Last week, the provincial representative responsible for the Outaouais, Mathieu Lacombe, moved a resolution . . .
in the National Assembly recognizing the unique characteristics of this region, and the fact that it has been under-funded in critical areas like health care and education. The motion, though largely symbolic, received unanimous support from the assembly and is a step in the right direction for the region as a whole.
Minister Lacombe repeated what watchdogs and elected officials in this region have been saying for years: that the government spends less on Outaouais residents than citizens elsewhere in the province.
A report released last August by the Institut de recherche et d’informations socioéconomiques (IRIS) showed that health care in the region is under-funded by about $250 million per year. In 2015/16, the province spent $1,938 per resident, compared to the Quebec average of $2,569.
Many residents, wary of the state of the region’s health care infrastructure, opt to cross the river to receive care at facilities like CHEO, which cost Quebec close to $100 million in 2017.
According to a report by CBC, more than 30,000 Quebecers were treated at the Hawkesbury General Hospital alone that year, resulting in a bill of $36.3 million.
Not only are patients crossing the river, but plenty of health care workers have migrated to Ontario as well, where they don’t face stringent language tests and are paid more for their efforts. Add an aging population you have all the ingredients for the current labour shortage.
The local health authorities are doing what they can, and have even begun to reverse some of the centralization that was brought about by the Liberal health care reform, Bill 10. Some control will return to the people actually offering the services, instead of decrees being issued from Gatineau. We saw with the proposal for paid parking at the Pontiac Community Hospital how a lack of local control can lead to some, uh, poor decision making.
It’s great that the CAQ government is looking to improve the lives of Outaouais residents, and hopefully they’ll have some tangible actions to back up their words. One of those tangible actions should be to replace the English signage that was removed from the hospital in Lachute. Impeding access to vital services under the guise of protecting the French language is not a good look for a government that’s trying to win over the English-speaking population.
Another should be to rethink their immigration reform bill, which scrapped the applications of tens of thousands of skilled workers trying to become Quebec citizens. This province needs workers, and cutting immigration to pander to their nationalist voting base is obscene.
This recognition by the National Assembly is a good start, but given the level of disfunction and the many years that it was allowed to fester under previous governments, Minister Lacombe certainly has his work cut out for him.
Caleb Nickerson
