The Legault government declared a state of health emergency on March 13, 2020. At that time, all governments in Canada had done the same thing, although with different application methods.
A few weeks ago, Prime Minister François Legault planned to lift the state of emergency at the same time as most health measures somewhere in early 2022, when children aged 6 to 12 would have been vaccinated.
But this vaccination campaign is slow to get started. The national director of public health, Dr Horacio Arruda, indicated that it could be “around Christmas”. So that, if this continues, the state of emergency may not be lifted before March 13, 2022.
This will mean that half of the mandate of the current government will have taken place under a state of emergency which considerably increased the powers of the government and consequently reduced its transparency obligations.
If we make it to this anniversary, there will only be a little over six months until the next election. However, by their very nature, the pandemic and the resulting state of health emergency create a considerable imbalance in democratic debate.
Let it be understood, we do not live in a dictatorship, the National Assembly sits and legislates, and as far as we know, the government has not abused its powers.
But those powers are considerable, including the right to enter into private agreements without competitive bidding, the details of which are not known at this time. The law provides that at the end of the state of emergency the government must provide a report on the use of special powers, but this will necessarily be after the fact.
Meanwhile, law professors and other observers are starting to say the government is sidestepping the spirit of the public health law. In Articles 118 and 119, the law gives the government the right to impose a state of health emergency for a period of 10 days, renewable by simple decision of the Council of Ministers. This is what the government has done systematically since March 2020.
But the law also indicates that the state of emergency can be renewed for 30 days “with the consent of the National Assembly”. The spirit of the law is clear: if we have to impose a state of emergency when the Assembly is not sitting, we do so for 10 days. When the National Assembly sits, it is done for 30 days with a vote of the Assembly.
The government does not want to bother with such a procedure which would force it to justify maintaining the state of emergency.
It should be noted that the two large Canadian provinces which have a health situation quite similar to that of Quebec abandoned the state of emergency a long time ago: last June 9 for Ontario and June 30 for Colombia. British.
But what is particular in Quebec is the unfortunate tendency of the government to constantly link the maintenance of the state of emergency to the fight against COVID-19. Asked about this by Liberal MP Marc Tanguay, the government chamber leader, Simon Jolin-Barrette, first described him as a conspirator before saying, more calmly: “The MP’s solution is to say : well, listen, we should not have a state of health emergency, so we could not provide the care that is required and necessary in our hospitals, to organize the health network, in particular. ”
No state of emergency, therefore no care in hospitals? Mr. Jolin-Barrette must believe it since, immediately, he put a layer back: “We are taking the health emergency decree because it allows us to put in place measures to protect the lives of Quebeckers. ”
It is the amalgam that the government has served, directly or implicitly, since the start of the pandemic. As if the state of emergency were the only way to provide health services, to fight against the pandemic and, while we are there, to save lives. It cuts the debate short and allows you to make all the decisions you want without referring them to anyone.
As we entered the election year, this is an attitude that should worry us. Because the government is now used to governing by decree and with a minimum of transparency.
What makes it knowingly maintains a confusion between the end of the pandemic and the end of the state of emergency. But the real question that can and must be asked is: does the government still need emergency powers? The government systematically refuses any debate on this issue.
The result is that the democratic debate that we would be entitled to expect during an election year risks being unbalanced, if not distorted: because there will be one of the parties that will have had, for almost half of the vote. his mandate, all the cards in his deck.