Prime Minister François Legault is determined to follow through on reforming the way doctors are paid.
• Read also: Lowering the apron would not be a solution for trucks, according to the Quebec Ministry of Transport
• Read also: Legault promises the tramway and wants a bridge for trucks, but no tunnel for the tramway between Quebec and Lévis
“It’s going to be hard, but you have to have the courage. I will go all the way,” he declared in an interview with Paul Larocque and broadcast on LCN on Monday.
For Mr. Legault, it is essential that this issue be resolved before any other change in the health system.
“Until we resolve this, we will not resolve the problems in the health network,” says the Prime Minister. […] If there is not a strong first line with GMF, we will clog our emergencies with people who should have been treated on the front line, we will never solve the problem.
François Legault maintains that doctors “are already very well paid when we compare their remuneration with the remuneration in the rest of Canada”.
“What we need is to change the method of remuneration so that there is support. This is not normal, we managed to increase the number of Quebecers who have a family doctor or a GMF from 6.4 million to 7 million Quebecers, but there are 9 million of us, so there are still 2 millions who do not yet have a family doctor,” he laments.
If this change in the method of remuneration risks creating turmoil, François Legault believes that his government “owes that to Quebecers”.
“It is certain that the reaction of doctors can perhaps offend certain people in the population, but we owe it to Quebecers to fight for patients, to fight for Quebecers. It should have been done by previous governments who did not have the courage to do it,” he says.
For the CAQ leader, the coming months will be “very hard” in health, due to negotiations with general practitioners and nurses.
“We have two big collective agreements to negotiate […] one with family doctors so that they can take care of more patients and one with nurses so that they give us the flexibility to better manage the network,” he explains.
3rd link: an arrow in Duclos
François Legault persists and signs on the mobility file and defends his position to move forward with the 3rd link project between Quebec and Lévis.
One of the arguments raised by the Prime Minister is that there should be a second crossing link for heavy trucks.
“There are 10,500 trucks that pass over the Pierre-Laporte bridge every day and it is the only bridge that can accept trucks, and the next one is in Trois-Rivières,” he explains.
Faced with this argument, federal minister Jean-Yves Duclos notably suggested, last week, that the deck of the Quebec bridge be lowered. This modification would, according to him, allow heavy trucks to circulate there.
A proposal that François Legault criticizes.
“Look, the specialists from the Ministry of Transport say it doesn’t work,” he says. […] If we reduced the number of tracks, which is not desired, desirable, if there is more space to go up, because there we have to go down the deck, but it also has to go up, so currently, people from the MTQ are telling me: we’ve already looked at that, it doesn’t work.”
Screenshot/VAT News
Concerning the tramway and third link projects, the Prime Minister affirms that the population does not need to take sides and that it is possible to realize them both.
“For a long time, either we were for the tramway or we were for the 3rd link. We are going to do both,” he assures.
Mr. Legault is also considering asking Ottawa to finance the two projects.
“Honestly, I don’t rule out convincing both Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Poilievre, and saying: we need both projects, so help us finance both projects.”
Temporary immigration: “a question of reception capacity”
Asked about his statement concerning the impact of temporary immigration on the housing crisis, François Legault replied that he had not gone too far.
He also adds that temporary immigration has an impact in several sectors other than housing in Quebec.
“We must understand that this uses 1,100 nurses, 3,700 teachers, 100,000 housing units and this leads to a decline in French in Montreal,” declared the Prime Minister.
This is why he is urging the Trudeau government to reduce immigration thresholds.
“At some point, we have to be able to wake up and say: Mr. Trudeau, we have to cut that in half,” he said.
François Legault declares that if “Quebec has always been welcoming, here, we have far exceeded the limit of what we are capable of receiving.”
“It’s not racist to say that, it’s a question of reception capacity,” he adds.
See the full interview with François Legault in the video above.
