Committee created to oversee anglos’ access to health services
It’s good to have screaming rights, but it’s better to have suing rights, lawyer Eric Maldoff joked following an announcement Monday that the government will create an official English-language committee responsible for maintaining access to health and social services.
Quebec Health Minister Gaétan Barrette and Kathleen Weil, the minister responsible for relations with English-speaking Quebecers, announced new regulations creating a provincial access committee.
Barrette said problems for English speakers in health care existed long before he enacted Bill 10, which abolished local boards at various institutions.
“I’m announcing a solution to a problem that already existed,” he said. “I understood that the community wanted to have a voice in one, clearly established way, through a provincial committee on access.”
How much money will be set aside for the committee will be made public at a later date, Barrette said.
Maldoff, who heads the Quebec Community Groups Network health and social services committee, praised Barrette for following through on a commitment.
Maldoff said the rights of English speakers cannot depend on the goodwill of the government.
“Our right to health and social services in our language depends on the creation of proper access plans that spell out the services we can access,” said Maldoff, a key figure in the lobbying campaign of several community organizations to give anglophones more of a say in running their institutions after Barrette’s administrative reform of hospital governance, set in motion in 2015, had merged the management of health institutions, cut hundreds of administrators and also drastically reduced their governing boards and patients’ committees.
Bill 10 was a catalyst for the community because it radically restructured the health system, Maldoff said.
“Communities genuinely felt the loss of their boards,” he said. “They felt they were was in control of their institutions and suddenly they were out. If everyone goes home then this is just being run by bureaucrats. And that doesn’t lead to best quality or best care. The data suggests that what drives quality is engaged senior volunteers that know the community and its needs.”
It took three years of work to update the regulations governing the advisory committee.
“This represents a sea change in the relationship between the community and the Ministry of Health,” Maldoff said.
The revamped provincial advisory committee will monitor the health care services in English and provide recommendations of what’s needed and where, as well as keep an eye on the quality of the care provided.
Under the new regulations, which go into effect Wednesday, two community groups, the Quebec Community Groups Network and the Community Health and Social Services Network, are to make recommendations to the minister on appointments to the provincial committee and regional committees. Barrette will have the final word on the candidates.
The provincial committee will have 11 representatives, four from the Montreal area including one from Laval, one from the Eastern Townships, one from Outaouais, and four from the rest of the province. With suing rights, Maldoff explained, is that “when all else fails, you can go to court and plead your case before a judge. This regulation, once an access program has been developed and approved by cabinet, by decree, at that point it’s a right enshrined by law.”
The committee is expected to be in place by the end of June.