When it takes us for fools… money

Photo By Héloïse Archambault
The mega MUHC in Montreal (McGill university health Centre).

Josée Legault

Monday, 28 August, 2017 14:44

UPDATE
Monday, 28 August, 2017 14:59

Look at this article

Austerity or obsession with deficit-zero, to see the billions raining on some sectors significantly more preferred than others by the political power, the Quebec must surely be a lot more rich as we are told.

Bombardier, as it is known, has the attentive ear of the government and the hand heavily slipped in the purse class, but the community organizations, visibly less.

We let the doctors bill the public treasury without a great check to the RAMQ, but it punishes welfare recipients as soon as they depart from the least to the dictates of the government of the day. Etc. Etc. Etc.

The examples of “two weights, two measures” when the time comes to release of public funds are not lacking, unfortunately, not.

In its edition of Monday, an article in the Montreal Gazette gives yet another striking example. To read the text, here it is. Warning : you will need a large cup of herbal tea a soothing effect after reading.

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Pay to control costs we do not control

The Gazette reported that an “obscure government agency” established in 2005 under the Charest government and its Health minister Philippe Couillard is “with an annual budget of $ 2 million and nine employees,” (or nearly $28 million up to now). The problem is that this agency has the mandate to monitor and limit the costs of construction of super hospitals in Quebec. To see the invoice of his white elephants climbing for years, who would know?…

All the more that since the creation of the “Office of the modernization of CHU”, as reminded also of the article, the “total cost to build the MUHC and the CHUM, as well as for the expansion of Sainte-Justine, has tripled“. All for the tidy sum overall of $ 7.1 billion.

Worse yet, this Office would continue to be commissioned “in spite of the fact that these projects are either completed or in the process of being”. The nice case.

City, Paul Brunet, the president of the Council of the sick, did not come back: “it is a truly very sad, a huge and costly”. Me Brunet, adding that the two CHU, built-in mode “PPP” – public-private partnership, was supposed to transfer the risk of cost overruns to the private and the public, that is to say, to the taxpayers.

However, not only the costs have tripled, but as I Brunet the note, the consortium responsible for the MUHC continues the government for 330 million dollars for “extras”.

Also remember the scandal of the $ 22.5 million in bribes in the construction of the MUHC…

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Success-remember

Success remember : do you remember this exit mind-blowing Monique Jérôme-Forget, former president of the treasury Board Jean Charest, who, in 2011, launched this bead dramatically in bad faith : “The PPP, it saves the fraud. And the cost overruns.”. Misery…

Surely she wanted to say, “it saves FROM fraud”…

In short, we take the taxpayers for fools… money.

During this time, despite a dramatic increase in their compensation, a quick consultation with a medical specialist is still and always the cross and the banner.

Our emergency “displayed the worst performance of the western world”. Nothing less.

Unlike Ontario, our elderly in NURSING homes are limited to one bath per week.

And the social services of quality are as rare as palm trees in the far North. But the sheer size of the super hospitals and their blessed contractors, them, receive their windfall from the public treasury.

I tell you since a long time : the Quebec city is rich, but not for everyone…