If there was a consensus at the end of the pandemic, it is that the health system needed a boost, a big boost.
Money alone would not solve the problems, structural reforms were also needed.
However, neither of these two main objectives will have been achieved at the end of a political standoff that will have lasted two years. And the worst part of all this is that we are all losers: Ottawa, Quebec and us, the patients.
The reign of the status quo
Justin Trudeau dreamed big. In-depth reforms, national standards for CHSLDs, a guarantee of services for billions. In the end—, he will only have adjusted the old federal methods to give the illusion of better transparency and better accountability.
At most, he will have forced the hand of the provinces on the modernization of data.
Let’s say that we are far from the political victory he hoped for and which he needed to revive his government weakened by a terrible start to the year 2023.
For François Legault, the defeat is bitter.
Put away its balance of power, its paying nationalism, its common front. He is condemned to do like Philippe Couillard before him, take the money while grumbling and hoping that it is only a postponement.
That is where the drama lies. At the end of a pandemic which broke the kidneys of our fragile health system, the political class fell back on its old reflexes.
The lock
As the saying goes, it’s hard to do something new with something old.
Yet this is what Minister Christian Dubé is trying to do with his Health Plan. It is a question here of finally trying to implement reforms too often abandoned in the past.
We work on the margins without daring to think regarding the essentials: is our universal public system viable in the long term when we already know that it is one of the most expensive and least efficient in the world?
But to dare to ask this question, one would have to dare to debate the ultimate sacred cow: the Canada Health Actthe straitjacket that frames everything else.
After being idealized, it has become a political weapon. Impossible to discuss it without being accused by the Liberals and the NDP of wanting to impose American-style medicine in Canada. As if there were not dozens of adjoining health systems, like those we see in Europe.
To dare, it would take a lot of political courage, a strong mandate from the population and the time to set up a Special Commission to give birth to a new formula.
Justin Trudeau no longer has the political capital, he preferred peace at a low price. Pierre Poilièvre will not take the risk of touching the kryptonite of health.
Meanwhile, the Legault government is preparing to crack down on the private agencies that vampirize the network. But in the same breath, he relies on private surgery clinics to reduce waiting lists, without asking too many questions regarding their long-term impact.
Look for consistency.
