Extract – Shock treatments and tarts | The ravages of populist crisis management

In December 2020, François Legault gave himself a “perfect score” for his management of the pandemic. A statement that has made all those who have lived, thought about and commented on the health crisis jump. This book is intended as a response to the CAQ’s self-flattering, a trace of what should not be forgotten.

How great is the mystery of Sainte-Flanelle, François Legault has seen fit to ask Public Health for relaxations in health rules to galvanize supporters of the Canadian during the 2021 playoffs. A measure that was poorly received by the floating cultural milieu, often the first to close and the last to reopen, but which has also discouraged the D^D Marie-Pierre Larrivee, child psychiatrist at CHU Sainte-Justine. “Tell me about reopening the Bell Center to hockey fans when every week I see teenagers who want to kill themselves, deprived of everything that is essential for them,” she quipped. The Press. ” [L]he full-time face-to-face school for all young people – including those in CEGEP – should have been THE priority. “For little and François Legault brought back the Nordiques for his electorate of Quebec …

Truce of cynicism, the pandemic has consolidated the populist practices of our Prime Minister, who likes to pose as a good father. The polls and his Facebook page have become his rudder, often taking precedence over the opinions of specialists, as was the case in the case of the extension of highways 13 and 19.

“We are thus replacing experts, studies and data with common sense, Legault version”, wrote the editorialist François Cardinal in 2019.

As time passed, the government’s communications machine leaked information ahead of press conferences to gauge public reception. While transparency and education could have won popular support for science-backed measures, the cookie-cutter snippets have often set the government back – and jeopardized the fight against the virus. A “yo-yo” that has tired the people, tired of waiting for this “return to normal” repeatedly promised, but never achieved.

In government communications, emerging from the pandemic, the “all-vaccination” approach and the use of nostalgia thus appear to be intimately linked.

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We were thus sold the vaccine as a comforting “passport to freedom”, which will allow a “return to normal”: that of the world before. The government invested all its energies in deploying a very successful vaccination campaign, but our director of public health did little to explain the efficacy and safety of the vaccines (the procrastination surrounding the AstraZeneca vaccine probably did not not helped), and the gray areas have multiplied, creating so many discursive gaps in which the “conspiracy theorists” have put their arm in order to sink into them. Yet, from the time vaccines were developed, the limits of their usefulness were clear and trumpeted in many mainstream media (The Atlantic, The New York TimesRadio Canada, The duty): they would reduce the risk of developing severe forms of the disease, but not prevent transmission. The barrier measures would therefore have to continue. But to stimulate interest in vaccination, the Legault government preferred to associate it with the abandonment of wearing a mask, in particular dangling a “normal” back to school and a “summer of rapprochements”; even going so far as to shout “freedom” everywhere, especially in the “average parties”. And when the vaccine effort ran out of steam, the Legault-Arruda-Dubé trio preferred Loto-COVID to education and transparency. “Come closer, come closer, two doses before the 1^er October could win you big! Scholarships, money and even a personal watercraft! Oh ! Do you live in town? Too bad ! You did not vote for us. »

Shock treatments and tartlets – Critical assessment of the management of COVID-19 in Quebec

Collective under the direction of Josiane Cossette and Julien Simard

All in All Editions
April 2022

296 pages