QUEBEC — Health Minister Gaétan Barrette wants to know what Montrealers living in long term care facilities like to eat, as part of a charm offensive to improve menus for seniors in the province.
Barrette has been heavily criticized this fall by unions and opposition parties for allowing long-term care facilities (CHSLDs) to serve such meals as puréed meat pies, which end up looking like piles of mud, and instant mashed potatoes, and for spending on average two dollars per meal.
The Coalition Avenir Québec has argued that amount should be raised to at least $4.14, while Québec solidaire claims a decent meal costs around $8.
On Wednesday, Barrette invited MNAs and media to dine on coq au vin, salmon and lasagna, items that he said were revisited by a team of chefs and nutritionists as part of a pilot project in Quebec City.
He assured media that even though the event was taking place at the Quebec City convention centre, the food had been prepared in CHSLD or hospital kitchens.
A throng of Liberal MNAs, including Montrealers David Birnbaum and Filomena Rotiroti, attended the event (they had coq au vin and salmon, respectively) and said the food was excellent but will need to be adjusted to Montreal’s culturally diversified population.
“In Montreal, you have a completely different reality; there’s going to be a need for menus that are culturally sensitive,” Birnbaum said.
His plate of coq au vin also consisted of mashed potatoes and green peas, with a puréed version beside it, which is what will be served to the 40 to 50 per cent of seniors living in CHSLDs who have difficulty swallowing food.
Université Laval nutritionist Lucie Fillion, who had been invited to the tasting by media, applauded the new flavours and added nutritional value.
It was later revealed that Birnbaum’s chicken dish had cost $2.34 to make, which became a source of pride for Barrette, who promised to go through the same testing process in Montreal, without raising budgets for food.
“It’s not a budgetary issue; it’s a quality issue, it’s a variety issue,” Barrette insisted.
“To accommodate cultural communities, first of all you have to address the habits of those people, because the very essence of this process was to adapt the culinary offer to their needs, tastes and choices,” he said. “What do you like? What way would you like it? Then adopt the choices of the people to proper nutritional parameters, textures and recipes.”
Barrette promised better food for Montreal seniors sometime by 2018.
He ripped into opposition parties for snubbing Wednesday’s tasting, which he said cost $4,000. “It’s about workers and professionals who work hard, who decided to do better, and they’re coming up presenting the results of their hard work, and (opposition parties) are saying to them ‘You’re not interesting to us politicians’.”
PQ health critic Diane Lamarre argued the $4,000 could have been put to better use, and urged Barrette to invest more in CHSLDs, citing reports about limits on the number of patient diapers.
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Barrette announced last week that an additional $65 million will be used to hire 1,150 employees — nurses, nursing aides and orderlies — to boost the quality of care for the 38,000 Quebecers living in CHSLDs.
Still, Québec solidaire MNA Amir Khadir — who attended the event Wednesday but did not eat — said if people thought the meals served at the convention centre were good, then “imagine what we could do with $4 per meal.”
“This is just not enough at all,” he said, arguing ministers spend $65,000 a year on food at their caucus meetings, which comes out to about $50 a meal per minister.
