CAQ denounces cuts at MUHC
Vows to table nurses’ petition in National Assembly in September
The union representing nursing staff at the McGill University Health Centre got the backing of the second opposition party in the Quebec legislature on Thursday in its fight against spending cuts to the institution.
Coalition Avenir Québec MNAs Nathalie Roy and Lise Lavallée held a joint news conference together with the head of the union, Denyse Joseph, to denounce what they say has been $120 million in cuts over the last five years. The result has been a decline in patient care and burnout of the nursing staff, many of whom are now on stress leave, they said.
In a further attempt to get the attention of Quebec Health Minister Gaétan Barrette — who is already at odds with the hospital administration over funding and management — the CAQ has promised to be the standard-bearer of a union-sponsored petition with 14,000 signatures calling for the restoration of proper funding for the $1.3-billion super-hospital.
The nurses union painstakingly gathered the signatures of patients and citizens by setting up tables in the MUHC’s various units during the last few months.
The CAQ will table the petition in the legislature when the National Assembly resumes sitting in September.
“From what I see, something abnormal is going on,” Roy told reporters at a news conference in the union’s offices.
“You have a brand new hospital, brand new facilities, and it isn’t working as it should be. There’s pressure on the nurses, patients in the corridors.
“We built that beautiful hospital to solve those problems, and obviously, it’s getting worse. There’s a problem there.”
Added Lavallée: “Today, MUHC nurses and professionals are sending a desperate cry for help that we can’t ignore.”
When asked when the additional funding was needed, Joseph — the president of the Union of Nursing and Cardio-Respiratory Professionals of the MUHC — was blunt.
“We needed it yesterday,” she said.
But the issue rapidly took on the makings of a political football game, with Barrette responding to the accusations that the hospital is being shortchanged and commenting on the CAQ’s involvement.
“The CAQ is desperate to get additional votes and are basically playing politics,” Barrette said in a later telephone interview. “And by playing that kind of politics, they are demonstrating their incompetency when it comes to health care. As a party, they would lead us right into a brick wall.”
Barrette said if the CAQ one day formed a government and wanted to raise funding for one hospital, it would have to do the same for all the province’s hospitals.
“This is a party that says that it wants to reduce taxes and, at the same time, raise funding to hospitals,” Barrette said. “Could they explain where they would get the money to do that? It doesn’t add up.
“They give the people the impression things are possible when they are not.”
Barrette restated that, despite the union’s assertion, the hospital is funded at exactly the same level as hospitals of a similar size and with a similar vocation.
But Joseph painted a bleak picture of the hospital’s reality, saying the cuts started under a Parti Québécois government and continued under the Liberals. The MUHC’s budget today stands at about $850 million, down from more than $1 billion a decade ago.
The direct result has been the elimination of 200 vacant healthcare positions, despite the team’s excessive workload. The number of beds at the MUHC today stands at 710, down from 832 a few years ago, which has caused delays in elective surgery, Joseph said.
Joseph said Barrette recently imposed an emergency overcapacity policy, which means patients get transferred out of ER and often results in two people being in a room designed for one person or leaving people in the hallways. And this without the addition of staff, Joseph said.
“It just shifted the same problem,” Joseph said. “They are able to disguise the emergency ward numbers, but the health units take a hit, the patients take a hit.”
You have a brand new hospital, brand new facilities, and it isn’t working as it should be. NATHALIE ROY