If it takes courage to tell the truth, the Ombudsperson, Marie Rinfret, demonstrated a lot when writing her special report on COVID-19 in CHSLDs during the first wave of the pandemic, made public Start of the week. We can understand Prime Minister François Legault and his government to be in a hurry to change the subject, because they do not come out of it grown up.
Which is rather disturbing for a government which, let’s face it frankly, had so far been rather well served by the pandemic, with an enviable popularity rate.
A myth that takes a hit
The government’s positive perception of its handling of the health crisis has a lot to do with its current popularity.
Since the spring of 2020, the Legault government had succeeded in creating a certain form of myth around an almost perfect management of the pandemic.
Today, the Ombudsperson’s report deals a serious blow to this myth. The Legault government is far from deserving a perfect score for its management of the pandemic. While it is true that the severity of the pandemic caused by the COVID-19 virus was not predictable, the situation is quite different for the state of vulnerability in which our public health system found itself, in particular our CHSLDs. , when the health crisis broke out.
A crisis accentuated by government decisions
The FSQ-CSQ as well as other union organizations have increased the number of alerts in recent years to denounce our great weakness in the event of a similar emergency. Unfortunately, this government, like those which preceded it, preferred to turn a deaf ear, ignore the “bad unions” and sink even further into the policy of underinvestment of our public health system. in progress for too long, particularly in terms of prevention.
Because we must not be fooled: if the scale of the pandemic has taken us all by surprise, our inability to more adequately protect the most vulnerable people in our society is no accident. It is directly related to the political choices made by the various governments which have succeeded one another in Quebec for 25 years. COVID-19 has given way to the links weakened by the underfunding of our public health system in recent years, particularly CHSLDs which have been politically very neglected for several decades.
Other causes of confusion
But this is not the only cause. We must also point out the utopia of centralized governance as a management tool for our public health and social services network.
After denouncing the Barrette reform, which abolished any proximity decision-making structure in our public system to concentrate power in the hands of the minister and his ministry, the CAQ, once in power, maintained this ineffective and dangerous mode of management. .
The Québec Ombudsperson demonstrated it: decision-making structures that were too far removed from practice settings resulted in excessively long response times and, in some cases, a misunderstanding of needs and directives. This led to a real health and administrative mess, with its share of deaths and tragedies.
Quebec has also neglected prevention in public health for too long, a mission that is essential to adequately deal with health crises. And crises, we will unfortunately experience many more. While other Canadian provinces have significantly increased their public health spending in recent years, Quebec’s have experienced significant declines since 2014. In 2019, Quebec spent three times less per capita ($ 150) than the Canadian average ($ 384), an investment deficit that represents nearly $ 2 billion annually.
What the government must do
What to do now ? We no longer want the government to try to justify its past choices, we demand that it take its responsibilities.
We want it to put prevention at the heart of its risk management decisions. He must restore locally, and for each of the facilities in our network, public health action plans that will be developed, implemented, evaluated and regularly updated by the parties concerned, including workers who know very well. well the gaps, needs and challenges of their communities.
Also, the government must give communities and healthcare settings back the decision-making levers and resources that will allow them to ensure their safety. Proximity planning and speed of action will be our best protections during the next health crises.
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