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It’s become an almost weekly ritual for Gaétan Barrette. The health minister strides before a podium at a newly inaugurated super clinic and declares in front of the TV cameras that thousands more patients will soon have access to a family doctor.

And that’s not all, he tells reporters. The super clinics will finally solve Quebec’s perennial crisis in emergency-room overcrowding.

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“For the first time in history — and it’s never been seen before — there is a reduction in the number of patients presenting to the ER,” Barrette said on Feb. 23 in Côte-des-Neiges without providing any figures to back up that assertion.



Less than two weeks later in Pointe-Claire, Barrette predicted that the Stillview super clinic will attract 40,000 walk-in patients per year. “This is a very, very significant milestone,” he added in what sounded like a pre-electoral speech.

But a close examination of the super clinics raises questions about many of Barrette’s claims, chief among them, that the minister is fulfilling a 2014 election promise to “create” 50 super clinics by the end of this year. In fact, the Montreal Gazette has confirmed that every one of the 31 super clinics announced to date was long-established as a family medicine group, and all were already open seven days a week before Barrette rechristened them.