The Blue Room resumed its pre-pandemic appearance on Tuesday, the opposition parties want to see “democracy be deconfined” on Wednesday. After two years of governance by decree, the government of François Legault will propose during the day a way out for the state of health emergency which it has renewed 103 times since the arrival of COVID-19.
The Minister of Health and Social Services, Christian Dubé, entered a bill – simply titled “Law to end the state of health emergency” – on the order paper of the National Assembly on Tuesday morning. He will present it in good and due form around 10 a.m. on Wednesday. “Since most of the measures are falling, we no longer need the health emergency,” François Legault briefly explained on Tuesday in a press scrum, a few minutes before rushing into the Blue Room for the period of the Questions.
In the hall of the National Assembly, the elected CAQ found himself facing a compact mass of opposition deputies. Since COVID-19 plunged its claws into Quebec’s political daily life, Parliament has sat with 37 elected members, then 62. However, health measures are melting like snow in the sun, and the National Assembly is not a exception: due to an agreement ratified last Thursday, all elected members are now authorized to sit on the benches of the Blue Room, as in March 2020.
Through its bill, Quebec wants to “find an arrangement”, confided last month the chief of staff of the Prime Minister, Martin Koskinen, in an interview with The duty. Earlier this year, François Legault had estimated that he needed a state of health emergency for “four to five reasons”. First and foremost, to “pay bonuses to nurses outside of collective agreements”.
The Alliance of Professional and Technical Health and Social Services Personnel (APTS) is apprehensive about the bill.
“We are worried about that because the measures that have been put forward to somewhat counter the staff shortage, if we put an end to that, there is no plan B at the Ministry of Health and Social services, lamented its president Robert Comeau on Tuesday. So, we are going to return, once again, to the lack of personnel and the fatigue of our world. »
Same concerns at the Federation of Health and Social Services (FSSS), affiliated with the Confederation of National Trade Unions (CSN). “The cessation of financial measures [comme les primes] will perhaps rush people who will say to themselves “ok, I gave, I return to other sectors of activity which have better salary and working conditions”, believes its president Réjean Leclerc.
With Marie-Eve Cousineau
François Legault does not listen, does not anticipate. He acts paternalistically.