Santé Québec rewrites its home-care tenders after lowest-bid contracts upset seniors

Regions where private firms won

• Lanaudière
• Laval
• Montérégie-Est

After Santé Québec, the province's health agency, required home-care contracts to go to tender, private firms replaced non-profit providers in three regions.

Provincial top-up, an hour, a little over

6 $

Non-profit home-care workers get a provincial wage top-up of a little over $6 an hour, but tenders counted it in their bids, favouring firms paying close to minimum wage.

The tenders, suspended in February, resume this month with quality criteria harmonized across regions, and the top-up will no longer count, Santé Québec says.

Workers laid off by one co-operative

75 workers

The Dimavie co-operative in Lanaudière laid off about 75 workers, and about 200 clients lost aides some had had for more than 10 years, its director general said.

Benoît Caron, who heads the network of non-profit home-care enterprises, welcomed the changes but said: “We'll see in the next tenders, because I have no proof.”

— Benoît Caron, network of home-care non-profits