Commission d’enquête sur les services de santé et les services sociaux (Rochon Commission)
The Rochon Commission was named after its chair, Jean Rochon, former Dean of Medicine at Laval University, who in 1985 was invited by the Parti Québécois to examine Quebec’s health and social services. Rochon’s report built on the Castonguay–Nepveu Commission of 1967–1970, which had recommended a decentralized structure of departments of community health based in hospitals (Départements de santé communautaires) and local community health clinics (Centres locaux de services communautaires, or CLSCs) governed by regional councils, and on briefs submitted to his own commission. The report made six general recommendations that supported further regionalization and decentralization founded on “evidence-based decision-making, needs-based funding, improved professional collaboration and primary care reform” (Gregory P. Marchildon, Health Systems in Transition: Canada, ed. Sara Allin and Elias Mossialios [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006], p. 109). Taking on the role of Minister of Health in Jacques Parizeau’s Parti Québécois government in 1994, Rochon was able to implement some of his proposed reforms, but his attempts to control costs by closing hospitals and reducing the number of beds were strongly opposed and he was replaced as health minister in 1998.
As Minister of Health and Social Services for the Parti Québécois from 1994 to 1998, Dr. Jean Rochon, a former academic and public health expert, tried to turn Quebec’s medicare system around by focusing on community health centres and ambulatory care.
Courtesy of L’Actualité, Vol. 21, No. 6 (April 15, 1996), cover.
