(Quebec) In a transpartisan offensive, the opposition launched a final appeal to Minister Christian Dubé to renounce using the gag order to pass his vast health reform next week. The latter still refuses to exclude him.
“We are gathered here to ask Minister Dubé not to move forward with a gag order in [le projet de loi] 15,” pleaded the solidarity deputy, Guillaume Cliche-Rivard. “We are talking about the second largest bill in the history of Parliament, with bundles of amendments being tabled every week. The bill is basically writing itself as it goes,” he added.
Mr. Cliche-Rivard was accompanied Thursday by his opposition counterparts, the liberal André Fortin and the PQ Joël Arseneau — all of whom are participating in the detailed study of the reform — and representatives of several community groups and of unions.
Today, hundreds of civil society organizations, groups and associations from the community, union, cooperative and medical sectors are uniting to ask the Minister of Health, Christian Dubé, to take a no retreat and not impose its reform on Quebecers.
Nathalie Deziel, representative of the Health Solidarity Coalition
The groups present ask the minister to stop “rushing alone” towards the adoption of his reform by the end of the parliamentary session, which ends on Friday, December 8. The Minister of Health presented his game plan last week to adopt the imposing legislative text before the holidays.
“Let’s be very, very clear. The opposition has done an incredible job so far and when I submitted my game plan, I said that it was surely possible to adopt this by the end of the year if we continued to collaborate in the same way. […] So far, I am very, very confident,” Mr. Dubé said earlier.
Bill 15, which will result in the creation of Santé Québec, provides for a period of six months after its adoption to constitute this brand new state corporation, which will become the sole employer of the health and social services network. Santé Québec will be responsible for the entire operational aspect of the Ministry.
“A reform like this affects so many different aspects of the health network, community groups, unions, employees, and which will ultimately affect the network’s patients. We cannot do it too quickly, we cannot do it in a hurry,” said MP André Fortin.
A “fish tail” end
More than 600 of the approximately 1,200 articles of Bill 15 have been adopted so far in addition to hundreds of amendments tabled by the minister. The latter also presented others this Thursday in a document which is around a hundred pages long. On Tuesday, Mr. Dubé sowed consternation in the union world by proposing amendments to increase the employment categories in the network from four to six.
“I take as an example, two days ago, major changes to job categories,” expressed Mr. Arseneau. “The people who are most affected are not aware. They don’t even have an opinion on it because they are not sure they can measure the impacts,” he lamented, fearing that the detailed study of the bill would end “in fish tails “.
According to Mr. Dubé’s roadmap, parliamentarians would adopt more than 400 amendments during the week of intensive work on December 5, the majority of which are articles of concordance.