By Trevor Greenway
An ER doctor in Gatineau says that if the region cuts $97 million out of its healthcare budget, it will “lead to more suffering” in the Outaouais.
Dr. Peter Bonneville, who is also president of Conseil des médecins, dentistes et pharmaciens (CMDP) of the Integrated Health and Social Services Centre of Outaouais (CISSSO), told the Low Down that he is “very worried” about the impacts to local health services in the region.
His concern comes after the province’s new health authority, Santé Quebec, ordered hospitals and clinics across the province to slash a total of $150 million from its budgets by March of next year.
Santé Quebec said the cuts are in an effort to avoid a $1 billion provincial deficit, and said the Outaouais’ portion will be about $90 million.
“The people in the trenches – people who are actually doing the job, being with patients, evaluating them, treating them, doing the tests that they need – everybody is worried right now,” said Bonneville. “I think it’s with great certainty that anybody who looks at the math behind the numbers will see that this is totally unrealistic. It’s unrealistic that we are going to be able to cut $90 million and people will not suffer.”
Bonneville said the cuts to this region will be felt tenfold compared to other regions across the province, since the Outaouis has been chronically underfunded in health and social services for the past decade.
According to the Observatoire du développement de l’Outaouais (ODO), there is a shortfall of $181 million to bring the Outaouais region up to the provincial average in healthcare funding. What this suggests is that the new health authority, which officially takes over on Dec. 1, is making significant cuts to an already historically underfunded region.
Bonneville said the cuts will lead to fewer nurses, fewer technicians and, ultimately, fewer beds for patients. He said he worries about home care services for patients who require follow-up care once they leave the hospital. He said waiting lists will skyrocket, and patients who need a gallstone operation, for example, will wait up to three years in Quebec for surgery, where those who go across the river to Ontario can get the surgery within a month.
“This is not going to improve,” added Bonneville. “I also see patients that go back home and need to have care at home through different people – social workers, physiotherapists, occupational therapists – and we’re going to lose staffing for that, and I’m very worried that we’re not going to be able to give them the care they need after leaving the hospital.”
‘We can do it’ says CISSSO head
CISSSO CEO Dr. Marc Bilodeau told the Low Down that the projected $1 billion deficit in the province’s healthcare is aimed at home care services and agency workers, who have been brought in temporarily to help with the region’s staffing crisis, and is also because CISSSO will not be reimbursed this year for inflation or the rise in cost of living. Bilodeau said that he sees inefficiencies throughout the entire health sector that could be streamlined to reduce costs.
“Obviously, $90 million is a significant amount for us,” said Bilodeau, adding that this number represents about six per cent of the CISSSO’s overall $150 billion budget. “The good news is we can do it, and I’m confident we can do it without impacting care. We have a target to basically completely remove those agency employees, in the fall of 2026, so that will definitely make significant savings for us.”
Those “agency workers,” according to health watchdog group Vigi Santé, costs CISSSO $15 million every year, but with staffing levels operating at between 30 and 40 per cent at the Gatineau and Hull hospitals, the region didn’t have much choice in hiring them.
Wakefield Hospital safe but will change
When Santé Quebec announced the cuts in mid-November, watchdog groups and health critics became concerned about the future of the Wakefield Hospital, which has been threatened with closure on and off for the past decade.
Bilodeau assured the Low Down that services in Wakefield would remain intact.
“The intent is not to impact services negatively,” said Bilodeau. “This doesn’t mean that there’s going to be no change in services, though. The intent is to maintain the same level of care but with less resources.”
Bilodeau used the example of cutting walk-in blood testing and moving to appointment-based services to cut down on hours worked. Bilodeau said he would also look at reducing overtime hours for nurses and other hospital employees as areas to cut.
Agency workers too expensive: Vigi Santé
Vigi Santé spokesperson Marcel Chartrand said the Outaouais got into this trouble because it relied too heavily on these agency workers, which cost CISSSO between $10–15 million every year.
He explained that, because the region is so close to Ontario, the Outaouais consistently loses healthcare workers to Ottawa – namely nurses and technicians who travel across the river where they can make significantly more money and work under better conditions.
“So you pay [agency workers] more, and in some cases, you have to lodge them. You have to provide transportation. So it all adds up,” added Chartrand.
The CAQ ‘mismanaged spending’
Liberal Health Critic and MNA for Pontiac André Fortin said that CAQ leader and Quebec Premier François Legault broke his promise earlier this year when he said that healthcare wouldn’t be cut amid provincial spending cuts. He argued that the CAQ has “mismanaged spending” since it came into power in 2018.
“When the CAQ government came in, they had a $7 billion surplus. Now we’re facing an $11 billion deficit, and it’s growing, even though they are making cuts left, right and centre,” said Fortin. “And so they’re turning to the healthcare network, which the premier himself promised would be unaffected by potential cuts. It goes directly against what the CAQ had promised.”
“They had promised that the Outaouais would be able to catch up with the rest of the province in terms of healthcare funding,” he continued. “Now we’re being cut just like everybody else. And we already have some of the worst healthcare in the province. We know it’s already immensely difficult for people to access [the] healthcare network. This will only get worse.”
Fortin said he has been paying attention to what services other regions have targeted, and it includes dialysis projects, needed renovations for youth centres and cuts to the hiring of nurses and other medical staff.
SOS Outaouais executive-director Jean Pigeon said that the cuts, combined with a hiring freeze in the Outaouais, will put more pressure on current employees and lead to longer wait times for patients.
“When an organization is asked to cut spending on this scale, it confirms that the system is inadequate to meet the needs of its population,” said Pigeon, head of health watchdog group SOS Outaouais. “These cuts will have a negative impact on services, whether we like it or not. These are the citizens who will pay the price in a region that is already playing catch-up.”
SOS Outaouais is calling for $181 million in funding to correct the region’s shortfall and “differentiated compensation and incentives” to attract and retain staff in a cross-border context.