It’s Santé Québec’s anniversary. Whoop-dee-doo.
December 1, 2025, was a sad day. The Dubé reform and the creation of Santé Québec has pushed what remained of the health and social services network right over the edge. After three overhauls in less than 20 years, laws enacted under closure, and a government with a haughty attitude, promises have clearly not been kept.
The outcome has been catastrophic for employees in the network, regardless of what Geneviève “Top Gun” Biron would say. To be sure, one-year wait times for surgery have decreased, and fewer children are waiting to be assessed by youth protection. However, the number of patients still waiting to see a specialist has increased to 900,000, wait times in the emergency room haven’t budged, and there’s a critical shortage of doctors.
Do you remember the promises about each workplace having an accountable manager with genuine decision-making power? To the contrary, more decisions are being centralized—Biron’s modus operandi—and transparency has decreased, exactly the opposite of what the public was promised.
Faced with nearly $1 billion in cuts, the network’s 330,000 employees have paid the price over the past year. No sooner had we recovered from the shock of experiencing a worldwide pandemic than our workforce, still in a diminished state, was confronted with a genuine situation of care being dehumanized because of constant overwork month after month.
One the one hand, the number of managerial positions is rising (even though a reduction in such positions was promised each time the network was restructured), while on the other hand, workloads also keep increasing, severely deteriorating conditions in the workplace. We don’t need new managers; what we need are frontline workers to deliver care and services to the public.
Here are some of the issues we’ve seen in recent months:
- Massive job cuts
- Hiring freezes last spring
- Closure of departments and absorption by other departments
- Non replacement of absent employees, creating contingency situations
- PURA (Programme unique de reconnaissance de l’ancienneté – the only bright spot for our members). Among the many problems besetting the program, the government has delayed its implementation.
- Delays in the payment of certain premiums and in implementing premium levels, millieu premiums, and retroactive pay
- And more…
The sad fact is that one year has passed and we’re still waiting for the benefits promised by this bureaucratic reform. Even worse, our healthcare system is moving toward a multi-tiered system and surreptitiously letting in private pay through the back door. Working conditions are getting worse overall and soon, only a privileged few will have full and timely access to healthcare services, unlike their less privileged counterparts.
Sophie Bibeau