Major job cuts at the Outaouais health authority

CBC

14-03-2025

The Outaouais health network is cutting up to 800 more jobs.
In a news release Thursday, the Centre intégré de santé et de services sociaux de l'Outaouais (CISSSO) said it is eliminating 127 positions, about 25 of them in management.
"Although this decision is difficult, it is necessary to ensure the sustainability of our services and optimize the use of public funds entrusted to us," the statement said in French.
The unions representing health-care workers in the region said 79 part-time positions and another 600 unfilled vacancies are also being cut.
CISSSO CEO Marc Bilodeau said the cuts would mainly be administrative staff and not impact service.
The move comes as Quebec tries to eliminate a $1.5-billion deficit in the public health-care system. As part of that effort, it told CISSSO in November to cut $90 million from its budget.
CISSSO also eliminated 196 temporary positions in January.
'Basically a fail mode'
Jean Pigeon, a spokesperson for health-care advocacy group SOS Outaouais, disagreed with the idea the cuts will not impact service.
"These decisions that the government is making are completely absurd and they're putting the CISSSO into a basically a fail mode for offering service to the population," he told CBC.
Pigeon said Bilodeau stated there will be no job cuts several months ago. However, he was sympathetic toward him and instead laid the blame on the province.
"It was probably a very hard day for him today, having to announce these cutbacks, but he has no other choice," he said.
The cuts are also concerning for Alain Smolynecky, the president of STTSSSO-CSN, the union representing health and social services workers in the Outaouais.
While CISSSO said the cuts will mainly impact administrative staff, Smolynecky told CBC that will mean more administrative tasks will fall to other staff, including nurses.
"We will have to give the same service with less people," he said.
Smolyneck also worries the cuts will force health-care worker to leave CISSSO and push patients toward private clinics.
"If we cut service inside the public service, they will increase people going to the private.…We installed in Quebec the universal and free health systems and we have to keep that."
Chronically underfunded
Pigeon said the announced cuts don't seem to make up the $90-million target for cuts.
He also said the cuts will worsen a situation marked by chronic underfunding compared to other regions in Quebec by a magnitude of $200 million per year.
He said the National Assembly passed a motion recognizing the underfunding of the Outaouais region in 2019, but has done nothing to remedy the problem in the years since.
"We're now placed in a situation where … we don't have the money and the human resources to offer the population of the Outaouais a decent health-care system," he said.