LJI reporter

Sophie Kuijper Dickson, LJI Journalist

Outaouais’ healthcare authority announced Thursday it would be cutting 727 permanent positions across the region in response to the province’s demand it balance its budget by the end of the end of this month.

Dr. Marc Bilodeau, president and CEO of the Centre intégré de santé et de services sociaux de l’Outaouais (CISSSO), said in a press conference this would include the elimination of 127 currently staffed positions, 25 of which are management positions, as well as 600 vacant positions.

The majority of the cuts are to administrative positions, but also affect around 30 clinical positions, including nurses, psychologists and social workers.

Alain Smolynecky, president of STTSSSO-CSN, the union representing 77 of the 127 employees who will be losing their jobs, confirmed four of these jobs are in the Pontiac region – a nurse and three administrative assistants. He also said of the 600 vacant positions being cut across the region, two are at the Pontiac Hospital, both nurse’s aide positions.

These cuts are the latest in CISSSO’s efforts to reduce its planned spending by an amount of $90 million, its share of the cuts Santé Québec mandated last fall for all healthcare networks across the province in an attempt to tackle its $1.5 billion deficit.

Dr. Bilodeau previously assured spending cuts would not affect jobs, but on Thursday, which he admitted was his hardest day in the position since he stepped into it last March, he said job cuts were unavoidable, as salaries represent 70 per cent of the network’s expenses.

“While this decision is difficult, it is necessary to assure the sustainability of our services, and optimize the use of public funds,” Bilodeau said, assuring cuts would not affect healthcare services as all clinical employees would be offered another job elsewhere in the network as part of a restructuring of the workforce Bilodeau says will save money.

“The intent is to be able to offer them other roles in more critical positions where we have vacancies,” he later told THE EQUITY.

“The current posture costs me a lot, because if I don’t have enough people working evening and weekend shifts, I need to pay people overtime to fill those vacancies, which costs me way more than if I have regular personnel throughout the 24/7 cycle.”

Other cost-saving measures have included the elimination of 231 temporary assignment positions and the reassigning of many of the people in those positions to more critical roles, as well as a reduction in hours dedicated to providing home care.

“It’s clear that about 50 per cent of our surplus over our allocated [spending] amount was going towards home care,” Bilodeau said Thursday, noting the high demand for in-home care is a direct consequence of the fact that the region is lacking long-term care beds.

He said CISSSO has evaluated homecare being provided across the network and “assured the amount of help being given was corresponding to the need.”

“There’s a difference between the need and the demand [ . . . ] Finding these gaps is what enabled us to reduce some of the services being given.”

Admin positions take biggest hit

As for the administrative roles being cut, Bilodeau said he is confident they were surplus.

“What we know is our administrative ratio, which can be compared with other organizations in the province, was a bit higher than the average,” he said. “So this shows that we had some room to maneuver, and we were able to reduce our administrative ratio without impacting care negatively.” 

But Smolynecky said it is not possible these cuts will not touch frontline care.

“It’s false because most of the people in administrative positions are in support of nurses. So by cutting those people, nurses will have to go back to doing more paperwork and will have less time to take care of people,” he said.

“In health systems, everybody is a piece in the chain. Everybody needs the other one. If we cut in cleaning, we’ll have more viruses, more bacteria, more sick people. The nurse needs people to fix the equipment. We all have to work together.”

Smolynecky doesn’t buy Bilodeau’s argument that CISSSO’s higher ratio of administrative workers to nurses justifies cutting back on the network’s administrative jobs.

“That’s the point-form given to him by Santé Québec. In fact, we have less nurses in the Outaouais per thousand habitants than all other regions of Quebec,” he said.

“Because we have less nurses and still have the same amount of cases and paperwork to do, they had less time to provide health care. So that’s the reason why we had more administrative people, to reduce the paperwork to the nurses and doctors, to help them have more time to take care of people.”

Smolynecky highlighted the fact that CISSSO is underfunded by about $200 million annually, as found by a study produced by the University of Quebec in the Outaouais.

“It doesn’t make sense that we have to cut $90 million from the $200 million we don’t receive.”

Jean Pigeon, spokesperson for the healthcare advocacy group SOS Outaouais, echoed this point, one he has been making since the founding of the group last year.

“This announcement, presented as an optimization measure, is in reality a symptom of chronic underfunding that is dangerously undermining our healthcare network,” Pigeon wrote in a statement following Thursday’s news.

Bilodeau said he agrees the Outaouais has been historically underfunded, and said the network is working on “having a bigger piece of the pie in order to avoid having inequitable distribution of healthcare in the province.”

Despite this long-term ambition, he said Thursday’s cuts only get CISSSO two-thirds of the way to the $90 million it needs to save before Quebec tables its new budget at the end of this month, and so further cuts and restructuring will be needed to recuperate the remaining $30 million.

Sophie Kuijper Dickson, LJI Journalist

It was a rollercoaster of a week for Pontiac producers working in agriculture and forestry industries, as they watched the longstanding trade agreements that have enabled relatively smooth selling of their products to the U.S. take a serious beating.

In one week, U.S. President Donald Trump implemented the long-threatened 25 per cent tariffs on goods entering the U.S. from Canada, exempted the auto industry from these tariffs and, soon after, walked back almost all tariffs, pausing them until Apr. 2.

Then, on Friday, he promised 250 per cent tariffs on Canadian lumber and dairy products entering his country, a threat that has since been walked back by his commerce secretary, who clarified these tariffs would be applied on Apr. 2, along with the rest of the paused tariff package.

For many producers in two key Pontiac industries, it’s not yet clear how this trade war will affect their livelihoods.

But in agriculture, where the margins are already slim, and in forestry, which has long been suffering in the Pontiac due to the closure of several local mills, producers have limited abilities to absorb added financial pressures.

On Thursday, near the end of the tumultuous week, Clarendon beef farmer Steve Hamilton put a call in to his buyer at Cargill, where he sells 80 per cent of his cattle. There, it’s processed and much of it sold to the U.S..

“The price that he gave me was roughly 10 per cent lower than it would have been two weeks ago,” he said, figuring the tariffs are certainly affecting it. “I knew there were going to be effects, but we still don’t know long term [what the impacts will be.]”

But the price Hamilton can get for his product is only one half of what he’s watching. Equally concerning are his input costs.

“It doesn’t matter what it is, from parts to anything that we need to buy, it’s costing more than a few years ago,” Hamilton said, suggesting there is little wiggle room for any additional costs to running the farm, thanks to tariffs.

But Hamilton has hope, both that the profound codependence of American and Canadian sides of the beef industry will encourage reconciliation before too much damage is done, and that the increasing precarity of the international market will encourage producers, and lawmakers, to support a more robust and sustainable local beef market.

Hamilton processes and sells the remaining 20 per cent of his cattle locally. He used to do so through the Shawville abattoir which he, as one of the producers on the board created to govern the co-op, is now working to reopen.

He said part of what he would like to see to make this business successful is the easing of interprovincial trade barriers that prevent him from selling beef processed in a Quebec abattoir to Ontario markets.

The restrictions, he explained, will seriously limit the abattoir’s ability to serve customers right across the river.

“The small [abattoirs], like we’re trying to get going here, obviously have the benefits of [supporting] food security locally,” Hamilton said, pointing to the COVID-19 pandemic as an example of the inclination to support local during times of economic crisis.

“Obviously, in any crisis there’s opportunities and things you have to look for,” he said, suggesting the current trade war offers a ripe opportunity for policymakers and farmers to double down on putting the infrastructure in place that can better support a local food economy.

“But it doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy. It is quite likely going to be tougher years again.”

Precarity for private wood producers

Cash Allard is the general manager for the Pontiac Forest Products Producers Board, which helps about 90 private producers to get their product to market and advocates for support needed to keep the local forestry industry alive.

He said while it’s not yet clear how tariffs will impact Pontiac’s private forestry industry, the nature of its current precarity means it’s vulnerable to any shift in the industry.

Allard said producers rely on the temporarily closed Resolute Mill in Maniwaki, which he said is now owned by Domtar, for softwood sales; on Louisiana-Pacific (LP) where producers sell panel wood; and on Domtar’s mill in Windsor, Que. where producers sell hardwood pulp.

“Tariffs could affect everything. Softwood’s going to get hit, there could be more levies on the hardwood, the fuel might go up, and if it does, it just makes it harder and harder for us,” Allard said.

Of particular concern for him is the future of the subsidy program from Quebec’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Forests, which since Sept. 2023 has been critical to enabling Pontiac producers to transport hardwood to the Domtar mill in Windsor, and is set to expire at the end of this month.

Allard is worried an economic recession will be the nail in the coffin of a program central to Pontiac’s industry.

“If the subsidy program doesn’t get announced again . . . if as an effect of Canadians not spending money, the government is doing slashing so they don’t get too much overhead, they could slash this program which would mean we lose our hardwood pulp market,” Allard said.

Of further concern is the potential of limitations on softwood markets, to accommodate a slow in sales to the U.S..

“For these mills to set up limitations could literally destroy the Pontiac’s industry,” Allard said Thursday, before President Trump announced a plan to slap the lumber industry with 250 per cent tariffs on Friday.

“We don’t even know the consequences. There’s a lot of people just talking right now, and we don’t know what’s been hit yet.”

Sophie Kuijper Dickson, LJI Journalist

A conversation amongst farmers questioning the request they adapt their practices to protect threatened grassland birds dominated a presentation about climate-friendly agricultural practices given at the Little Red Wagon Winery last Wednesday evening.

The event, co-organized by the Pontiac and Gatineau chambers of commerce, saw cattle farmers from across the Outaouais pack the venue to hear from agronomist Nathalie Côté on best practices for reducing methane gas produced by their animals and for supporting on-farm biodiversity.

Côté, herself a cattle producer who works with Les Producteurs de bovins du Québec, highlighted that 10 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) in Quebec are produced by the agricultural industry.

“We have some responsibility in the agricultural sector to take steps to reduce our GHGs,” she said to the crowd, making the case that the reduction of emissions from agricultural practices is a convenient consequence of increasing on-farm efficiency, and framing her presentation in terms of the latter.

She discussed various techniques for increasing farm efficiency so as to produce more meat in less time, with fewer inputs, including ways to optimize feed to reduce methane produced by the animal and tips for improving livestock efficiency through genetics and strategic culling.

It’s thanks to practices like these and others that Canada’s beef industry has been able to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 15 per cent between 2014 and 2021, according to a 2024 report published by the Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef. The roundtable figures the industry is responsible for 2.4 per cent of Canada’s total greenhouse gas emissions, and has committed to reducing this contribution by a third before 2030.

But it was when Côté’s presentation turned to discussing some of the ways in which farmers can support biodiversity on their agricultural land that attendees started asking questions, the first of which came from Clarendon farmer Ron Hodgins.

“When did these wild birds become so important? [ . . . ] What is the purpose of a Bobolink?” he asked, following several slides highlighting precautions being taken by Quebec farmers to limit disturbance of the Eastern Meadowlark and the Bobolink, grassland birds which for over a decade have been considered “threatened” by Environment Canada, only one stop short of “endangered”.

Governments and conservation groups are concerned for these birds’ survival, as increased agricultural activity in their nesting grounds over the last half century has caused a decrease in their populations.

An Environment Canada report published in 2019 found that since 1970, the population of grassland birds has decreased 67 per cent.

Farmers are being encouraged to modify hay production practices during the weeks the bird is nesting in their hayfields between April and July, a period that usually, and inconveniently, coincides with the most effective time to harvest their hay.

The precautions shared by Côté included slowing mowing speed to 10 kilometres an hour or less, or mowing a hayfield from its center to its perimeter, rather than the reverse, so the birds are able to get out of the way.

“Before 2020, I never talked about birds to my producers,” Côté said, in answer to Hodgins’ question, adding she saw governments start paying more attention to biodiversity efforts in the last five or so years.

At the 2022 United Nations Biodiversity Conference in Montreal, 200 countries committed to protecting 30 per cent of their country’s land and freshwater ecosystems by the year 2030. Quebec’s Ministry of Environment committed to this target a year earlier.

“All those new orientations of the government gets us aware that [ . . . ] our production can do more for biodiversity. So it’s a positive thing for our production,” Côté emphasized.

But Hodgins expressed what he found to be a contradiction between the first part of her presentation, which encouraged practices such as cutting hay early to optimize its nutritional content, and the second part, which encouraged delaying hay cutting to protect grassland birds.

“We’re slowing down our haycutting procedure so they can fly out of the field. Well that’s not saving the environment and methane, and we’re burning more fuel to get that crop off,” he said. “One hand’s not working with the other.”

‘Everybody’s got to do a little bit’

For Victor Drury, who runs a 295-head cow-calf production with his father in La Pêche, supporting on-farm biodiversity is not his priority, but neither is it at odds with his regular production methods.

He works with the Alternative Land Use Services (ALUS) program, which pays him for every acre he sets aside to use for grazing or hay later in the season.

“They’ll pay you for the reduced quality of your hay, if you’re cutting it for hay, or the later pasture, if it’s not as vegetative,” Drury explained, noting setting aside certain land fits well within the rotational grazing he already practices.

“That just happens to promote biodiversity. Now, that’s not my goal. My goal is to raise cattle and feed my family,” he said. “The advantage of doing this particular program is it doesn’t cost me anything, and I happen to be doing this other benefit that people seem to think is valuable.”

Blake Draper is the MRC des Collines-de-l’Outaouais representative for Les Producteurs de bovins du Québec. He also works with ALUS to protect certain parts of his land.

“As far as what I’m doing, I’m just allowing [the birds] a little more room to work, And, birds eat insects,” he pointed out, following Côté’s presentation. “I figure everybody’s got to do a little bit.”

Stanley Christensen is a cattle farmer from Lac-Sainte-Marie in the Gatineau Valley, and also the Outaouais-Laurentides representative for Les Producteurs de bovins du Québec.

During the conversation about why farmers should care to change their practices in favour of supporting biodiversity, he said he believes making efforts to do so is critical to maintaining the trust of the general public that farmers are, as they have always been, caretakers of the land.

“We’ve got to find ways of averaging things out and showing that we are good citizens, we are taking care of the environment, and that we are of benefit to all of Canadian society by using things like this,” Christensen said.

“So I push as hard as I can to try to develop these programs, and find a way to benefit producers. And if we do get compensation per acre, that’s part of it, but the first thing is to convince society that we’re doing a good job taking care of the future of Canada.”

Sophie Kuijper Dickson, LJI Journalist

A new kind of support is now available to farmers across Canada who may be struggling with their mental health – a crisis line that can be called at any hour of the day, 365 days a year.

The free service, accessible by dialing 1-866-FARMS-01, is completely confidential and available in both English and French.

It is being run by the Canadian Centre for Agricultural wellbeing thanks to a three-year, $1.5 million investment from crown corporation Farm Credit Canada, and is for farmers, their family members, farm employees, and spouses and dependents of farm employees, 16 years or older, who are either in crisis or just need to talk to somebody about how they are doing.

The service’s website lists everything from financial stress and succession challenges to feelings of burnout and isolation as just some of the reasons calling the phone line might help.

Callers will be connected with a mental health professional who has received a special training to support members of the agricultural community. They will listen, offer coping strategies, and connect the caller with other forms of support, if needed.

While this phone line, launched earlier this month, is not yet a well-known resource in the Pontiac community, it’s being received as a welcome upgrade to the ag-specific mental health support already available to Pontiac farmers. 

Audrey Arcand is a Pontiac-based farm wellness worker with Écoute Agricole, a non-profit that offers mental health services to farmers across the Laurentians and the Outaouais, including in the Pontiac.

She said while her organization offers the benefit of being able to meet with farmers in person and support them over the course of longer periods of time, the team she works with cannot be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

“We only work regular nine to five [hours], Monday to Friday, usually. But we are definitely not a crisis call line,” she said. “When people need to reach us outside of our hours, it’s important for them to have a place where they can call, and I think a place that is adapted to their reality, and their special needs.”

The need for a crisis line in the Outaouais is particularly heightened, according to Arcand, who explained there is no general suicide helpline in the region. She said people who call the province-wide option – 1-866-APPELLE – will be redirected to the provincial 8-1-1 health line, where they might encounter longer wait times.

“For a person in a crisis state, [that’s] not the best option,” she said.

Gema Villavicencio, owner of Pure Conscience farm in Bristol and vice-president of the Pontiac chapter of Quebec’s union of agricultural producers (UPA), said she believes there are many in the Pontiac farming community who could benefit from this kind of industry-specific mental health support.

“It’s a different reality. I think not everybody understands the reality of a farmer,” she said, noting one of the challenges to be the relatively isolated nature of the work. “We all go through the winter blues, especially around this time of the year.”

Despite what Villavicencio describes to be a fairly common experience of isolation, numbers from Écoute Agricole’s 2023-2024 annual report show not many farmers in the region are benefiting from the mental health support offered by the organization.

Of the 367 agricultural producers in MRC Pontiac, only 10 were supported by the organization in the 2023-2024 reporting year. Another 13 producers in the MRC des Collines-de-l’Outaouais also sought help from the organization.

Half of the people helped were referred by someone else, while the other half reached out themselves.
Arcand emphasized how critical it is that the support be provided by professionals who are well acquainted with the realities of being a farmer.

“In the case of a crisis, there are many aspects to take care of. It’s the farm that’s at risk sometimes,” she said.

“For someone to get help, especially in a crisis situation, the whole farm needs to be taken care of, because they’re not going to call if they’re not sure their animals will also be taken care of.”

Villavicencio said she was happy to learn of another form of support being offered to farmers.

“It’s very complementary to what Écoute Agricole is doing. We just need to make it more known.”