The daughter of former Prime Minister Robert Bourassa, Michelle Bourassa, stood up again to defend the right to die with dignity, free from suffering, Friday evening.
Last November, her mother, Andrée Simard, died in agony at St Mary’s Hospital Centre. Ms. Simard lived for three days without palliative sedation, which would have guaranteed her a dignified and pain-free end of life. Michelle Bourassa, however, fought hard for her mother to be relieved, suffering in the process the threats of expulsion from the nursing staff who accused her of having broken the bond of trust.
The latter has since founded the group #mortensilence to denounce the conditions of end-of-life care. “What I went through was absolutely horrific and excruciating. For my mother and all our family. That’s the way it happened. There was an incredible showdown, an opacity. There was no way to make things happen. I was ashamed [de notre système de santé]“, told Ms. Bourassa to Stéphan Bureau, Friday evening, on the set of the show The world upside down.
The Minister of Health, Christian Dubé, who was present on the set of the show to defend his new reform, recognized and denounced the quality of services in the network. “It doesn’t make sense that we get treated like that in the hospital and me, it comes to get me,” he commented, adding that he “knew what a good system was. of health” when he was working in Switzerland.
“It’s an access problem here. It is a problem of quality of service”, he continued, specifying that he was defending the patient.
With his bill tabled on Wednesday to reform the health care system, Christian Dubé recognizes that there are a lot of changes to be made, “whether with health professionals, unions, CEOs, everyone,” said he said, Friday evening, to Stéphan Bureau.
Ms. Bourrassa, for her part, suggested that the Minister provide palliative teams at all times in hospitals, work to offer better care at home, as well as a better distribution of resources.
The debaters of the week, Yasmine Abdelfadel, Guy Nantel, Sophie Durocher and Biz, discussed the return of employees to the office with Sébastien Vachon, the big boss of Korem, a technology company. The specialist in spatial intelligence tries in particular to rebalance the relationship between employees and employers and to revalue the workplaces.
Comedian Cathy Gauthier was the guest of the week.
The show The world upside down is presented every Friday at 8 p.m. on TVA.