The public is paying the price for a lack of honesty and efficiency in the province, Quebec’s Auditor General determined in a report released Wednesday.

In her report, Auditor General Guylaine Leclerc said whether it's patients getting in to see a doctor, Hydro-Quebec managing itself properly or workplace accident victims getting treated quickly, Quebecers aren't getting their money's worth, and in some cases people may be suffering as a result.

Hydro-Quebec’s sale of $79-million worth of equipment for just $75,000 was one of the targets of Leclerc’s criticism.
The recently-purchased steam turbine equipment was resold following a restricted call for proposals after the Parti Quebecois ordered the Gentilly-2 nuclear plant closed in 2011.

Leclerc said that Hydro Quebec failed to rigorously evaluate the value of the used equipment before selling it, which was sold for scrap.

“To be able to (appraise) the turbine at the higher price, to try to find a nuclear plant that would have accepted it or buy it or use it,” she told a press conference in Quebec City Wednesday.

“We didn’t know that Hydro Quebec did everything it could to get the best deal for this equipment,” she said.

Energy Minister Pierre Arcand said the Liberal government did the best it could.

“Those kinds of items, when they are not in use it’s because they're specially designed for that particular place,” he said. “This is what happens.”

The turbine is another sign that Hydro-Quebec is poorly managed, said CAQ leader Francois Legault.

“Come on, it's our money we paid for all this equipment for Gentilly,” he said.

In another area, the auditor faults workers' health and safety board the CSST for dragging its feet.

Cases now take an average of 88 days to process, which is 29 per cent longer than eight years ago.


“That increases the risk of chronicity,” said Leclerc.

Patients who go untreated for longer, she said, can result in a higher cost for taxpayers


The CSST deals with 90,000 cases and pays $1.9 billion in benefits per year.

Quebec Solidaire MNA Amir Khadir said his party believes too many doctors are scared of going against the CSST.

“A lot of doctors just take the side of the CSST to be secure. In many cases I've seen, it’s because many patients now are in big trouble because of confronting these experts who give advice favourable to the CSST,” he said.  

The CSST is so behind, the report showed, it owes a total of $2 million to the families of people who died at work.

The report also criticized the bureaucracy involved in finding a family doctor, which is described as "neither transparent nor fair." Some patients can wait years to receive proper care under the system, the report noted.

The report also rapped the knuckles of the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (UQTR) where Rector Nadia Ghazzali was cited for a possible conflict of interest involving a research chair at the school. The UQTR was also criticized in the report for poorly-administered projects such as a Drummondville campus and a sports excellence centre.