(Quebec) The bill to limit private health agencies was adopted by the National Assembly on Tuesday. All the deputies present in the chamber voted in favour.
The long-term goal is to completely ban agencies by December 2024 for major centers like Quebec and Montreal.
Most other regions will have until December 2025 to end the use of agencies.
“And that gives us time to make the link with the collective agreement negotiations which are taking place in parallel”, explains the Minister of Health, Christian Dubé, in a press scrum at the National Assembly.
In the meantime, the law will determine the conditions allowing the health sector to use the services of a placement agency. We are talking in particular about maximum tariff. There are also provisions for fines of up to $150,000 for failure to comply with these conditions.
The Minister explains that approximately 30,000 nurses leave the network each year, including 10,000 due to retirement. He therefore hopes that good collective agreements will be negotiated with the unions in order to retain the other 20,000 nurses who are leaving for other reasons.
“There are a lot of nurses who are interested in coming back. Me, that’s what I hear. But they need to have good working conditions,” assures Mr. Dubé.
Quebec is dependent on these external agencies, which provide public health establishments with personnel on request, in particular to make up for the shortage of manpower.
The use of independent labor cost the public network 960 million in 2022, a 380% increase since 2016, according to data from the Ministry of Health.
It represents 14.8 million hours worked, compared to 4.8 million six years ago.
Consultations for Bill 15, which aims to make the health care system more efficient, begin on Wednesday. “If I look at the collaboration we had with opposition, […] I think that bodes very positively for the bill,” said the Minister.