The Minister of Health of Quebec, Christian Dubé, highlighted Saturday at dawn the relief and enthusiasm of finally being on “day 1 of the transition”. It was after a sleepless night spent testing the exceptional legislative procedure — the famous gag order — allowing the government to pass a bill at high speed. Yet another transformation of the Quebec health network is adopted urgently, leaving hundreds of articles of the reform completely outside the parliamentary debate. All this is perfectly legal, but this poorly functioning gag leaves in its wake the stench of the denial of democracy.
The megareform is supposed to restore efficiency to the health network by creating an agency — Santé Québec — bringing decision-making closer to the place where the action takes place. How will this new sweep relieve patients’ ailments? These patients, very poorly named, because they are above all overcome by impatience and disenchantment, are tired of waiting for everything. For a simple prescription renewal or for a follow-up appointment with “their” family doctor, for a trip to the emergency room or for an operation. The initial posture in Quebec for health care is calculated in days, months and even years of waiting.
Besides, the minister is fed up too. “Me, I’m a little tired of seeing what’s happening in the network,” he said last week in a press scrum. “People waiting in the emergency room, people dying in the emergency room, people who are unable to have an appointment with their doctor, waiting lists at the DPJ. I’m tired of this. » On this point, here is a minister in perfect harmony with the general feeling of the population. This one, let’s say it, is on the verge of becoming sick with exasperation.
What can we say about our health system when people die in the emergency room, waiting for service? They were probably in the right place, but not at the right time, these two people who recently died in the emergency room of Anna-Laberge hospital, in Montérégie. One of them reportedly waited 12 hours, even though her condition required a quick examination by a doctor. An investigation will reveal more about the responsibility of the medical authorities in these tragic endings, but we can already conclude that nothing is wrong when you come to end your life in the emergency room before even being able to see a doctor.
It is difficult to see when and how the adoption of bill 15, of which some 400 articles out of the 1180 it contained will not have been discussed, will change the daily lives of patients, and for example this congestion of emergencies which returns every year like a painful toothache. How many health reforms have promised to stem this excessive wait in the corridor of last chance? We lost count. This was one of the ambitions of the Barrette reform of 2015 – also adopted under gag order, under the government of Philippe Couillard – which today the Dubé reform has dismantled.
It was difficult to imagine a worse context for adopting a law as ambitious and fraught with consequences than that in which Quebec finds itself. A large portion of state employees, including those in health, are demonstrating for better working conditions. The echoes coming from the Common Front and the Interprofessional Health Federation of Quebec are hardly reassuring. Trade is stalling, government offers are considered insufficient. Quebec is emphasizing its need for flexibility, and Minister Dubé will need a good dose of it for his reform to work smoothly. On this thorny point, unions and employers must make reasonable efforts to come together. The status quo is untenable.
The mammoth bill designed to redesign the health network was therefore adopted, by 75 votes to 27, after the natural course of things had been forced. It may have been discussed for more than 200 hours, as the government boasts, but it was the abundance of the material that required such an unusual record. The opposition is right to rail against this fishtail final: it was proposed to extend the debates by a week, but an end time was imposed on it for the discussion. For a project of such importance, François Legault’s government lacked parliamentary elevation, let’s say it.
Faced with a fait accompli, all that remains is for us to commit to two things. The first one ? Hope. Hope that this time will be the right one and that after all these commissions, all these reports and all these doctors who manipulated the health network without ever finding the recipe, this career manager that is Christian Dubé will really be able to bring about a change. paradigm leading to efficiency. The second ? Keep an eye. Rely on all the monitoring bodies responsible for scrutinizing the efficiency of the health network and above all on the population: it is they who will be able to say whether, yes or not, this gigantic reform is indeed the right one .