Published May 29, 2024

By Trevor Greenway

A year ago this May, the federal government warned Quebec that it would have a health crisis in the Outaouais unless serious money was injected into the region. 

Liberal Pontiac MP Sophie Chatel says the CAQ government didn’t listen, and now the Outaouais is experiencing a major disruption of services. Staffing levels are at an all-time low, hospital wait times are at an all-time high, and operating rooms and medical scans are set to close at a number of hospitals in the region. 

On May 22, 2023, Chatel sent a letter to then Quebec Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos, noting that the Outaouais was “hemorrhaging” from healthcare workers migrating to Ontario, where wages and working conditions are more favourable. The letter, obtained by the Low Down, refers to a number of studies, such as the Observatoire du développement de l’Outaouais (ODO), which revealed that the “Outaouais region will be short of around 1,000 nurses and nearly 250 doctors by 2020–2021.”

The report also notes that the Outaouais needed 198 short-term beds and 502 long-term beds to reach Quebec average of beds per 100,000 inhabitants. In 2021 alone, the Outaouais received $781 less per capita for local health and social services programs than the Quebec average, according to the ODO.

When asked if she thinks the Quebec government is taking the Outaouais health crises seriously, Chatel said, “No.”

“We read the documents, the statistics and the data, and we thought we were building a good argument for why it’s important to invest more in healthcare and the region to avoid a situation like we are seeing now,” added Chatel. “So I don’t know why [the Liberal party was] not listened to. Perhaps it’s because it’s not our jurisdiction, and I get that. But we knock on doors, we meet with citizens, and they don’t necessarily want to hear,  ‘I’m sorry, this is not my jurisdiction.’ They want solutions to their problems.”

According to a 2021 Institut de recherche et d’informations socioéconomiques (IRIS) report, nearly 12,700 people travelled to Ontario hospitals for care because of the struggles in the Outaouais. Chatel said that she’s heard from several of her West Quebec constituents that Ontario clinics are increasingly turning down Quebec patients. 

For Chatel, the solution is simple: it’s funding – funding for staff, funding for equipment, but most importantly, funding that will make salaries for healthcare workers on par with those in Ontario. 

In a recent letter to Quebec Health Minister Christian Dubé, Chatel called on Quebec to “improve the salary bonus and working conditions of healthcare personnel”; fund “modernization of medical technology systems” to facilitate information sharing between Ontario and Quebec; prioritize “inter-regional equity” so the Outaouais gets its fair share of health funding; and to apply the “principle of portability” so that Quebec patients can be treated in Ontario as if they were Ontario residents. 

Scroll to Top