Quebec’s College of Physicians said it is investigating the actions of 23 doctors who are threatening to resign unless the province puts in place a moratorium on uranium exploration.

The doctors at the Sept-Îles Hospital wrote to Quebec Health Minister Yves Bolduc last week to notify him of the ultimatum.

The doctors, including several medical specialists, said plans for uranium exploration in the region could put the health of the local population at risk.

But an article of the doctors’ code of ethics prohibits them "from taking part in a concerted action of a nature that would endanger the health or safety of a clientele or population," said college president Dr. Yves Lamontagne.

"I would be very angry to see that physicians would take either some part of the population or a whole population as a hostage in order to show a point of view,"Lamontagne said Monday.

But the doctors are defending their actions.

"We don’t consider that we are taking the population hostage," said Dr. Bruno Imbeault, a respirologist who speaks for the doctors at the Sept-Îles Hospital.

The fact that the doctors are speaking out is proof they care about the well-being of the population, Imbeault said.

Though the doctors sent a joint letter to the health minister, Imbeault said their resignations would be submitted one by one, and so would not constitute a "concerted action," Imbeault said.

Meanwhile, the newly elected mayor of Sept-Îles, Serge Levesque, is also critical of the doctors' actions.

Levesque said the population is worried about the loss of additional doctors in a region already facing a shortage of health-care workers.

He said the city has commissioned a poll to see whether the population agrees with the doctors’ position.

But the executive director of the Quebec Mineral Exploration Association, Jean-Pierre Thomassin, warns the province is in no position to implement a moratorium on uranium exploration.

He said the companies involved have spent $250 million on exploration in the past five years.

"These companies will ask to be reimbursed their money if you do such a moratorium."

Thomassin said the radioactive mineral has been mined safety since the 1950s in Saskatchewan.

On Friday, Bolduc said there were no immediate plans for a uranium mine in the region, and any project would have to have the public's support to be approved.

The Sept-Îles Hospital administration has said it supports the protest by doctors, but warned their departure would be "catastrophic."