PQ says Santé Québec will go despite ‘transformation’ talk

QUEBEC – The Parti Québécois government still intends to abolish Santé Québec, Health Minister Marie-Karlynn Laflamme said Wednesday, after her use of the word “transformation” prompted opposition parties to question whether the campaign promise was being watered down.

Laflamme told reporters at the National Assembly before a cabinet meeting that the government needs time to analyze “what works well at Santé Québec and what doesn’t work as well.” She said the talk is now of a transformation of the provincial health agency. (Quotes translated from French.)

“Have we gone too far with centralization? Undoubtedly,” she said. “We’re going to work together to decentralize services.” She added that Santé Québec “hasn’t done only bad things.”

Later in the afternoon, Laflamme posted a clarification on X. “There is no question, and there never has been, of backing down on our promise to abolish Santé Québec,” she wrote. She said the government will abolish “this structure, which is far too cumbersome and centralizing,” while keeping useful elements such as a new funding model for each region, economies of scale in some sectors and performance measures for each facility. “It is in this sense that I speak of a transformation,” she wrote.

She said she met with Santé Québec teams last week to take stock and that the work continues this week, with communications with the agency expected in the coming days.

Conservative Leader Éric Duhaime said the government was off to a bad start. “What does ‘transform’ even mean?” he said. “If it’s just about changing names and shuffling people around, that’s not what the government had said.” (Translated from French.)

Québec solidaire also asked for clarity. Its health critic, Gisèle Pouhe Njall, said in an email that the minister had changed her language without presenting a plan. “She must answer our questions now and stop using vague language,” she said. (Translated from French.)

Santé Québec is the Crown agency created to run the province’s health network. Premier Paul St-Pierre Plamondon pledged during the campaign to abolish it, and his party formed a minority government after the October election. The new government’s cabinet was sworn in only weeks ago, and the legislature’s opening has been delayed to Dec. 1, so no bill on the agency’s future has been tabled. Because the PQ governs without a majority, any legislation will need support from at least one opposition party.

This report draws on reporting by The Canadian Press and the minister’s public statement on X.

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