(Ottawa) The Bloc Québécois bluntly denounces the remarks made by federal Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos about the reforms that the provinces must adopt before obtaining a substantial increase in health transfers.
Bloc Québécois MP Luc Thériault accuses the minister of lecturing the provinces at the expense of patient health, while the federal government has shown itself incapable of adequately managing essential services such as passports, immigration, pensions for certain retirees. and the pay of civil servants in recent years.
“I find it indecent that Minister Duclos is lecturing Quebec and the provinces who have struggled through a pandemic that has further weakened a system that was already weakened by chronic underfunding,” said Mr. Thériault, who is the Bloc health critic.
In an interview at The PressMinister Duclos described the health networks as a patient who is “seriously ill”, who will have to be transferred to the emergency room shortly if nothing is done to restore him.
The disease that afflicts him – “the sickness of the silos” – can be cured. But it will take more than federal money to get there, he said. Provinces need to do things differently, including instituting better data sharing, he argued.
“The system is seriously ill. He’s in the emergency room and we don’t want him to go to intensive care. […] He is in the emergency room because we did not take care of him before, ”launches Minister Duclos bluntly.
“We are talking about the health system. But we don’t have a health care system in Canada or in Quebec. We have pieces that could make a system as a whole, but that’s not the case because the pieces of this system work independently of each other. It is the sickness of the silos. And everyone recognizes that it’s a serious disease,” he said.
“Our system will not survive if we don’t make major changes. […]. The silos must disappear so that people can work more together, that we remain centered on the patient and that there is a better sharing of information, ”he put forward as a possible solution.
For example, Minister Duclos pointed out that hospitals work independently of family physicians. Doctors work independently of CLSCs and pharmacies and long-term care, he lists.
Result: there is not enough sharing of information on people’s health between the various players in the network. This largely contributes to its cumbersomeness, inefficiency and high cost.
But according to MP Luc Thériault, all the experts who came to testify before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health during the third wave of COVID-19, in the spring of 2021, said that the federal government had contributed to weakening the network before the pandemic by refusing to inject enough funds into it.
“The weak links in the health system broke us in full during the pandemic. And the minister comes to tell us that he has a concern for the health care system. […] Experts told us that the logic of the Trudeau government to say that it will fix the problems of the network after the pandemic does not make any sense, neither from a medical point of view or from an economic point of view, ” he argued.
He recalled that an early diagnosis saves lives when it is necessary to treat patients quickly. However, there are more than 160,000 people in Quebec who are out of time for surgeries or procedures. “When we know that three to four weeks of delays increase the mortality rate by 6 to 8%, that’s what we’re talking about. If a minister comes to tell us that he is concerned about saving a system, I want to save the patients,” declared Mr. Thériault.
“This federal government is not even capable of managing pensions properly. It is not able to handle passports. He is unable to manage his payroll. But he would like to become the one who will tell the provinces what to do. The most cynical thing about it is that he will never be accountable to the people,” added the Bloc MP.
Over the past few weeks, the war of words between Ottawa and the provinces has escalated as hospital emergency rooms are overwhelmed and healthcare workers are stretched thin after more than two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. 19 and the arrival of respiratory viruses.
The provinces are demanding an annual increase in health transfers in the order of $28 billion, and that without conditions. According to the calculations of the provinces, such an increase would mean that Ottawa would pay 35% of the total bill related to the health system against 22% today. Two weeks ago, the provincial premiers asked Justin Trudeau to convene a meeting early in the new year to settle this file.