$1.5B health deficit: Dubé to try to ‘minimize’ impact on services

Eliminating $1.5 billion in health spending may have an impact on services, but Quebec will try to “minimize” it.

That’s what Health Minister Christian Dubé said on Friday at a press conference to mark the launch of the Santé Québec agency on Sunday.

The agency has been mandated to return to a balanced budget, an exercise the Minister described on Thursday as “non-negotiable.”

Already, hundreds of vacant positions have been abolished in all regions of Quebec, noted the opposition parties.

On Friday, Dubé acknowledged that this major clean-up of institutional spending will probably affect services to the population.

“I can tell you, in all transparency, that we are currently looking at everything to make sure that there will be budgetary rigor and that we will be able to minimize – that’s the right word, minimize – the impact on services,” he declared.

The Minister is finally admitting what “the public already knew and felt,” reacted Liberal health critic André Fortin.

“Home care is being cut, the number of CHSLD workers is being reduced, dialysis projects are being cancelled, and staff recruitment, particularly for nurses, is being suspended,” he listed.

“When Christian Dubé tells us we’ll see a change in the coming months, he’s right. But what we will see is a flagrant reduction in services,” he insisted.

MNA Vincent Marissal, of Québec solidaire, made the same observation. “Welcome to the real world,” he warned Dubé during a press scrum.

“I’m very, very worried (…) Necessarily, there are going to be cuts. (…) What managers in the regions are telling us is that there are risks to health and to the safety of care, and therefore to patients,” he said.

–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews