How can Quebec still be in a state of health emergency when Sunday singers are back in karaoke?
How can the government continue to give itself exceptional powers while allowing Quebeckers to return to a more or less normal life?
I noted this contradiction in a column last week. Since then, I think I have understood what motivates the government. This is not to play with authoritarian rule – although governance by decree clearly has its advantages, from his point of view.
Read “We must lift the state of emergency”
No, if the government is so reluctant to lift the state of emergency, it is because it fears that the health network will collapse before its eyes.
When we think of a state of health emergency, we think of coercive measures: curfews, closure of businesses, red zones cordoned off by the police.
We are no longer there. We are no longer in the urgency of the first months. The government could very well maintain certain instructions, such as those concerning the vaccination passport and the wearing of a mask, with the support of the National Assembly.
He could lift the state of emergency, as Ontario and British Columbia did in June. Even if it means declaring it again, if the Omicron variant were to cause a wave capable of overwhelming us.
At a time when the rich countries are discussing the booster dose, the global panic caused by the emergence of this new variant in southern Africa should also wake us up – finally – on the cul-de-sac towards which vaccine nationalism is leading us. This pandemic will never end until the entire planet is vaccinated.
But it is not to counter a possible devastating variant that the government does not lift the state of emergency. Rather, it is because it uses this exceptional decree to plug the breaches of an exhausted network, battered and weakened by the pandemic.
In particular, it allows it to grant bonuses to health workers who are at the end of their rope.
At the time of the last payroll, the government paid 44.5 million in bonuses to network employees. So far it has paid them 2.16 billion. Just as bonuses. To encourage them not to give up.
The state of emergency also allows Quebec to ignore collective agreements and employ 30,000 people who do not have the required skills. Again, the goal is to relieve regular employees and prevent the network from crumbling under pressure.
By lifting the state of emergency, these measures will fall suddenly. Temporary employees will be thanked. The bonuses will disappear. How many healthcare workers will decide to bow out? Will it be necessary to reduce care for the population? In Quebec, it is a real fear.
That says a lot about the state of the health network.
A network so fragile that it must be kept on an artificial respirator. In a permanent state of emergency.
The five big unions representing the employees of the network want this to stop.
On November 17, they filed a complaint against the government at the Administrative Labor Tribunal. Their approach aims to “stop the abusive and systematic recourse by the government to the state of emergency and to the decrees of working conditions”.
They recall that the staff shortage “has nothing to do with the health emergency”, since this shortage existed long before the pandemic.
For François Legault, it is “the world upside down”: the unions grumble when the government pays bonuses to their members …
But what especially annoys the unions is that since the start of the pandemic, Quebec has been acting as if they did not exist. Collective agreements either.
“The health crisis should not be a pretext to justify continuing to manage by ministerial decree,” warns Josée Marcotte, vice-president of the Federation of Health and Social Services (FSSS-CSN).
According to her, this way of doing things produces the opposite result to the desired effect: it exhausts the employees and pushes them towards the exit. “Every time there is a ministerial decree, there are waves of departures. ”
However, the government believes that it has no choice.
He argues that the binding measures at the start of the crisis – such as Order 007, which allowed vacations to be canceled and 12-hour shifts to be imposed – have not been applied for months. Now we are talking about incentives and bonuses.
If we cancel them, there is a risk of screwing up the camp.
And yet, the state of emergency will have to be lifted.
The government is aiming for the start of 2022. It is working on a bill to maintain certain measures for a few weeks or even a few months.
This will not happen until the end of the vaccination campaign for children aged 5 to 11. The 8,000 vaccinators who participate are veterinarians, nutritionists, retired nurses, etc. All recruited by ministerial decree.
Okay, but after? The nursing shortage will not be miraculously resolved once the state of emergency is lifted. And the government will not be able to afford to pay bonuses indefinitely …
No one can predict what will happen. But in the meantime, it is democracy that is suffering from the situation.
For 20 months, the government has assumed extraordinary powers. He does not have to consult the National Assembly, nor to respect collective agreements, nor to launch calls for tenders to award contracts.
“It doesn’t make us happy. Me the first, I can not wait to remove the health emergency, “assured François Legault, Tuesday at a press briefing.
The Minister of Health’s office sent me a list of measures that the state of emergency allows. Among them: “to have agreements with private clinics” to carry out operations, “to put an end to the work in silos between the CISSS and the CIUSSS” and “to promote telemedicine in the network”.
It seems to me that there should be a way to do all this without having to resort to a health emergency …
The government should be able to both restore democratic balance and support the health network other than through emergency decrees. The task will certainly be heavy, but it is long-term care that this sick network desperately needs.