Opposition parties, unions criticize Quebec’s growing private health-care network

Medical tools are pictured in an exam room at a health clinic in Calgary, Friday, July 14, 2023. (Jeff McIntosh / The Canadian Press)

New criticism of the private sector’s role in health care came Wednesday from the Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN), Québec Solidaire (QS) and the Parti Québécois (PQ).

At a news briefing at the National Assembly, the three groups argued that it was important to talk about the privatization of the health-care network, since the public system is deteriorating at breakneck speed, in their view.

“Who benefited from all these destructive reforms of the public health and social services system? They benefited entrepreneurial doctors, people from the business world, businessmen and women who made a profit out of sickness,” said CSN vice-president David Bergeron-Cyr, at a news briefing.

The trade union centre “promises to turn up the pressure” if the government does not implement its three demands by May 1.

First and foremost, it is asking the Health Minister to halt the exodus of doctors to the private sector.

“It is the worst province in Canada for protecting its public health and social services system. There are over 800 who have left the public system or who are constantly going back and forth,” said Bergeron-Cyr.

He was referring to the 800 or so Quebec doctors who have left the public system to go into private practice. In the rest of Canada, 18 doctors disaffiliated from the public system in 2021-2022.

In addition, last week’s special consultations on Christian Dubé‘s Bill 83 - which would force new doctors to spend the first five years of their practice in the public system - revealed that 2,300 Quebec-trained physicians have moved to Ontario.

Bergeron-Cyr also presented a CSN petition with almost 10,000 signatures opposing the privatization of the health and social services network.

“The CSN is also urging the Legault government to stop licensing private, for-profit clinics immediately. The proliferation of for-profit clinics must stop. They’re springing up like mushrooms,” said Bergeron-Cyr.

As a third demand, the CSN wants the government to introduce a moratorium on all types of privatization of work and tasks performed for the public, including employment agencies, laundries, building maintenance, patient transport, etc.

QS health spokesperson Vincent Marissal said he was encouraged to see that Dubé seems willing to have a real debate on the place of the private sector in health care.

Marissal asserted that the public health system “is getting its throat cut these days, notably by the additional $1.5 billion in cuts to the public health network.”

Meanwhile, he continued, the private sector is proliferating in all sorts of ways.

PQ health and social services spokesperson Joël Arseneau also criticized the current situation in the public network.

“It’s timely to talk about the private sector in health care, the commoditization of health care, because the public system is collapsing,” he declared. “We’re on the verge of the breaking point, and the development of private health care is one of the causes of the breakdown of services in Quebec’s public network.”

He believes that Dubé‘s Bill 83 is “aimed at the wrong target” but that at least it provides an opportunity to discuss the issue.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on Feb. 12, 2025.

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