We certainly cannot accuse Health Minister Christian Dubé of passivity or a lack of imagination. Hardly a week goes by without him pulling another bunny out of his hat.
Do not, however, confuse action with agitation. We cannot blame him for exploring new avenues, even if there are limits to innovation after a continuous succession of reports and reforms, but several of his initiatives seem mainly aimed at giving the impression that the government does not spares no effort to straighten out the health network, without really changing things.
We will see if the creation of the new Santé Québec agency will succeed in “shaking” the columns of the temple, as promised by Mr. Dubé, but it is difficult to see who or what it will be used for in concrete terms to measure, in a very subjective way, the degree satisfaction of the users of the various establishments, if not to feed his passion for dashboards, which have multiplied since his arrival at Health.
Thus, during their visit to the hospital, everyone will receive a QR code which will allow them to answer an online questionnaire. What else will we learn from this kind of complaints service? It can certainly be unpleasant to be greeted by a nurse or a doctor who does not seem to show any sympathy, but that is usually not the problem. What irritates users the most is well known: the endless wait in the emergency room or on an operating list.
Just check out the site healthindex.cawhere ER traffic and wait times at each facility are shown in near real time, so you know where the mood will be most gloomy.
The Minister for the French Language, Jean-François Roberge, was delighted with the positive reception received by the advertising message comparing the precarious situation of this bird “really sick what is the peregrine falcon with that of French in Quebec. It must be said that congratulations were rather rare during the years he spent in Education.
The proliferation of Anglicisms in everyday language, among young and old alike, is certainly worrying, and anything that can contribute even a little to sensitize Quebecers to the challenge of the survival of French on the North American continent is welcome.
Again, however, agitation should not take the place of action. Mr. Roberge presented the falcon ad as a taste of the plan he is to unveil in the fall. It is to be hoped that it will be more structuring.
When he took office, his immediate predecessor, Simon Jolin-Barrette, had promised “robust measures”. We quickly understood that he had not been allowed to go as far as he would have liked and present this “new law 101” promised by the Coalition avenir Québec. Over the decades, however, we have had plenty of time to measure the limits of advertising and language incentives.
There may be times when real action is actually an admission of powerlessness, as the Horne smelter announcements that were made to much fanfare this week illustrate.
Quebec Environment Minister Benoit Charette and his Municipal Affairs colleague Andrée Laforest have caused consternation and anger among residents of the Notre-Dame district in Rouyn-Noranda, who will have to be relocated even if the government still claims to lead the smelter to comply with the arsenic emission standards set by Public Health.
The move to a new neighborhood, the location of which has yet to be determined, could take place over a period of five years, Ms.me Laforest. According to what his colleague from the Environment explained, arsenic emissions should then have been limited to the threshold of 15 nanograms per cubic meter, which would reduce the risk of cancer by 45%, and the establishment should have presented a plan – without a timetable – to reduce them to 3 nanograms.
If the government has decided to order the relocation, with the human tragedies that this will inevitably cause, it is because it does not really believe that the emissions of arsenic, let alone lead and cadmium, will be able to be reduced to an acceptable level in the foreseeable future.
The dilemma is real. Provoking the closure of the foundry would also cause drama, in a region where jobs do not rain, but how to explain to the families who will have to leave their homes that the government is acting for their good rather than for that of a multinational whose profits number in the tens of billions? A little fuss with that?