The National Assembly of Quebec adopted, on 1er last June, the Act to end the state of health emergency, while providing for the maintenance of transitional measures necessary to protect the health of the population. Quebec can be proud of the longevity record of the state of health emergency in Canada, despite a broad coalition led by the League of Rights and Freedoms, which has been calling for an end to it for more than a year. Only the members of the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) voted in favor of this bill.
The mention of transitional measures in the title of the law refers, in fact, to a set of decrees resulting from the state of emergency which concern working conditions in the health and education sectors, vaccination and screening measures and what Minister Dubé likes to describe as the operational needs related to the pandemic. For mysterious reasons, the law provides that all of these exceptional provisions will end in December 2022. The law adopted is therefore aptly titled: it aims to put an end to the state of emergency, because, still according to the Minister responsible, it cannot be otherwise… in the name of the operational needs mobilized by the pandemic.
The debates surrounding the study and adoption of this law have essentially revolved around the need for complete and intelligible accountability for the management of the COVID-19 pandemic. We would have hoped that the minister would be sensitive to the lessons learned from it. Indeed, the COVID-19 crisis has revealed numerous human rights violations against the Quebec population, based on socioeconomic characteristics and vulnerability criteria. The state of health emergency has also increased the tendency of the Quebec government to confuse the rights and needs of Quebecers.
It is in the name of urgent needs that it has multiplied the breaches of the right to the protection of privacy and the collection of personal data, the contracts by mutual agreement negotiated on the margins of the requirements of the Act respecting the contracts of public bodies and attacks on collective agreements in the health and education sectors. Along the way, he has also generously contributed to increasing the wealth of doctors and set in motion the technocratic and digitized overhaul of the health system that he has been announcing for several weeks.
The work of the National Assembly’s Committee on Health and Social Services has revealed the limits of the Public Health Act, the source of the emergency powers exercised for too long by the government. In committee, the opposition parties made considerable efforts to define the requirements of the laconic event report that must be produced following a state of health emergency under the Public Health Act. In vain.
Whether it is the examination of the responsibilities of the actors of the crisis, the analysis of the impacts of its management, that of the decision-making processes and the availability of information at the key of these ci or the results of the use of independent labour, the minister said no. At most, he agreed to a production date for said event report set for June 10, 2022. As a result, the opposition voted against this bill.
To tell the truth, the state of health emergency will have significantly contributed to the autocratic turn of the Quebec government, which has given some layers in terms of management by performance indicators, the digitization of public services… and privatization. What are the long-term effects for the human rights of Quebecers? For the right to work? For the right to health?
The state of health emergency is very practical for the government, but it is simply not democratic. It will take a lot of citizen vigilance to recover from this pandemic crisis. Because the government has taken bad habits and stretches the pleasure. In a democracy, extended management by means of decrees and orders, which is characteristic of a state of emergency, is not an option. Because under the umbrella of the health crisis, something else is hiding.