Many issues loom for CMA's new president

Barbara  Sibbald

When Dr. Henry Haddad assumes the CMA presidency later this month, there'll be no shortage of issues on his plate.

First on the agenda is Roy Romanow's study of medicare's future, which may have the most impact on Canada's health care system since the Hall Royal Commission issued its report almost 40 years ago. Haddad will have to ensure that the former Saskatchewan premier is fully briefed on physicians' concerns.

Haddad, who assumes the presidency Aug. 15 during the CMA's annual meeting in Quebec City, is also concerned about the way politicians debate medicare. During last fall's election campaign he told reporters that political posturing must stop and health care must be treated as more than a “political football.”

As is the case with many of the CMA's 50 000 members, waiting lists are a personal concern for Haddad, a gastroenterologist from Sherbrooke, Que., who has a 4-month-long waiting list for patients needing endoscopy.

He also worries about the country's poverty levels. “One in 6 Canadian children under 18 lives in relative poverty,” he says. “As physicians, that should bother us a lot.”

Haddad, a 1963 University of Ottawa graduate, has cleared the decks for his 1-year term by cutting his clinical practice responsibilities by 75% and taking a leave from his duties at the University of Sherbrooke, where he has been a full professor since 1982.

He says his work with the medical students at Sherbrooke has been a learning experience for him, too. “The vast majority of these students are in medicine for the right reason — to serve — but they want a more balanced life than my generation had, and I fully agree with that. I look back on my own life and I didn't see my children grow up.”

He is also a strong proponent of the need to increase medical school enrolment — he says the number of medical students accepted annually is still well short of the total needed, despite recent increases at some schools.

Haddad, the first member of Canada's Arab community to head the CMA, cut his political teeth with the Quebec Medical Association, where he is a past president. He says the QMA has undergone “huge changes,” particularly in the area of advocacy. It now represents more than 6000 of the province's 15 000 physicians. “That isn't bad, given the political context of Quebec,” he says, “but there's still work to be done.”

Haddad, 63, acknowledges that he is taking the CMA's helm during one of the most unsettled times in Canada's health care history: health care workers are angry, patients are upset and a recession threatens. At the same time, the CMA's visibility has never been higher.

“Today the CMA is quoted and our positions are referred to with great regularity in both the national media and the House of Commons. We have become the ‘go-to’ organization for national media when it comes to health-policy issues, and this in turn means that we have a major responsibility to both the country and the profession.”