Quebec election: 'Do you have a doctor?' Voters grow weary of promises

Tales from La Pinière, on Montreal's South Shore, reflect a growing frustration across the province over campaign pledges to fix health care.

The Gazette is visiting what are expected to be some of the more hotly contested ridings in the Montreal area, and examining how key campaign issues are resonating there. Today: La Pinière and health care.

Kenza Mourchad is lucky.

Jessie Chahau is lucky, but her husband isn’t lucky yet.

And Veronica Bagdoo is lucky, as is her daughter — but not her mother, despite having Alzheimer’s.

Bagdoo, Chahau and Mourchad don’t know it, but each of them used the same word to describe their situation when a reporter stopped them at random at a shopping centre in Brossard last week and asked if they have a doctor.

“I had to beg my family doctor to take my kids,” Mourchad said, adding that her daughter and son’s pediatrician had retired. In fact, the GP who accepted her children as patients was originally her mother’s physician, she said.

“We were lucky to find her,” Mourchad said of the physician now treating three generations of her family.

Luck clearly should have nothing to do with accessing health care, says the Ligue des droits et libertés du Québec, which is on a mission to have the federal and provincial governments add health to the Canadian and Quebec charters of rights as a guaranteed right.

“I’m happy they have a doctor, but it doesn’t mean they’re lucky,” Lucie Lamarache, a law professor and member of the Ligue’s board, said when she heard the anecdote. “It means that part of their right to health is respected, not violated.”

Two decades ago, the Quebec Human Rights Commission recommended that health be added to the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. It reiterated the request late last year in the wake of the pandemic.

However, none of the political parties in the Quebec election is proposing to reframe the debate about health as a fundamental human right, Lamarche said.

“The right to health is not only about not being sick,” she said. “It’s about being healthy.”

The shortages for those who are sick will only worsen unless Quebec expands its approach to health to include what citizens need to live in a state of physical and psychological well-being, Lamarche said. A healthier society creates less sick people, she said, and that requires taking care of housing, food security, clean water and other human rights.

“There’s no reason for an OECD country, which is a rich country, not to have a really generous basket of health services,” Lamarche added. As it stands, “mental health, physiotherapy, dental care, among other services, are excluded from the basket.”

The link between health and other rights was apparent on the visit to Brossard, which makes up the South Shore riding of La Pinière.

The riding, considered a close race between the Liberals and the Coalition Avenir Québec, isn’t younger or older than the provincial average, but it has a higher proportion of couples with children — 47 per cent of the riding, versus 40.2 per cent for the province.

Many parents have no family doctor or pediatrician, said Bianca Michetti, a daycare operator who lives in Brossard. As a result, it’s an ordeal to get a doctor’s note for a child, she said. She runs four daycares, including three in Brossard.

“Ten minutes ago, I had a parent cancel their contract with me because I see a rash on the child and I’m saying ‘I’m sorry, but the child can’t come into childcare with an unexplained rash’,” Michetti said. She asked the parent to get a doctor’s note before bringing the child back to daycare to ensure everyone is safe, she said. But the parent told her that she doesn’t have a doctor and can’t take time off work to wait a day in an ER, Michetti added. “So I basically just lost a child coming to my daycare because of our health system.”

La Pinière has been represented since 2014 by Liberal MNA Gaétan Barrette, who was minister of health under the previous Liberal government, which slashed health budgets, including public health, and centralized the governance of health care institutions.

Barrette isn’t running again. The Liberals have chosen Linda Caron, a school administrator and president of the Quebec Liberal Party, as its candidate in La Pinière. The CAQ have picked a doctor, Samuel Gatien. The other candidates are Tzarevna Bratkova (Conservative Party of Quebec), Jean-Claude Mugaba (Québec Solidaire), Suzanne Gagnon (Parti Québécois), Donna Pinel (Canadian Party of Quebec) and Ryan Akshay Newbergher (Green Party of Quebec). 

Diana Low, co-founder and principal of the Brossard Chinese School, said she wishes voters would hold politicians accountable for their broken promises.

“Health is a very important issue,” she said. “There’s a growing number of seniors and we’re coming out of the pandemic.”

François Legault and the CAQ reneged on their 2018 election promise to provide a family doctor for every Quebecer, Low said.

“Politicians seem to just take these promises very lightly,” she said.

“And I think that is also the reason why individuals do not take elections that seriously.”

The CAQ is no longer promising a family doctor for every Quebecer. Now it’s promising every Quebecer a consultation with a health professional within 36 hours and a 90-minute limit on waiting in hospital ERs. The party proposes the private sector build and operate two medical centres, one in east-end Montreal and the other in Quebec City, to house family medicine groups and “mini-hospitals.” The CAQ would also assign 20 per cent of pending surgeries to private clinics to reduce waiting lists.

The Liberals, meanwhile, have adopted the promise to provide a family doctor to each Quebecer, with priority for people with chronic illnesses or mental illnesses, seniors and people with disabilities. The party also promises to boost the number of family medicine groups, invest $6 billion in health infrastructure and add 4,000 hospital beds. The Liberals are also promising more agreements with private clinics to reduce waiting times for diagnostic examinations and surgeries.

Québec solidaire says it’s focused on prevention, promising CLSCs would be open 24/7. The party wants Info-Santé nurses to have access to patient health records and offer appointments. It also wants multidisciplinary teams to provide preventive care services in schools and daycares, public coverage of mental health services and free contraception and menstrual hygiene products.

The PQ platform promises to open some CLSCs 12 hours a day and increased funding based on the needs of the population served by a CLSC. The party also promises to raise the budget for public health.

The Conservative Party of Quebec is calling for “competition” from the private sector. The party wants to set time limits for the public system to treat health conditions, beyond which patients would be referred to a private place. The party also says it would allow Quebecers to buy complementary private insurance for care already covered by medicare and would test out private companies to manage some hospitals. The Conservatives would also fund hospitals according to the number of patients treated and services received so that patients are seen as a source of revenue rather than as an expense. 

Still, it’s unclear any party will convince voters it can fix the system.

Chahau said she considers health care crucial in this election. But which parties are making promises that appeal to her?

“Until now?” she asked. “Nobody.”

Chahau, who has lived in Brossard for 32 years, said she finally got a family doctor last year — in Montreal. She considers herself fortunate, she said. Her husband, who suffered a heart attack this summer, has been on a waiting list for a doctor for five years. Her daughter just got a doctor after seven years of waiting.

Bagdoo, a Candiac resident, drove her daughter to an emergency pediatric clinic in Brossard on this day because no emergency services are available around them to treat a child with asthma, she said. Bagdoo added that her mother, who has Alzheimer’s, doesn’t have a GP since her doctor retired.

“There are no resources for children and for adults, actually,” she said. “I’m lucky enough to have a doctor. If you don’t have a doctor, it’s impossible to get one. And even if you do, to actually get a spot as a last-minute emergency is really difficult.”

For Bagdoo, the answer — which she’s not hearing in the campaign — is to “deconstruct the health care system and rebuild it and really find the source of the issue.”

The Ligue des droits et libertés says recognizing health as a right would be a start. Then the courts could evaluate services and policies such as privatization using the yardsticks of discrimination, accessibility and affordability, Lamarche said. Her group is organizing a public seminar on the issue on Oct. 25.

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