A phone call came in last week from a stranger with an ominous warning.
Colette Boisvert Canavan, the director general of a nine-unit seniors home in Low, shared what she had learned from a CISSSO director: that the CLSC in Low was one of four on a hit list CISSSO has sent to Santé Québec, recommending their closures as part of its efforts to make up the $90 million in spending the province has ordered it cut to balance last year’s budget.
Colette did not know which others were on this list, but advised some digging be done. And I tried.
When I reached out to CISSSO, I was told that it’s Santé Québec who answers these questions.
“No changes are planned for the services offered in the various CLSCs, at present,” was the answer I received from the new crown corporation that’s been put in charge of managing healthcare in this province. When I pushed, asking whether any recommendations had been made for closure, I was told Santé Québec had “no further comments.”
Apart from Colette’s warning, and confirmation Radio Canada obtained from MRC Vallée-de-la-Gatineau warden Chantal Lamarche that she too had heard from said CISSSO director about the recommended fate of the Low CLSC, there is no offical confirmation that any recommendations for closure have been made.
But for the residents in Low, this news isn’t coming as a surprise. The CLSC has long been on an IV, according to Colette. First, she said, basic services like blood pressure and diabetes tests were transferred to a Groupe médecine de familial (GMF) in the region. Now, with no permanent doctor, and a nurse and secretary it shares with the CLSC half an hour north, it is open only one day a week. On those days, the waitroom is packed.
CISSSO, for its part, said it has nothing new to report about potential plans for more cuts to last year’s budget. So far, on an order from the province, it has cut about $60 million, which has affected home care and over 700 filled and vacant positions across the network. Since the latest provincial budget was tabled in March, it has not been clear whether that remaining $30 million will be forgiven or claimed by the province.
If the latter, we may have to scream.
Yes, CISSSO is just trying to do its job, and meet the harsh budget directives from the province. But in the context where the CAQ government has wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on failed investments and tech projects, and where, according to new numbers from Observatoir du développement de l’Outaouais, this region’s healthcare network is underfinanced by not merely $180 million a year, as we previously understood, but almost $350 million, or $846 per resident, per year, forcing the closure of any rural CLSC is not acceptable.
CLSCs elsewhere in the province have had services cut back, or cut entirely, as part of the government’s recent efforts to reclaim $1.5 billion across the province.
For months, residents in Low have been concerned theirs would see the same fate, that the slow drip keeping their CLSC alive would finally be unplugged. Now, without any word from CISSSO or Santé Québec on what is happening on this file, we can only wonder whether one of ours in the Pontiac will be joining it.
Sophie Kuijper Dickson
