A Montreal mother's recent weekend ordeal has laid bare the severe cracks in Quebec's healthcare system, an experience she describes as a lesson learned "the hard way" about its broken state.
A System That Turns Away the "Healthy"
The family's troubles began two years prior when their pediatrician retired. On their final visit, the doctor informed the mother that because her children were "healthy" with no underlying conditions, they would not be assigned a new family doctor. Instead, they were placed into the Gestion d'accès à la première ligne (GAP) system. This program is designed to provide appointments via the 811 Info-Santé line, but in practice, it failed them completely.
When her eldest son woke up severely ill, a call to 811 yielded no help. The symptoms were dismissed as likely flu, and no appointment was granted. With no other public option, the mother made the only choice left: she took her shivering, visibly sick child to a local hospital emergency room.
The Endurance Test of the Emergency Room
What followed was a harrowing five-hour wait in a packed waiting room. Her son sat on hard plastic chairs, shaking with chills, as the room filled with other patients. For the final two hours of their wait, not a single person from the general waiting area was called in to see a doctor, while ambulances continued to arrive—a priority the mother understood but which underscored the overwhelming strain on the system.
After five hours, her son could no longer sit upright. Defeated and with no end in sight, they made the difficult decision to leave. At home, the boy collapsed from exhaustion and woke up feeling worse, yet he pleaded with his mother not to return to the hospital, traumatized by the experience of the waiting room.
The Private Sector as a Last, Costly Resort
The next morning, the mother embarked on a desperate search for care. She spent hours calling private clinics across and beyond Montreal, encountering full voice mailboxes, endless holds, and callbacks that led nowhere. "When the public system fails, it seems the private one becomes overwhelmed, and suddenly there is nowhere left to turn," she observed.
As a last resort, she called Info-Santé again, waiting over two hours on the line simply to ask for guidance. Ultimately, her only viable option was a private clinic, which came with a $250 fee. There, her son was diagnosed with both influenza and strep throat and was finally prescribed antibiotics.
A Broader Crisis of Access and Exodus
This personal story is set against a backdrop of systemic turmoil. The article references Quebec doctors airing grievances during a protest against Bill 2 at the Bell Centre on November 9, 2025. There are widespread reports of physicians making plans to leave the province, frustrated by working conditions and legislation.
For families living this reality, the collective failure feels like neglect. The author, Andrea Intrevado of LaSalle, argues forcefully that healthcare should not require endurance, luck, or financial privilege. Children should not be traumatized by the very places meant to heal them, and parents should not face an impossible choice between their child's pain and their dignity.
"Quebecers deserve better than this," she concludes, issuing a powerful indictment of a system that is failing its most vulnerable at their moment of greatest need.
