When Geneviève Biron was introduced as the head of Santé Québec, she promised “an innovative approach.” Cutting services we barely have access to would be anything but innovative.
Actually, no. If I’m being totally honest, my first thought was: Are Quebec taxpayers paying Santé Québec head Geneviève Biron an annual salary of $652,050 for the first two years of her mandate just so she can turn around and instruct health facilities to cut $1.5 billion in spending? Because if slashing is the miraculous solution, I could have done that for free and saved us all more than half a million dollars in salary expenses.
Snarky comments aside, the health-care situation in Quebec is worrisome, so indulge me if I’m prone to a little existential screaming.
Telling Quebecers more cuts are coming is not reassuring.
How exactly does one rectify the lack of services by … cutting more services? Call me crazy, but as a lowly patient occasionally forced to navigate this under-pressure, messed-up system of ours, I’ve developed a wild, perhaps a little out-of-the-box theory: The lack of services can only be rectified with … more services.
In the meantime, readers tell me they’re on year-long waiting lists for surgery, it takes them hours on hold listening to Muzak to book an appointment, and they’re instructed to address only one health problem per appointment.
Toula Drimonis is a Montreal journalist and the author of We, the Others: Allophones, Immigrants, and Belonging in Canada.