MUHC’s plight underlines bigger problem
Keep taking anglos for granted at your own peril, Liberals warned
Health Minister Gaétan Barrette still doesn’t get it. He took to the airwaves Tuesday to defend his harsh treatment of the McGill University Health Centre.
He insisted it needs to be “stabilized,” accused administrators of making statements that are “not factual,” and disputed that the MUHC is underfunded compared to the Centre Hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal.
He also claimed that a Machiavellian proposal to make the MUHC part of a larger hospital “conglomerate” with one or both west-end Montreal health bodies is not his idea and purely theoretical. (Barrette doesn’t like the word merger. Maybe because it brings back too many bad memories for Montrealers?)
In other words, it was business as usual for Quebec’s bombastic health minister, whose reforms to governance, budget cuts and slippery approach to potential amalgamation have significantly weakened Montreal’s worldclass English-language university health centre.
Hours later, the MUHC board of directors challenged Barrette’s assertions. As my colleague Aaron Derfel reported, Dr. Oliver Court, the head of the council of physicians, dentists and pharmacists, reiterated frustrations that the MUHC’s funding is being dictated by an outdated, 10-year-old plan that is not in keeping with the volume of patients today. And interim executive director, Martine Alfonso, maintained the MUHC’s 832 beds are funded only at 85 per cent capacity.
A stalemate has set in, between the unflinching minister and a hospital network waiting for the axe to fall.
But Barrette would be wise to reconsider his obstinacy. Since I wrote a column this week urging the public to stand up for the MUHC, I have been inundated with responses from readers who are grateful for the care the bilingual hospital network provides when their health is on the line and outraged at how it has been diminished.
Many have seen firsthand the results of the $120 million in cuts carried out at the MUHC. They have witnessed doctors and nurses moving heaven and earth to maintain quality care for patients, sometimes to the point of exhaustion. Some have loved ones who are suffering under these cuts, having their surgeries cancelled or staying in unclean rooms. Others have experienced the fallout themselves. They are fuming over Barrette’s maligning and undermining of an institution the community helped build.
But public concern about the hobbled MUHC is a symptom of a larger malaise.
The anglophone community is sick and tired of issues that matter to them being taken for granted by the Quebec Liberals, a party most of them have loyally supported for decades. Many told me their patience is rapidly running out and that they are toying with taking their votes elsewhere in 2018.
Is that just bluster? A Mainstreet poll of 1,500 Quebecers conducted for the Montreal Gazette and Postmedia last week shows the Quebec Liberals and the Coalition Avenir Québec are in a statistical dead heat, with 31 and 32 per cent support apiece. The CAQ surge in the last few weeks can be partly attributed to the party picking up traditional Liberal backers. With the numbers for the Parti Québécois down in the dumps, the risks of shifting allegiance have been greatly reduced for federalists and minorities.
Although pollster David Valentin suggested the erosion in Liberal support is due to a blast of past corruption coming back to haunt them, I would suggest any collapse of their Montreal base is at least in part a result of repeatedly ignoring their concerns.
Here are a few recent examples: the English-speaking community very politely floated the idea of an anglophone affairs secretariat being created inside the Quebec bureaucracy. Premier Philippe Couillard rebuffed the proposal, promising instead to appoint a liaison within his office. Was formalizing the position not needed, as he suggested, or just not worth it?
There are irregularities that warrant investigation at two of Montreal’s English-language school boards that the community certainly wants to see thoroughly probed. But an earlier proposal to abolish school board elections had to be abandoned. Though some parents were for it and the greater role Bill 86 would have given them, constitutionally enshrined minority language protections were threatened.
Then there are the grave omissions in the new provincial history curriculum that give short shrift to the contributions of anglophones, indigenous people and other minority groups to Quebec society. It was drafted when the PQ was in power, but the Liberals haven’t stepped in to prevent stereotypical portrayals from being perpetuated for future generations.
There are structural reasons the Quebec Liberals get away with taking English speakers and other minorities for granted. The commission in charge of redrawing Quebec’s electoral map has — once again — reinforced the electoral weight of the (shrinking) francophone majority in the regions at the expense of minority communities in Montreal. Now this supposedly apolitical work by an independent body, has created a political headache for the Quebec Liberals. Municipalities and community groups on the island of Montreal have banded together to fight the electoral boundary changes. On Thursday, they will announce a court challenge, to be led by constitutional expert Julius Grey.
Are Quebec anglophones demanding too much? Basic respect, acknowledgment of their interests and preservation of their institutions hardly seem like asking for the moon. And if talk of merging the MUHC is merely a trial balloon as Barrette claims, why doesn’t he go ahead and pop it already?
The Liberals should continue to ignore Montreal’s Englishspeaking community at their own peril. Not only are they mobilizing to stand up for their hospitals, they are ready to stand up for themselves.