(Quebec) Coroner Géhane Kamel sent a total of five subpoenas to two ministers to come and testify as part of her investigation into deaths in CHSLDs during the first wave.
Posted at 3:46 p.m.
Updated at 7:22 p.m.
This was clarified on Tuesday by the Minister of Justice, Simon Jolin-Barrette, during the study of the budgetary appropriations of his ministry.
He had just spoken at length with the Liberal MP for La Pinière, Gaétan Barrette, about the number of ministers who had received a summons to testify.
Relying on a response from the coroner’s office to an access to information request, Mr. Barrette maintained that no less than five ministers had been summoned.
What Mr. Jolin-Barrette denied with great insistence.
According to him, only two ministers had been called to the witness stand: the former Minister of Health Danielle McCann and the Minister of Seniors Marguerite Blais.
“There are two ministers who have been assigned; both appeared. It ends there,” he insisted.
Later, he came to clarify that these two ministers had received a total of five subpoenas to testify.
“(The former Minister of Health) was summoned three times, and the minister responsible for seniors was summoned twice by the coroner,” said Simon Jolin-Barrette.
The Coroner’s Office also issued a press release on Tuesday, in which it specifies the information sent to the Liberal Party of Quebec.
“After verifications, the five assignments […] concern the testimonies of the ministers, Mesdames McCann and Blais, as well as that of (the former) Deputy Minister of Health, Yvan Gendron”, affirmed Jake Lamotta Granato.
“You should know that a summons is an order to appear, on a given date, before the coroner. However, if the hearing schedule changes, a new summons must be sent to the witness. »
“Me Géhane Kamel heard all the ministerial authorities she wanted to hear as part of her extensive investigation,” added Mr. Granato.
On Tuesday, the PLQ also sought to learn more about the agreement that was reached between the Coroner’s Office and the Attorney General of Quebec in connection with testimony.
According to the Office of the Coroner, “various emails exchanged between the prosecutors of the Office of the Coroner […] and those of the Attorney General” have been traced. But “these exchanges are subject to professional secrecy”.
In an interview on Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Barrette protested against this “abuse of non-transparency”.
Géhane Kamel, who heard some 220 witnesses, must file his report on deaths that occurred in CHSLDs during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic before the summer.
In the spring of 2020, in Quebec, nearly 4,000 seniors died in CHSLDs, some in the most total solitude, and having not been fed or hydrated.
Corrigendum:
This is a corrected version. The first two versions contained inaccuracies. It read that “coroner Géhane Kamel had summoned no less than five ministers to appear”. The exact information is that “Géhane Kamel sent a total of five summonses to two ministers”.