government did not support it. In front of the media, Mr. Dubé repeated that “gag” was a word he did not “know”.
The Minister of Health has always maintained that he needed to adopt Bill 15 before the end of the year to launch the process of appointing the CEO of the future agency at the beginning of year and launch Santé Québec activities in spring 2024.