A coffee with… Régine Laurent | Benevolence, with a column

Régine Laurent quickly defuses the issue.

Does she want to get into politics?

” No no no ! She laughs.

It is not because different parties did not try to convince her, and we understand them. Former nurse and trade unionist, president of the special commission on children’s rights, Mr.^me Laurent embodies both common sense and benevolence. It combines goodness and moral uprightness. With a radar to detect rubbish and a backbone to expose it.

He’s the kind of person Quebeckers can easily love. Moreover, in the café in Hochelaga where I meet her, heads turn discreetly to follow her with their eyes.

After our interview, a neighbor at the table will approach him with delicate embarrassment. “Madame Laurent, thank you for what you are doing! “

But after giving a lot, she wants to think about herself.

“I finally have some time. I can spend a day in my pajamas. I cook for my guys, I sit down on the sofa, paws in the air, with a book. This is the big luxury! “

She looks at me with a suppressed smile, before banging her fist on the table. “I’m healthy, I’m lucky, so I want to enjoy it a bit. “

However, it does not take away from public affairs. She still follows the news and comments on it at LCN. But she is satisfied with the role of observer.

“I spent so many years working 60 to 70 hours a week, and I loved it! But what ended up exhausting me, in the end, was packing my bags. It made me feel sick to my stomach. “

She did not come out completely unscathed either from the hearings of her commission, which had been triggered following the death of the girl from Granby.

What did she find the most difficult?

“The first week,” she replies. Young people came to testify. Their speaker changed often, they had to start over. It exhausted them. They closed in on themselves and they suffered. “

* * *

Régine Laurent grew up in Port-au-Prince. His mother taught science, his father practiced law.

It was the time when Haiti still had a middle class, she recalls. But life was not easy.

His father was arrested a few times by the Duvalier regime. “He wasn’t particularly politicized. But you didn’t have to be to be bothered by power. There were sometimes waves with a hundred arrests and my father was one of them. “

In the early summer of 1968, Régine immigrated to Quebec with her family. She is 12 years old.

His father cannot practice his trade here. He must retrain in teaching. “The only job he has found is a religion teacher. Yet he was not that religious. But he adapted the lessons in his own way, he added a philosophical touch, ”she explains.

The clan lives in New Burgundy, near Acadia, in the north of Montreal. Fields still abounded around Henri-Bourassa.

Children receive skates, and are driven back to the park during their first winter to use them. “My parents wanted to pitch us in our new company. “

Young Régine was the only black girl in her school. The same goes for his brothers. I ask him how it was.

“People were curious… We had a big basement and the weekends were full. Children, especially. Parents were less open. “

She speaks of a certain “carelessness” which contrasts with the “heaviness” of today.

But don’t ask him to speak out against “systemic racism”. She does not like the expression, which, according to her, would mix two very different things: the indirect effects of a system and the prejudices of individuals. “Racism must remain associated with those who propagate it, with their beliefs and their actions. And we also have to make people responsible for this. Slavery, racism, there are people who opposed it, who fought the system. “

What does she think of the term “systemic discrimination” then?

“Yeah, I’m comfortable with that. ”

She deplores the dead end of discussions on this subject. “We don’t listen to each other anymore! We are unable to debate! ”

But is this a debate? If a person says they are judged because of the color of their skin, should we debate it? “We have to talk about it,” she said. If someone calls themselves a victim, it is normal to ask them why they feel like this. It all depends on listening. ”

At 64, she admits to being far from the realities of young people from difficult neighborhoods. “I sometimes talk about it with my two sons and my niece. They tell me: you don’t go out anymore, you don’t know what’s going on! “

And to stay awake, she makes a point of listening to them.

* * *

If it had to be done again, Régine Laurent would still choose the profession of nurse. She never thought of doing anything else. But her “nurse’s heart” hurts.

She remembers her early days. Time spent talking with patients. Helping with her colleagues, who could cover her when she had to linger with someone in distress.

Now it is different. The volume of cases has increased, as has their complexity and cumbersome management.

Since her beginnings in the profession in 1978, she has seen the network become centralized through reforms. Care has become dehumanized.

“Before, when we had a problem, we went to see the head of the care unit on our floor. It doesn’t work like that anymore. The person is no longer a nurse. “

It is now the responsibility of managers, who are increasingly removed from the field. Added to this is the too rigid organization of work. According to her, the nursing staff no longer feels collectively responsible for the patients. There would be no more “give and take” between these professionals to distribute the tasks.

This problem stems more from the work culture than from the collective agreement. And as she sums it up, a culture, “it’s hard and long to change”.

And the famous collegiality of English-speaking hospitals, where nurses share the hours more equitably? “You have to understand where it comes from,” she replies. At the time, in French-speaking hospitals, a nurse could work in the same week during the day, in the evening and then at night. It was insane. There was a fight to stabilize the posts. “

However, this achievement has become a burden in the eyes of young nurses caught up with thankless hours.

M^me Laurent shares the observation relayed by countless players: our first line is dysfunctional, and the remedy involves, among other things, the delegation of acts. But it’s never easy.

The eyes of the ex-unionist light up.

The answer, according to her: the medical lobby. “No government dares stand up to him. They are afraid. ”

But Régine Laurent will not jump into the fray to tackle it. Its immediate concern is to observe the follow-up given to the report of its committee on the rights of the child. The responsible minister, Lionel Carmant, tabled his bill a few days after this interview. M^me Laurent reacted favorably to it. But she also hopes that the Caquista government will adopt another of its flagship recommendations: create a Child Welfare Commissioner. Someone with a horizontal vision to defend their interests in all matters.

She is ready to provide her lights. But for the fight, she gives her weapons to the next. Her fight, she has already made him advance as far as possible.