Poilievre Attacks Charest's Record on Health Services

Former Quebec premier and CPC leadership hopeful Jean Charest is promising to improve the state of health care funding in Canada to the point where lockdowns would no longer be needed to protect hospitals from being overwhelmed.

Charest said he wants to accomplish this by allowing provinces the option of employing more private health care delivery. He said it would all be paid for by the provinces and insists patients would not have to cover the cost of care personally.

Poilievre quickly took to attacking Charest. He sent out a tweet savaging Charest's record on health care as "a disaster" and linking to a 2007 article that describes an average wait time of more than 16 hours in a Quebec emergency room.

In 2006, while premier of Quebec, Charest pledged to bring in "a new era of health care" by allowing more privately delivered care, but its success was questionable.

"As Liberal Premier, Charest’s health care record was a disaster—16 hour emergency room wait times. Sure, he spent a lot of money—and raised taxes to pay for it—but he got terrible results for Quebec patients. Why believe him now?" wrote Poilievre on Twitter.

In 2012, the last year Charest was premier, the Canadian Wait Times Alliance ranked Quebec second in the country after Ontario for fastest wait times for hip, knee and cataract surgery, and for radiation treatment.