This ongoing battle between the Health Minister and Quebec doctors has left me and countless others dazed and confused.
The idea was to abolish certain fees charged by doctors to patients which in some cases seems well and fine but what has happened is that it looks like the minister has gone too far.
Guess who will end up suffering?
For example, private colonoscopy clinics are closing and everyone is now being placed on the long hospital waiting lists.
A one-year wait may turn into a two- or three-year wait and for certain patients at risk, the wait might prove to be too long.
Blood tests or certain vaccinations carried out in doctors’ offices will no longer be allowed.
Instead, patients are being told they must get them done in hospitals or CLSCs .
You know exactly what is going to happen. Patients will fall through the cracks.
Under a public health care system patients should not be required to pay for blood tests or vaccinations or little extras, but nothing is perfect.
Now the minister has in many cases removed the possibility of choice and at the same time it appears there has not been enough added money nor resources injected into the public system to cover the added load.
Gaetan Barrette picked a fight and stormed in like gangbusters, telling doctors it was his way or the highway. He announced his plans without getting a buy-in from the doctors first.
I fear somewhere along the way, the fight over ideology will harm those caught between the two sides. And that is me and that is you.
Plan for the worst
You would think that one of these days the city could get it right. I mean winter does come every year.
We all knew a storm was coming on Tuesday.
So why wasn’t the public works department out early enough to salt the roads and sidewalks?
Mother Nature has a way of surprising us. They are predictions. So why not just be on the safe side?
Instead we had a great big mess with a city bus pushing other city buses up a hill. Frustration and anger on the streets of Montreal.
There isn’t much we can do about the weather.
But we can plan better.
You see people don’t need extravagant 375th birthday parties.
They don’t need million-dollar stumps on the mountain.
They don’t need their bridges lit up like Christmas trees.
They do need to be kept safe and secure. Is that too much to ask?
Martine Ouellet, wannabe leader
Finally, Parti Quebecois MNA Martine Ouellet really wants to be the boss of something.
She ran unsuccessfully for the PQ leadership and now is toying with the idea of running for that dinosaur of Canadian politics, the Bloc Quebecois.
The trouble is, if she became the Bloc leader she would want to stay on as an MNA.
The Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation correctly points out that taxpayers should not fund her federal political ambitions.
Besides, being an MNA is pretty much a full-time job.
That’s the problem with separatists. They want to have their cake and eat it too.
Which makes Mme. Ouellet the perfect Cake Boss.
