“It’s time for Health Minister Christian Dubé to realize that something’s got to give.”
Twenty years ago, both my wife and our daughter became gravely ill with heart failure and cancer, respectively. Both needed emergency interventions, which were successful, and medicare was a godsend. We then built a life and everyone is well. No bankruptcy, no surgery bills, all because of medicare.
Two decades later, we recently received an email from my wife’s primary care doctor. He’s excellent, knows her case well and keeps a close eye on her status. The letter said he’d made the difficult decision to “go private” and she’d have to pay to see him. The other option would be to go on a waiting list, which seemed very uncertain. At first she did not want to pay, but I said, “To hell with it, I’ll pay — he’s good,” so I did. It’s $350 later and my wife still has her family doctor, but what if we could not afford to pay?
A few months prior to my wife’s doctor going private, my mother-in-law needed a renewal of her medications. She called her family doctor, who insisted he’d only renew them if she went to see him. Another catch: He’d gone private, too. My mother-in-law was furious and asked me, her son-in-law/nurse, to try to find another doctor under RAMQ. So I went to the Clic Santé website, which listed many appointments for doctors, but they were all in private clinics — meaning she’d have to pay as well. In the end, she ended up paying roughly $400 to see a family doctor near her house. Again, what if she couldn’t afford to pay?
It seems entirely unfair that Quebecers, particularly the elderly, pay taxes their whole lives and then have to pay out of pocket when they need a doctor.
Medicare needs to function in primary care as well as it does in acute and critical care in order for the system to work well. In primary care, small problems — such as hypertension — can be nipped in the bud before they become life-threatening catastrophes, like heart attacks.
It’s time for Health Minister Christian Dubé to realize that something’s got to give. Either cut taxes or give Quebecers the primary care they deserve.
Nathan Friedland, Roxboro
Patients have to navigate roadblocks
There are countless roadblocks on Montreal’s crumbling streets — streets that are in desperate need of repaving. Navigating these roads is challenging and frustrating. Apparently there is not enough money in Quebec’s coffers to fix the resulting huge, ugly mess.
But there is money for this: The Coalition Avenir Québec government is putting up more roadblocks via the Office québécois de la langue française. These directly target anglophones and allophones in health institutions, which should be sacred and off limits. As Allison Hanes succinctly put it: “The last things patients need in navigating a complex and strained system are interactions with overreaching functionaries emboldened by Bill 96 to set up more roadblocks.”
Robert Filler, St-Laurent
Better late than never
I am so glad I left the province of Quebec seven years ago. The pettiness of the OQLF is beyond belief. My only regret is that I didn’t leave 30 years before I did.
Jeff Stattner, Toronto
Hundreds of millions spent in the wrong place
What’s next for the OQLF and the CAQ government? Will they start checking the language we use in our homes and, even worse, in our bedrooms? Does the almighty government have the right to interfere in our lives? What else do they have up their sleeves?
Peter Sipos, Côte-St-Luc
Sick, afraid and unable to understand
I would like to share my experience with health care in Quebec from an anglophone perspective.
My 69-year-old uncle was hospitalized in 2023 because of pneumonia. The ambulance brought him to the emergency ward at Notre-Dame Hospital. During his stay, which was about three weeks, he was very uncomfortable because only one nurse spoke English to him. Most of the time they couldn’t tell him in English about the procedures they were doing, and he was very afraid.
He is currently in good health, but we can’t get a hold of his doctor at the hospital and he doesn’t have a family doctor. When we call the hospital and dial 0, we can’t get an English-speaking person. In fact, someone who answered said “tout le monde parle français” when I asked in French if they spoke English.
This situation is really bad and will probably get worse, but it won’t drive us out as the government seems to hope.
Kellie Leigh, Plateau-Mont-Royal
A history lesson for the OQLF
Apparently an OQLF inspector was questioning the lack of French on some donor plaques at the Jewish General Hospital, asking why they were in English and Yiddish only. The reason may be traced back to the very founding of the hospital. Contrary to popular belief, its raison d’être was not to serve the Jewish community specifically. In fact, it was founded by Jewish doctors who could not get a job anywhere else.
They decided to found their own hospital, a place where they would be free to practise medicine for the benefit of all Quebecers, regardless of language or creed. Far from being a symptom of the founders’ insularity or rejection of the majority, the lack of French on those plaques shows the barriers that these early Jewish doctors overcame in their efforts to serve the broader community.
These OQLF inspectors need to study history before commenting. They often have no idea how things came to be this way.
Jordan Black, Rosemont
Put rational thought before legal force
I was born in the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal in 1944. My wife, my kids and I left Montreal in 1974. I will readily agree with Quebec’s right to pursue French as the primary language in the province. But two languages are better than one. The approach of every government since we left seems to have been to wield the force of law to try to achieve a unilingual citizenry. It is absurd. Do you think that if you were injured in Tel Aviv, the hospital staff would quibble over your inability to speak Hebrew? Quebec will never be a true nation in the world until it puts away the big stick and talks softly.
Larry Sylvester, Acton, Ont.
Dubé is better than this
What’s next? Telling all non-aphasic long-term care residents to attend French immersion classes?
Preposterous hypocrisy, thy name is CAQ. One would expect a premier who steered his province badly during the pandemic to tread lightly in the health-care system post-COVID. Alas and alack, François Legault’s team makes the rules governing all our lives, even when we’re weak or ill, n’importe quoi.
I’ve long been an admirer of Health Minister Christian Dubé. He is a serious, hard-working cabinet minister. Surely he understands the paramount needs of hiring more medical personnel, and of knocking down barriers that stand in the way of immigrant nurses and doctors so they may serve all Quebecers. Perhaps the public is not alone in having our dignity ignored.
Judith Goldman, Montreal
Where is the compassion? Where is the shame?
It is authoritarianism to not allow all citizens to get health services safely and promptly. As an anglo senior in Quebec with pretty good but not perfect French language skills, it is terrifying to feel that I may not be able to have clear and precise communication with health services, especially at my age. In the CAQ government’s approach to other languages, there is no clarity, no certainty, no security, no future, and hardly a present.
In a polite, compassionate society that cares about social justice, minorities are treated with flexibility and respect. Clearly, the CAQ government has no idea about this.
If the premier or many cabinet officials were capable of thinking with some sense of humanity and justice, they would feel a great deal of shame and guilt.
Lawrence M. Pinsky, Montreal