It’s not yet December and it’s already starting to feel like Groundhog Day – the Bill Murray version where he becomes trapped in a time loop, reliving the same day over and over again, and soon realizes his desperate attempts to get help are making no difference.
Last week, a journalist covering the opening of a daycare in Saint-André-Avelin took the opportunity to ask CAQ minister responsible for the Outaouais Mathieu Lacombe about his thoughts on his government’s Law 2.
His answer? The Outaouais is not unique in the challenges it faces with regards to this new legislation. In French, he said, “I don’t see how the situation in the Outaouais is particularly more problematic.” In other words, the potential that this law will cause an exodus of family and specialist physicians here is no different than elsewhere in the province.
Law 2, which was passed at the end of October, links doctors’ pay to performance metrics, including the number of patients they care for – an attempt, the CAQ says, to reduce the number of residents without access to family doctors in the province.
But doctors aren’t buying it. In the three weeks since it was passed, over 250 Quebec doctors have applied to work in Ontario, and several federations representing Quebec doctors have announced plans to take the government to court over the legislation, which is set to come into effect Jan. 1.
In the Outaouais, we’ve seen at least four of CISSSO’s head doctors resign over this bill. Some of them are now eyeing Ontario as a potential employer. And so begins the Groundhog Day loop.
The Outaouais is well familiar with Ontario’s poaching potential when it comes to the healthcare sector. The region has lost nurses and other healthcare workers to the other side of the river for years, because Ontario pays them more. Politicians and advocacy groups have been screaming, also for years, that something needs to be done to ensure Outaouais healthcare jobs offer equal salaries as those across the river. Resolutions have been passed by councils, letters written by citizens, marches and protests held, yet the region is still, broadly speaking, in the same underfunded, poorly resourced hole.
Recall just last year, the regional healthcare network CISSSO suddenly faced a potential exodus of a handful of medical imaging technicians to Ontario. The CAQ’s response? Offer bonuses to techs that stay in Gatineau and Hull hospitals. It took a full summer of resolutions, protests, and techs threatening to leave before those in Pontiac, Wakefield, and Maniwaki hospitals received similar incentives to stay in their positions rather than hop across the river or take the higher-paying positions in the urban centres.
The message in the Pontiac was clear – this corner of the Outaouais is not exempt from the staffing challenges that plague the region thanks to our proximity to Ontario.
The situation for doctors is a little more complicated. According to reporting from the Montreal Gazette, on average family physicians in Ontario make more than they do in Quebec, while some specialists make less. In an interview with Radio-Canada, Lacombe expressed disbelief that Quebec doctors would want to move to Ontario, where he said they make less, and have to take on more patients.
Perhaps Minister Lacombe’s denial that the Outaouais’ situation is different is grounded in an unwillingness to accept that even when faced with worse pay and more patients in Ontario, as he says is the case, Quebec doctors would still opt to work in that province over continuing to practice in a province in which they feel disrespected and spread too thin.
But this denial does not change the reality that regardless of the reasons, Outaouais healthcare workers will always have another option for employment – an option that doesn’t involve any major life changes, such as moving homes or putting their kids in new schools. Late last week, Lacombe seemed to see the light of day, or at least a sliver of it, indicating he may in fact be open to adapting Law 2 to reflect these specific realities. What this adaptation might look like is still not clear, or not public.
But it should have been factored into new legislation from the beginning, not retroactively, as has been the trend in recent years. The government has already learned this lesson, several times over. Why are we consistently asked to re-teach it?
Pontiac Voice is inviting those who can find the energy to keep screaming to gather outside the Pontiac Hospital on Sunday at 1:30 p.m. for yet another rally.
Trapped in this Groundhog Day, where the duration of our winter is determined by whether or not a rodent sees its shadow, the question is, will it? And if it does, will this region be able to weather the oncoming storms?
