Deal with specialists settles past promises
Government takes the unusual step of making parts of agreement public
QUEBEC CITY Arguing it would be ir responsible to tear up past agreements, Treasury Board President Pierre Arcand said Friday that the province comes out a winner with a new deal it has negotiated with its medical specialists.
“The deal we are presenting to you today allows us to settle up for the past,” Arcand said at a news conference moving to deflect criticism that Quebec’s medical specialists have hit the proverbial jackpot.
“A contract cannot be torn up without there being consequences.”
Arcand was making reference to a large chunk of the money in the agreement — $1.5 billion over the next 10 years — devoted to paying an accumulated debt owed to Quebec’s 10,000 medical specialists. The meter has been running since 2012.
Those were the days when specialists in Quebec earned as much as 40 per cent less than in other provinces and successive governments promised raises to close the gap to avoid doctors fleeing to greener pastures.
But cash-s trapped regimes never paid the money and today settling that debt alone represents 2.2 per cent of the increases granted by the Couillard government in the deal made public Friday.
That’ s on top of another $511 million or 11.2 percent in re current increases (1.4 percent a year) spread over eight years. Altogether that’s about $2 billion more for doctors by the end of 2023.
And despite the government’s insistence that none of this is new money, Arcand acknowledged there’s not much he can do about the political optics; hence the battering that the Couillard regime has taken from the opposition and media over the deal.
“You know the public’s perception is always that doctors earn too much ,” Arc and said .“Regardless of what you do or say, people always find doctors earn too much.”
He noted doctors, nevertheless, work long odd hours and spend years studying before they get to hang out their shingle.
Arcand’s news conference followed a week of headlines about fat-cat doctors getting fatter, which put the Couillard government on the defensive. In full damage control, Arc and called in the news media for a technical briefing with negotiators and took the unusual step of making parts of the agreement public.
Negotiators played up the concessions they squeezed out of the Fédération des médecins spécialistes du Québec (FMSQ), which represents the doctors. They total $3.6 billion in savings to the state by 2023, which is the life of the agreement.
Among the concessions, specialists abandoned what is referred to as a “trailer clause” — an amount they would have obtained by piggybacking on increases in the rest of the public sector. That alone could have represented 5.25 per cent more (about $1.4 billion).
But the debate rages on over whether Quebec’s specialists are now going to earn more than their counterparts in other provinces.
One report this week claimed that, with this deal, Quebec’s specialists could wind up the best paid in Canada, earning on average $36,000 more a year than doctors in Ontario.
Part of the agreement made public Friday says the two sides have now agreed to allow the Canadian Institute for Health Information to conduct an independent study on wages between the two provinces that factors in Quebec’ slower cost of living.
Arcand indicated the debate might be a tempest in a teapot. Ontario doctors have been without a contract since 2014 and they are seeking a 39-per-centincrease. An arbitrator will soon rule on the increases.
On Friday, however, the opposition parties were not easing up on the criticism of the deal, which they have called “indecent,” given the state of the health care system.
Coalition Avenir Québec health critic François Paradis dismissed Arcand’s disclosures as window dressing and an attempt to divert attention from the fact Quebec is paying its doctors way more than necessary.
Parti Québécois health critic Diane Lamarre said if a PQ government had $511 million to throw around it would go to home care not the specialists.
Québec solidaire MNA Amir Khadir said all the government has done is try to paper over the scandal, which is more money for doctors.