'The tsunami is coming': Doctor warns Quebec health-care system requires radical overhaul

Jacob Reiser, 21, has been on a waiting list for a family doctor for three years.

Of the 1.8 million people living in Montreal, nearly 800,000 don’t have a family doctor. The ruling Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) party, which had promised a doctor for everyone in the 2018 election, now said that’s no longer possible.

"He’s asthmatic as well as he has allergies so that’s very difficult", says Reiser's mother, Orit Sheck. "He needs to update his asthma medicine, his allergy medicine, so what do you do?"

On the campaign trail, only the Quebec Liberal Party is promising the hundreds of thousands of Quebecers waiting for a family doctor would get one.

• READ MORE: Quebec election 2022 platform guide: What are the parties promising?

The CAQ is promising an improved digital platform to direct Quebecers to the appropriate medical professional, while the Quebec Conservative Party is pleading to put more of an emphasis on private medicine. Both Québec solidaire (QS) and the Parti Québécois (PQ) are promising more homecare services.

"Our world-class health-care system is now 'Call this call centre and maybe we’ll get you a health-care professional," said Dr. Michael Kalin, a family physician in Côte Saint-Luc.

Dr. Kalin said he believes the big problem in Montreal is doctors are often forced to work in the regions, which is why many take their Quebec education and choose to practice in other provinces or states.

"Close to 40 per cent of Montrealers do not have a family doctor as compared to other regions of Quebec where it may be less than 10 per cent, said Kalin.

"The government will say you have enough family doctors but these numbers are deceiving because as we know one-third of patients seen on the Island of Montreal do not live on the Island of Montreal."

Kalin thinks governments should promote family medicine, but instead many doctors complain of an adversarial relationship with Quebec's health ministry in which they are forced to take on too many patients, and not allowed to work where they choose.

"When the government comes along and is putting in this intimidating language, this intimidating legislation against family medicine, we could understand why medical students are turned off," he said.

Over the past two decades, Kalin has heard various plans and promises to fix health care in the province, but he said no government has solved the issue.

"As bad as it is now, the tsunami is coming. One-quarter of family doctors are over the age of 60," he said, "so you could imagine what’s going to happen in a decade from now."