GPs to receive 14.7% pay increase over six years

Average salary will climb to around $249,000 per year

The provincial government says it has “settled its debt” with general practitioners by increasing their remuneration by 14.7 per cent by 2023.

The increase will cost $340 million and there will be additional, non-recurring payments to doctors of at least $635 million.

The government chose to respect past agreements, which provided for increases that were delayed and spread out over time.

“Today, what we are saying is we will take on all of this, these arrears, and we will pay them,” Treasury Board President Pierre Moreau said at a press conference at a medical clinic in Quebec City on Friday.

The agreement in principle, reached in August between Quebec and the Fédération des médecins omnipraticiens, was ratified by a vote of 96 per cent, with 60 per cent of members voting.

The agreement, which will be retroactive to 2015, when the last deal between general practitioners and the government expired, is equivalent to giving family doctors an average increase of 1.8 per cent per year over eight years.

The average salary of a family doctor is $245,000, while specialists, on average, make more than $400,000 per year.

With this agreement, the average salary of general practitioners will increase to around $249,000.

An independent study by the Canadian Institute for Health Information will also take place to compare GPs’ salaries in Quebec and Ontario.

The Canada Health Act requires provinces to pay doctors competitive salaries.

While Moreau is of the view that doctors’ salaries in Quebec have now caught up with those in Ontario, FMOQ president Louis Godin maintains that the current gap is between 15 and 20 per cent.

“We will see the result of the study,” he said. “If the study shows that the gap is closed, perfect, the gap is closed and we will be very pleased with the situation.”

The conclusions of the CIHI will not be binding on the government.

In the meantime, Godin said doctors are on-track to meet government targets for patient care.

The FMOQ is required to ensure that 85 per cent of Quebecers have a family doctor by Dec. 31, 2017. As of Sept. 15, 77.5 per cent of Quebecers were registered with a doctor.

Parti Québécois health critic MNA Diane Lamarre said the government was working for doctors and not patients. She also criticized the fact that the agreement was not made public.

“Because the deal is secret, it is impossible to know what additional services the public will be entitled to in exchange. In fact, we don’t even know if there will be any guarantee of additional services whatsoever,” she said in a release.

The Coalition Avenir Québec also criticized the deal.

“Thousands of Quebecers don’t have access to a family doctor, our emergency rooms are overflowing and the Liberal government is giving new salary increases to doctors,” said CAQ MNA François Paradis.

W e will take on all of this, these arrears, and we will pay them.

PIERRE MORNEAU, Treasury Board president