'No cuts to health-care system,' Health Minister Danielle McCann vows
New minister says Friday's comment about cuts 'to better organize' system was slip of the tongue
After saying she would only cut "to better organize" the health care system, Quebec's new health minister, Danielle McCann, now says that was a slip of the tongue, and there will be no cuts.
"I know very well that in the system there is a lot of competence. People are ready to give really more efficient services. We have to help them, create the conditions for them to be more efficient," McCann told Debra Arbec, host of CBC News at 6, in an interview Friday.
"And I'm not talking about cutting services to patients, I'm cutting to better organize, in many ways, the administration ... to improve the volume of services to patients."
Elsewhere in the same interview, McCann told Arbec, "I want to say also for everybody in the network that we will continue, and increase even, our work in terms of efficiency: no cuts in services to patients, but efficiency."
The minister's office contacted CBC and asked to clarify her comments Monday, telling CBC News in a statement, "I wanted to say, 'I'm going to better organize'" the administration of health-care services, not "cutting to better organize" those services.
"I want to make it very clear: there will be no cuts in the health-care system."
"I firmly think that if we work in collaboration with all good-faithed people in the health-care system," including physicians, nurses and users, she said, "we can improve the access for all Quebecers."