The oppositions accuse the Minister of Health, Christian Dubé, of having taken advantage of the state of health emergency to obtain data about family doctors who “do not do enough”, and this, in full negotiation with general practitioners.
In the press scrum Wednesday, Mr. Dubé admitted to having been able to “make crosses”, in part “because of the health emergency”, to have more details on the care of doctors.
By acting in this way, the government committed an “abuse of power”, underlined Thursday the head of the official opposition, Dominique Anglade. “This is a clear example of what should not be done in our democracy and it should justify the fact that we lift this health emergency,” she added.
“The emergency decree allows extraordinary powers in an extraordinary situation,” she recalled. “There, Prime Minister François Legault decided to use the decree to obtain information [et] he shouldn’t use that information the way he does. “
In his press scrum, Christian Dubé had specified that the figures he obtained allow him to say that “out of the 4000 [médecins qui n’ont pas une prise en charge suffisante selon le gouvernement], there are 1,500 who do not even “make” 500 patients. The minister said he had information that “perhaps very few people have had in the past.” The teams of the president of the Federation of general practitioners of Quebec, Louis Godin, “know these figures,” he then indicated, recalling that nearly 15% of family physicians take care of less than 500. patients.
An ethical drift?
In front of the media, Dominique Anglade said that it “could be an option” to ask the ethics commissioner to look into the issue. Before her, the PQ member Joël Arseneau said “examine the possibility” of seizing the commissioner of the case.
“I will not comment on the substance, but I share this concern that there may be a drift if we use the law on sanitary measures to circumvent the regular laws in a negotiation process or in a process. communication aimed at laying the blame [sur les médecins] “, he said.
In the opinion of Mr. Arseneau, the approach of the Prime Minister – who has become impatient with general practitioners in recent days – is “completely counterproductive” and leaves the 880,000 Quebecers who are still waiting for a family doctor. “We now know that he will not achieve the goal he set for himself, the promise he made to Quebecers that everyone would have a family doctor before the end of the term. [en octobre 2022] », He launched. By attacking doctors, “the government, once again, is undertaking a campaign to shirk its responsibility, to cover up its inaction of the past three years,” he continued.
Vincent Marissal, of Quebec solidaire, said he believed that “the CAQ is pushing the plug quite far by using the state of emergency to obtain its blacklist of family doctors”. “This is further proof that we cannot continue to sign blank checks to the government: we must put an end to the state of health emergency which allows the CAQ to make it rain and shine”, he added.
His colleague Manon Massé asked the government to explain its methods. “When the power is concentrated in one office, it can lead to perhaps inadequate use of what it should be used for,” she said. She did not go so far as to say that in the case of the doctors, the use of the state of emergency had been “inadequate”.
“I don’t have what it takes to comment on this, but there is one thing [que je] I really know, it is that in Quebec, it no longer makes sense that it is a government that was elected with 36%, 37% of the votes that governs, now for more than 20 months, like [si ses membres] were the only decision makers. We exist. “