OttawaOutaouais residents rallied against the controversial Bill 2 in Wakefield, Que., on Saturday, with many expressing fears that even more doctors could leave the region.Proximity to Ontario makes the Outaouais vulnerable to physicians leaving, says mayorCampbell MacDiarmid · CBC News · Posted: Nov 22, 2025 4:52 PM EST | Last Updated: 39 minutes agoListen to this articleEstimated 3 minutesThe audio version of this article is generated by text-to-speech, a technology based on artificial intelligence.Dozens of Outaouais residents protested in Wakefield, Que., on Saturday over the Quebec government’s controversial Bill 2, which ties the remuneration of physicians in the province to hitting performance targets. (Campbell MacDiarmid/CBC)Outaouais residents rallied against a controversial new Quebec health-care law in Wakefield, Que., on Saturday, with many expressing fears of more doctors leaving their community.Bill 2, which is due to take effect in the new year, aims to link remuneration of doctors to performance targets. Its unpopularity has led to a surge of Quebec doctors applying to practice in Ontario, something that’s particularly worrying to rural Quebec communities close to the Ottawa River.The stated aim of Bill 2 is to help patients get treated faster by incentivizing doctors to meet performance targets. While the Quebec government has tried to modify it, that hasn’t mollified either physicians or those who demonstrated Saturday in Wakefield.Several hundred people marched to Black Sheep Inn after listening to speeches at the Centre Wakefield La Pêche community centre.Natasha Grimard, a medical resident in training in Ottawa from Chelsea Que., says Bill 2 is standing in the way of her returning to practice in Quebec. (Campbell MacDiarmid/CBC)’Like being torn apart’Medical resident Natasha Grimard told the crowd that Bill 2 was an obstacle to her returning to practice in Quebec.”This bill is making it hard for me to justify coming back, not so much from a remuneration perspective, but from a support perspective,” said Grimard, who grew up in nearby Chelsea and is now training to become a family doctor in Ottawa.She said Ontario is doing a better job funding its health-care system.”It feels like being torn apart, between this … very deep sense of needing to give back to the community that helped me grow up, and not having the tools here to do that properly,” she said. “[But] right across the river I can have those tools, and that makes it a very difficult decision as to where I go next.”Retired family doctor Gary Satenstein told the crowd he had watched the health-care system in Quebec decline during his 40 years practising in Wakefield. The solution to a doctor shortage is greater investment, he said, not linking remuneration to performance.”Coercive policies generally are not good because we already have a very motivated health-care force,” he told CBC. “They don’t need motivation. They need resources. They need numbers. They need help.”Gary Satenstein is a retired family doctor who spoke at Saturday’s protest in Wakefield over Bill 2. (Campbell MacDiarmid/CBC)’Real crisis’The region’s proximity to Ontario means that Marc Carrière, the mayor of Les Collines-de-l’Outaouais, is especially worried about health-care workers leaving the community. “Here we’re about 15 minutes, 20 minutes from Ottawa. So it’s easy for any doctors, any nurses to go across the river and go work in Ottawa,” he said. Protest organizer Sharyn Morris said most people in Wakefield already do not have a family doctor, making her especially worried about Bill 2. “A lot of our doctors have already left and it’s a real crisis right now,” she said. “We already are suffering in our medical system. And to be honest, I’m really scared of the outcome.”Sharyn Morris, who helped organize Saturday’s demonstration over Bill 2, says many doctors have already left the region. (Campbell MacDiarmid/CBC)ABOUT THE AUTHORCampbell MacDiarmid is a reporter with the CBC Ottawa bureau
Anger still simmering in western Quebec over doctor pay law
