It is with the feeling of “not being able to have a story that holds together” that coroner Géhane Kamel will end her nearly year-long investigation into the management of CHSLDs during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic. COVID-19 in Quebec.
Posted at 10:19 a.m.
“Department person [de la Santé] is only able to tell us before April [2020], the CHSLD was not under the radar of the government. We are not able to have this chronology because it is different according to the actors, “raged the coroner while listening to the testimony of the very last witness in her investigation, Martin Simard, former head of Civil Security at the Ministry of Health and Social Services.
“It’s been a year that what we’ve been told is: ‘I can’t tell you’, ‘I can’t tell you’ and ‘it may not be our ministry’. It seems to me that if you are in the front row, someone should be able to tell me: it’s true that we had a little blind spot. […] To this day, no one is able to tell me that the CHSLDs have been in the blind spot. Both arms fall off me. »
The coroner asked the witness to put himself in the place of the workers on the ground and the families of the victims, who must be furious at seeing, in the light of the vague and contradictory testimonies given before her, how elected officials and the highest officials placed “did not know what was coming and [qu’]they are not able to give a clear answer”.
Mand Kamel has been trying for months to establish at what exact moment the alarm was sounded by Quebec in the CHSLDs. She heard ministers, former ministers, the Dr Horacio Arruda, deputy ministers and several senior officials. At the end of this exercise, she will leave her survey with “impressions”. Each of the speakers named above offered a slightly different answer.
Monday, at the very end of the course, Géhane Kamel lost patience with the very formatted language of Martin Simard, whom she considered before her testimony as the “last piece of the puzzle”. Mr. Simard hosted daily Civil Security meetings with the main stakeholders in the health network. Questioned several times to find out what was said about the CHSLDs during these coordination meetings, whether it was about the lack of equipment, the lack of preparation, or the fact that, as Minister Marguerite Blais last week, we believed these circles were better prepared than hospitals, he replied that he did not remember such discussions. According to him, these issues might have been raised through other communication channels. Nor could he answer the question: have hospitals been prioritized for the benefit of CHSLDs?
At the very beginning of the day, Mr. Simard, however, contradicted the version offered in November by the former Minister of Health Danielle McCann and the former Deputy Minister Yvan Gendron. According to them, Quebec was aware from January 2020 that people aged 70 and over, especially those in CHSLDs, would be more vulnerable to the virus. The former minister said in November that the CEOs of health establishments had been asked in January to prepare their plans to fight the pandemic, including in their CHSLDs, in anticipation of the arrival of COVID-19. .
They relied on a letter, signed by Martin Simard, and sent to all CIUSSSs and CISSSs in the network. Regarding this letter, Mr. Simard stated that it was not aimed specifically at CHSLDs. “No, there was no question at that time of a vulnerable clientele on which we had to pay our particular attention,” he said.