On Nov. 9, thousands of doctors, specialists, residents, families, and friends rallied outside the Bell Centre to call for the suspension of new health legislation enacted by the province. On Oct. 25, the Quebec government adopted Bill 2, which will enforce a contract on Quebec doctors whose previous collective agreement expired in March 2023.

Under this law, ten per cent of physicians’ salaries will be tied to provincial performance targets. If those targets are not reached, their pay will be reduced. These goals include ensuring that 75 per cent of ER patients are seen within 90 minutes, and that 97 per cent of surgeries happen within a year of assessment. Furthermore, the law introduces capitation for family doctors, meaning they now receive a fixed payment per patient they support. 

Largely following the framework of Bill 106, a proposal introduced in September 2025, Bill 2 represents a broader overhaul of how physicians are paid and evaluated in the province. Bill 106 already raised concerns within the medical community and sparked protest from the Fédération des médecins spécialistes du Quebec (FMSQ), including FMSQ doctors striking from teaching obligations at Quebec medical schools. 

In an interview with The Tribune, Aaron Assedou, a doctor at L’hôpital d’urgence du Sacré-Cœur-de-Montréal, said this was the first rally he had attended against either bill and emphasized how much the collective action resonated with him. 

“The message that the government is sending [about Bill 2] is that it’ll help patient access,” Assedou stated. “I think that’s not true. They’re just setting objectives that are not attainable for us, and by demoralizing the troops, by making work harder, by encouraging doctors to leave because they’re fed up, they’re just going to make access [to healthcare] even worse.” 

Beyond the immediate financial strain it has placed on physicians, Bill 2 has created an atmosphere of fear. As medical students and doctors band together to protest the bill, they risk facing severe penalties: Steep fines of up to $20,000 CAD per day for individuals who disrupt medical services, and up to $500,000 CAD per day for groups. Members of the medical community have expressed concern that these strict measures discourage open criticism of provincial health care policy. 

In an interview with The Tribune, André Barielle, an attendee at the protest, shared his concerns for his daughter, a recent Quebec medical school graduate.  

“She’s anxious because things are changing too fast,” Barielle said. “She’s afraid that she’s going to have a revenue cut by 40 per cent. She has no pension plan, so she has to plan for that. She has to have risk insurance [….] She cannot go work somewhere else. That is so unfair.” 

Despite the threat of fines, chants of community and solidarity with medical professionals prevailed through downtown Montreal during the rally.

Dr. Emilie Gagné shared in an interview with The Tribune that while Bill 2’s stated goals are to improve medical service speed and access to care, she fears the legislation will have the opposite effect. 

“For the patients, we want to do better,” Gagné said. “There’s a million people that don’t have a family doctor. I’m a family doctor, and I wish everybody had one.” 

Gagné continued to express worries that instead of addressing systemic issues in the healthcare system, the bill may drive doctors out of the province, reduce Quebec’s quality of care, and limit access to providers. Quebec currently faces a shortage of approximately 1,200 general practitioners. 

“There’s going to be more delays, more accidents, and more debt,” Gagne emphasized. “There’s work to do, but this [bill] is not work. This is destruction.”

For family physician Julien Dumont, the day’s protest was rooted in unity and concern for the future of health care in Quebec. After over a decade of practice, he stated that the legislation has left many doctors questioning their vocations and identities in a system they once trusted. 

“Everyone is impacted,” Dumont said in an interview with The Tribune. “It’s a catastrophe for the public health system [….] We’re here to unify. As a physician, I think everyone is hurt by what is going on with the law because we, as doctors, treat patients as individuals, and we do with all our heart.”