This text is part of the special Syndicalism booklet
Last month, the Ministry of Health and Social Services announced its “Health Plan”, which aims to put a system damaged by the COVID-19 pandemic back on track by making it, according to the main stakeholders, more accessible. and more efficient.
Last month, the Ministry of Health and Social Services announced its “Health Plan”, which aims to put a system damaged by the COVID-19 pandemic back on track by making it, according to the main stakeholders, more accessible. and more efficient.
This announcement does not prevent Robert Comeau, president of the Alliance du personnel professionnel et technique de la santé et des services sociaux (APTS), from expressing categorical skepticism which does not seem unrelated to the outcome of the first series of negotiations between the government du Québec and the Front commun syndical made up not only of the APTS, but also of the CSN, the FTQ and the CSQ.
Mr. Comeau is also very satisfied with the first meeting of the negotiating teams last month in Quebec. “We were close to a thousand people and we were able to tie everything together, solidify everything,” he says.
“As for the negotiation as such, we filed intersectoral offers for the first time. We got an update recently, but it’s not much better [que les offres initiales du gouvernement] “, he continues, adding that, for the moment, the process seems to him usual.
Democratic deficit
From the outset, the President of the APTS notes that the current Minister of Health, Christian Dubé, is continuing the momentum of a trend established by his predecessors in previous governments for nearly twenty years, namely a centralization increased decision-making processes and efficiency measures, what Mr. Comeau calls “the obsession with dashboards”.
But what worries Robert Comeau above all with this centralization is the democratic deficit it engenders.
“We care about it and we believe in our public service, but what is most important is the democratic aspect of the network,” he explains, considering that the advent of Santé Québec, the superstructure that will succeed the MSSS, disconnect the head of its members.
“Across the regions, doctors and workers are nowhere in the decision-making structure, or even for consultations. It worries us a lot to see that the regions will no longer have decision-making power,” he explains.
The private, again and again
But it is not only this hypercentralization of decision-making powers in health that undermines this important democratic character of the system. The use of the private sector, probably considered a panacea given its omnipresence in the public apparatus, constitutes another threat.
“After two decades of budget cuts, we haven’t given the public system a great chance, but we still expect it to perform well. He was given no means other than recourse to the private sector, supposedly complementary to the public network, ”denounces Mr. Comeau.
“Basically, we want to put the private and the public in competition, but by favoring the private”, he protests.
A coalition that transcends the union world
For Mr. Comeau, beyond decentralization, the population must also have a voice in the decision-making process within Health Quebec in order to guarantee a truly democratic system.
Moreover, the union can count on the support of many actors in civil society, through the Coalition Riposte au Plan santé made up of 35 organizations, in particular the Coalition solidaire santé (of which the APTS is a member), the Ligue of rights and freedoms and the collective Care for social justice.
Gathered under the slogan “Stop the machine”, the coalition is calling for a genuine democratic debate on the directions that Santé Québec and the Health Plan will take. It also recalls the damage caused to the public health network by systemic racism, the devaluation of the public system and its community character, in addition to the ravages of privatization.
She calls for what she sees as real reform, brought together with community actors and marginalized populations directly affected by the current transformations of the system.
Mr. Comeau recalls, not without a certain nostalgia, the heyday of the local community service center (CLSC) system. “But all of that disappears as local structures are abolished and everything is brought back to the national level. »
Mr. Comeau says he wants to raise this problem in a possible parliamentary committee.
This special content was produced by the Special Publications team of the Duty, relating to marketing. The drafting of Duty did not take part.
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2023-04-29 04:01:29
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