Press release · For immediate release
Montreal, January 30, 2026 – On January 29, Sonia Bélanger, Minister Responsible for Social Services and Seniors, presented the new national home health care policy. After analysing this policy, the Clinic recognizes several positive directions, but remains concerned about the government’s real capacity to adequately meet home health care needs and address the challenge of an ageing population.
We welcome the government’s willingness to re-evaluate the role of CLSCs in home health care services and to emphasize the importance of their proximity to the population in order to better understand their needs. The integration of a community-based approach that emphasizes prevention is also a step in the right direction. The Clinic believes that CLSCs must resume a significant role in coordinating and delivering home health care services in their territory, with a view to preventing disease and promoting health and its determinants. However, this role must go beyond coordinating local stakeholders and assessing and referring users. We remain concerned that the announced measures may be insufficient to strengthen the capacity to meet real needs through high-quality, humane public services.
A few caveats
The new policy emphasizes the importance and essential nature of home health care services and recognizes the significant contribution of family caregivers, community groups and other local resources to the well-being of home support service users. However, we feel that the policy places too much emphasis on the contribution of these family, community, parapublic and private networks, and relies primarily on financial assistance programmes to increase and maximise home health care services. In our opinion, direct and structural reinforcement of public service provision should not be replaced by individual financial assistance.
Furthermore, the Clinic has mixed feelings about the announcement of a special partnership with social economy home care companies (EÉSAD), which suggests a possible expansion of their mandates beyond domestic help to include interventions more directly related to personal care and assistance. To date, several challenges have been observed within these enterprises, including workforce stability, working conditions, training needs and staff turnover. We see in this measure a risk that the logic of budgetary efficiency will take precedence over the continuity and quality of the response to home health care needs. In addition, the proliferation of actors in service delivery carries the risk of diluting responsibilities and undermining the accountability of the public system.
The same applies to the Home Independence Allowance. Although we welcome the recognition and remuneration of the work of family caregivers, the fact remains that the issues repeatedly mentioned (insufficient pay, lack of support for users in their role as employers, lack of training, etc.) in relation to this programme remain unresolved.
Furthermore, the policy still does not give enough weight to citizen participation in the governance and organisation of home support services.
Ageing well, living better: a right for all
In October 2025, in light of the preliminary guidelines for the new home health care policy, the Clinic and community partners presented a collective position statement. The three recommendations made to ensure the universal right to health and healthy ageing remain relevant:
1) Ensure substantial public funding for home support
2) Decentralise home health care services to CLSCs so that they regain their local and democratic roots
3) Ensure a maximum response to health and social service needs by integrating a preventive, community-based approach and repatriating care and support services for activities of daily living to CLSCs
Despite some progress, the government must do better and demonstrate its commitment to our public services in order to strengthen our collective capacity to meet the home health care needs of the population. The right to health and dignified ageing is a non-negotiable right!
To learn more about our collective position statement: https://ccpsc.qc.ca/en/collective-statement-on-the-caqs-new-home-support-policy/