CSN urges health minister to end exodus of doctors to private sector

The Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN) is stepping up a gear in its fight against what it perceives as the deterioration of Quebec’s health-care network. The union is urging Health Minister Christian Dubé to stop the exodus of doctors from the public to the private sector.

In a press release published Sunday morning, the Confédération cites statistics from the Régime public d’assurance maladie (RAMQ), data indicating that in 2024 alone, the number of disaffiliated family doctors was around 500, a figure that, the union continues, has quadrupled since 2009.

According to the CSN president, Caroline Senneville , the Quebec government could put an end to this exodus “as early as Monday.” Senneville states in the union’s press release that “the government has no excuse” for these departures from the public sector to the private sector.

In an interview later Sunday, the union representative explained that “it’s the law that regulates the fact that doctors can go to the private sector like that.” She pointed out that Quebec law does not allow doctors to practice in a private institution and a public institution at the same time, “but what the law allows is that you can work in the private sector and the public sector if you do telemedicine. We could put a lock on it.”

She also pointed out that a doctor can alternate between public and private. “You can do three months in the public network, three months in the private network, three months in the public network… And that’s really perverse, because you do three months in the public network, you see people, and then you tell them ‘if you come to the public sector, I don’t have time to see you for two years or a year for the operation, but if I put you in my private practice, I could offer you a slot in two or three months’.”

Senneville protests that Quebec patients are increasingly faced with a dilemma: wait or pay. And waiting seems less and less of an acceptable option, because, according to a survey by the “Journal de Québec” and the Léger firm conducted at the end of September among 1,002 people, in five years, 17 per cent more Quebecers turned to the private network to receive care.

According to the survey, half of those aged 34 and under paid for medical care in the last five years, compared to 36 per cent of those aged 55 and over for the same period.

Senneville exclaims on this subject: “We increasingly take it for granted that the public service no longer meets our needs. We have resigned ourselves to paying. But what we are saying is ‘no, let’s stop resigning ourselves and give ourselves the means to have a strong and efficient public health service.'”

The CSN announced that it will propose a series of measures at a large rally on Nov. 23 at the Colisée Vidéotron in Trois-Rivières. This plan is to follow the campaign that the union has been running for several months and called “No profit on illness.”

The union will not reveal more for the moment about its possible solutions. Senneville simply insists on the fact that they must guarantee that access to health care “is based on our needs and not the thickness of our wallets.”

The ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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With archives of Katrine Desautels

This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews