(Quebec) Health Minister Christian Dubé is trying to calm things down and adopt a low profile on the eve of tabling his beefy reform in the National Assembly on Wednesday.
After warning in the past few days that “temple columns will shake,” he limited his comments Tuesday to his bill “to make the health and social care system more efficient.”
“Quebecers know that we need a change, that the status quo is not acceptable,” he said.
After reading La Presse reports on Monday on the government’s intentions, former Health Minister Gaétan Barrette concluded that “it’s going to be World War III.” The unions of health workers and those of doctors will go up to the barricades according to him.
“There will be no world war,” tempered Christian Dubé. “I’m not a confrontational person. I’m more of a collaborative person. »
Asked if he was satisfied to have the support of Mr. Barrette, he was content to answer: “I will take the support of all Quebecers”.
For his part, Prime Minister François Legault considers that “the success of [the] approach” of the government “depends a lot on this flexibility that we will be able to get in the organization of work” especially among nurses.
He lamented that “local reorganizations can be blocked by local unions”. “We would like this to be no longer possible, for us to be able locally to adapt to each situation and to carry out a good reorganization. »
He refrained from repeating what he had been saying for the past few weeks, which is that the unions are locked into “a logic of closure” and do not want to talk to the government to “change things”.
“If we want to change the organization of the network, and I think it’s unanimous in Quebec that we have to change the organization of the network, we have to look for more flexibility, for example in the production of schedules. And there have to be a lot more decisions made by the management of the establishments, so decentralize, ”he explained.