The idea put forward by the Parti Québécois (PQ) to abolish Santé Québec in order to reduce the size of government is “not realistic,” according to Quebec Health Minister Sonia Bélanger.
On Wednesday, she was asked to respond to an article in the Journal de Québec in which PQ Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon pledged to abolish the agency if he takes office on Oct. 5.
Santé Québec was created in 2024 with the goal of separating broad ministerial policy from day-to-day operations within the healthcare system.
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As a result, Quebec now has a Ministry of Health and Social Services, which sets policy, and an agency, which implements it.
However, in less than two years, Santé Québec has increased its number of civil servants by 70 per cent and costs taxpayers an additional $40 million per year, laments St-Pierre Plamondon.
Last June, he hinted to the Chamber of Commerce of Metropolitan Montreal that a PQ government would dismantle Santé Québec.
The PQ leader said at the time that he wanted to focus on “the essentials” in health care. He is expected to unveil the details of his proposal later this week, the party said on Wednesday.
Bélanger is already speaking out against this idea. “It’s not realistic at all,” she said during a press scrum at the National Assembly.
“There was a transfer of employees from the ministry to Santé Québec. All of that has already been done. Those were significant negotiations. We won’t go back to that.”
“We’ve shown a lot of courage, and we’ve worked hard. Santé Québec is really taking off, so there’s no way we’re going back to the old system,” she added.
According to Bélanger, who will once again be running for the CAQ in Prévost, Santé Québec has, above all, delivered results for the public.
“There have been improvements. Look at the surgical waiting lists—they’ve gone down. We’re providing more home care services, and people have better access to family doctors.
“It’s not perfect yet, but we’re getting there,” she argued.
Santé Québec also speaks of “visible improvements in access, (…) particularly regarding surgical wait times.”
“Such an abolition would once again disrupt the network’s operations and the ongoing transformation,” warns its spokesperson, Yann Langlais Plante.
Liberal Leader Charles Milliard—a pharmacist by training—accuses St-Pierre Plamondon of wanting to drag Quebecers into another “structuralist drama.”
He says he has a special thought for the hundreds of thousands of people currently working in the healthcare system.
“I don’t think they want to relive another bad chapter of organizational chart reviews,” he said during a press conference in Montreal.
“What I’m proposing (…) is to sit down with Santé Québec and give them my guidelines on how we can better decentralize decision-making in the health care sector,” he added.
–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews
