One week later, CAQ’s wage freeze on back burner
QUEBEC The provincial government has backtracked after saying last week it had frozen the salaries of Quebec’s medical specialists.
“Before we talk about a freeze or anything else for that matter, we have to fully understand the agreement,” Treasury Board President Christian Dubé told reporters arriving for a Wednesday cabinet meeting.
“For the moment, there is no freeze because we want to understand the numbers which would be frozen if we were to freeze.”
Dubé’s comments contradict those of Premier François Legault, who said last week the government had slapped a wage freeze on the province’s 10,000 medical specialists pending renegotiation of the agreement with their federation.
He said the money would be held in trust. He made the same comments during the election campaign, complaining the Liberal government had given away the store to specialists while other parts of the health-care system suffered.
He said he wanted to reduce a specialist’s wage from $400,000 a year to $320,000, estimating the savings at about $1 billion.
Legault’s statement last week on the freeze puzzled the specialists, with Diane Francoeur, president of the Fédération des médicins spécialistes du Québec (FMSQ), saying they were not expecting any wage increase until 2023.
The only increases in the agreement signed between the two parties in 2017 was in the form of more money — between $125 million and $192 million — for doctors in regions, Francoeur said, warning the government that such a freeze could cause hardships for many patients.
Legault also said that before anything happens on the issue he wants to have in hand a study comparing the wages and benefits of Quebec’s specialists with those of their Canadian counterparts.
On Wednesday Dubé told reporters that after a breakfast meeting over omelettes with Francoeur, both sides agreed to try to work together. He announced the two will sign, within two weeks, an agreement allowing the study to go ahead.
STUDY TO COMPARE WAGES
To be conducted by the independent Canadian Institute for Health Information and completed by September 2019, it will compare the wages of Quebec’s specialists with those in the other provinces.
If the conclusions back the Coalition Avenir Québec’s line that the agreement is too generous for the doctors, the government could feel justified in reopening the agreement.
The tone was much different from last week when the federation threatened to take the government to court if it tries to reopen the deal.
While Dubé backed down on the talk of a freeze, a smiling Francoeur told reporters that doctors would rather co-operate with the government to improve services rather than have a nasty spat.
She welcomed the arrival of Dubé to the talks as a replacement of former health minister Gaétan Barrette.
“It was three and a half years of confrontation, it was my way or no way,” Francoeur told reporters in reference to Barrette. “We (doctors) are much more efficient in delivering services when the mood is co-operative.”
She said she hoped the new study brings concrete data to the table proving they deserve the wage increases granted by the Liberals as a catch-up to wages offered specialists elsewhere.
“We have no desire to hide things,” she said in reference to the bad press the specialists got over the agreements. “We took a real hit on this last year and we want to put this behind us.”
Dubé, however, denied Legault got carried away last week.
“Mr. Legault is never too quick,” Dubé said. “It’s my job to make sure that I understand the agreement very clearly. This is a very complex agreement. I need to understand it and when I understand the details of the agreement then we’ll start negotiations.”