Passing through Beauce on Tuesday, the leader of the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ), François Legault, decided to take the bull by the horns by addressing the theme of freedom and the limits imposed on it during the pandemic, a highlight. that the leader of the Conservative Party of Quebec (PCQ), Éric Duhaime, continues to push. In these constituencies where the PCQ finds fertile ground for its anti-sanitary measures message, the CAQ leader felt the need to respond by accusing his opponent of being irresponsible.
It’s a double-edged sword, since it brings Éric Duhaime back to his favorite terrain, which is well suited to a party whose slogan proclaims “Libres chez nous”. But it is possible that in the war room of the CAQ, we prefer that the Conservative leader remain confined there as much as possible.
Obviously, Éric Duhaime took the opportunity to launch his own salvos by accusing François Legault of having divided Quebecers between vaccinated and non-vaccinated, between essential and non-essential workers. François Legault is “the most liberticidal Prime Minister in our history”, he argued, which illustrates the Duhaime way well: the deceptive shortcut.
François Legault was the only Quebec premier who had to face a pandemic of such magnitude, caused moreover by a virus about which we knew little. We can also say that the Conservatives Doug Ford and Jason Kenney were also the most draconian prime ministers in the history of their respective provinces.
And what about Justin Trudeau, who, however, could, in the eyes of some, give up the prize to his father for his recourse to the War Measures Act in 1970.
Éric Duhaime is opposed to confinement, to the obligation to wear a mask in public places, to that of vaccination for health personnel, to the vaccination passport, which prevented unvaccinated people from frequenting restaurants. In short, the freedom he claims is the freedom of individuals to act unhindered during a pandemic.
The problem is that this libertarian approach has been tried elsewhere, and it has failed.
This was the case in Sweden, the most obvious example, where public health authorities advocated the protection of vulnerable people and the exposure of others in order to build up community immunity. Illusory objective. Sweden, whose health system is much more robust than ours, had to backtrack. Same thing in the UK. In Canada, Alberta gave it a shot. It was a dismal failure that cost Jason Kenney his premiership.
Éric Duhaime liked to cite the example of Florida, whose Republican Governor, Ron DeSantis, described as “Trump with a brain”, decided to ignore the recommendations of Public Health after having followed them for a while.
Result: compared to Quebec, which has an excess mortality rate of 3.9% for the period from March 2020 to the beginning of July 2022, the lowest rate in Canada apart from the Atlantic provinces, Florida has seen its deaths multiply, and its excess mortality rate is at least four times higher than that of Quebec, according to data published by the New York Times.
If we had imitated Florida, it is at the very least 17,500 more deaths than we would have on our hands. To this would have been added a serious overcrowding of the hospitals which would have forced an inhuman triage of patients – that is to say, forced the personnel to choose, for lack of capacity, the patients who would have survived and those who, deprived of care, would have took the path to the cemetery. The Conservative leader should tell us how many deaths his conscience could have endured in the name of freedom under such circumstances.
Certainly, the management of the pandemic by the Legault government is not without stain. The conservative leader says he is sensitive to the distress that confinement and health constraints have caused. He comes to the defense of these “angry people”, of “those people who have been sacrificed” during the pandemic. François Legault accuses him of wanting to “bring discontent into the National Assembly”. That is exactly what he intends to do, he says: channel that anger by giving it a democratic outlet, a political voice.
But where he deludes his sympathizers is by making them believe that without restrictive health measures, without these limits imposed on individual freedom in order to protect the health of all, Quebecers would have emerged unscathed from the pandemic or, in any case, in a better position than today.
The misfortune of this libertarian is that he is too intelligent to pretend that he is not aware of the falsehoods he is spreading. He is not credible: that should flatter him. It is not Maxime Bernier who wants. It is a lack of ethics, that of the politician, that Éric Duhaime however betrays with his penchant for manipulation.