Protesting med students stage strike to decry ‘ extreme’ Bill 20

Hundreds of students from Quebec’s four medical schools donned lab coats and protested outside the National Assembly on Monday against Bill 20.

Medical students voted for a one- day strike against the legislation, which would impose a load of up to 1,500 patients on doctors to increase their productivity. MDs who don’t meet their goals would have their pay slashed by up to 30 per cent.

Ashley Wynne, a third- year McGill med student with a stethoscope hanging around her neck, said the legislation has led her to have second thoughts about specializing in family medicine for the first time.

And she said she isn’t the only one.

“There are a lot of our classmates who weren’t sure what they were doing before, not sure where they ’re going. I’ve heard many, many of them say they don’t want to do family medicine anymore,” she said.

Emma Preston, another McGill med student, chimed in: “If Barrette were to have his way, my future as a family doctor would look very dismal.”

Holding up a handwritten that read “We can’t reduce you to a number,” Myriam Daignault, a first- year med student at Université de Montréal, said she disagrees with the weighting system the bill would use to categorize patients.

A healthy patient would equal 0.8 patients, according to the system. More vulnerable patients would be worth more: a single patient receiving palliative care would represent 25, for example.

“We don’t think that any patient is worth more or less than another,” Daignault said. “We don’t want to see our patients as numbers, but as human beings.”

Nebras Warsi, president of the Medical Students’ Society of McGill University, said students wanted to make their point loud and clear without being disruptive.

“McGill students don’t really mobilize. We’ve never done this,” he said. “It really takes something as extreme as this bill ( for us) to come to Quebec City and demonstrate and show the government directly how worried we are.”

The strike didn’t affect patients in McGill- affiliated hospitals and clinics, he said, because med students mostly work there as observers under a doctor’s watch.

In Quebec City for another announcement, Health and Social Services Minister Gaétan Barrette said it’s “astonishing ” to hear students criticize the system when they haven’t worked in it yet.

“Clearly, they are transmitting or relaying positions by ( doctors’) federations maybe, or political parties,” he said. “But, to me, it is surprising to see them ( making those) assertions themselves. I think they’re going a step too far.”

To students unhappy with Bill 20 and considering moving to another province for work, Barrette said “Good luck.”

“I’m sure that there will be positions available in Nunavut and Nunavik, but I’m not sure that there be positions available in Toronto.”

We don’t think that any patient is worth more or less … We don’t want to see our patients as numbers. MYRIAM DAIGNAULT