The Minister of Health, Christian Dubé, is not easily discouraged. He’s the kind of man who always sees the glass half full. He is even capable of rejoicing that it is only a quarter full. You could almost say that he elevated optimism into politics.
The emergency rooms are overflowing, the surgical waiting list resembles a holey boat that fills with water as quickly as it is emptied, but Mr. Dubé maintains his morale and the conviction that the future Santé Québec agency will restore the network on its tracks.
This unfailing faith commands admiration, although Quebecers do not share it. Only 16% believe that its reform will improve access to care, according to a Pallas Data-L’Actualité survey carried out at the end of January. A proportion which decreases from one reform to another. At the time, 24% believed in the virtues of that of Gaétan Barrette.
Last year, an overwhelming majority (84%) of nurses currently employed by private agencies, which the government intends to gradually abolish, considered it “unlikely” to return to the public network, due to the poor working conditions that ‘We find there.
Even civil servants don’t want to know anything about Santé Québec. Less than 5% of professionals from the Ministry of Health would agree to be transferred there, fearing they will become poorer if the provisions provided for in Bill 15 apply as they were adopted last December. Not everyone can be one top gun.
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“An optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty,” said Churchill. In this regard, Mr. Dubé can be delighted to be faced with a world of opportunities whose exploration would require several more mandates.
The latest news regarding negotiations with nurses is not encouraging. There is no settlement in sight. The “flexibility” demanded by the government comes up against a categorical refusal. The president of the Fédération interprofessional de la santé du Québec (FIQ), Julie Bouchard, was very clear: no agreement can be reached if the government persists in imposing travel between establishments or care units.
The government justifies these forced displacements by a lack of personnel which is very real, but rather they seem to have the effect of further aggravating the shortage. In Mauricie and Centre-du-Québec, where this practice is common, some 200 nurses have chosen to resign or take early retirement over the last nine months.
Unions sometimes tend to confuse the public interest with their own, but to what extent can a nurse be required to perform a task requiring skills that she believes she does not have? The government still maintains that all travel is voluntary, but why resign if nothing is imposed on you?
Optimism is a beautiful thing, but it should not make us lose sight of reality. Bernard Drainville’s admission of helplessness in the face of teachers’ disillusionment bodes poorly for the future of things in the education network, but he did not try to pass off bladders as lanterns. Because of scarcity, he could not grant them what he did not have. Mr. Dubé is in the same situation with the nurses.
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The Minister of Health is not only an optimist, but also a pacifist. Unlike Gaétan Barrette, who wanted to financially penalize doctors who refused to take care of more patients, Mr. Dubé wanted to avoid confrontation, preferring to renege on the promise to give every Quebecer access to a family doctor.
There are still 13,000 vulnerable patients on the waiting list for whom access to a nurse or pharmacist is not enough. Apparently, this is still too much for the Federation of General Practitioners of Quebec (FMOQ), which sent a formal notice to the government on Friday ordering it to refrain from publishing the regulation which would force their coverage, in addition to giving the government access to data on medical clinic availability.
Claiming to be faced with a fait accompli without having been consulted, which it considers to be a violation of its “right to association and its corollary, the right to negotiation”, the FMOQ intends to “break the mold”.
For fifty years, all governments have ended up backing down from doctors. This time, Mr. Dubé assures that he will hold on. It is necessary, the credibility of his entire reform depends on it. Forcing doctors to fit the mold might even convince some that his optimism may not be so far-fetched. And then, this standoff comes at the right time: for the first time in a long time, the government can hope to have the population on its side.