The Liberal Party of Quebec asks Coroner Géhane Kamel who is investigating the wave of CHSLD deaths to hear the inspectors whose reports were destroyed during the first wave.
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“How can we ignore the story of the nearly 6,000 people who died in CHSLDs during the pandemic? Who asked the inspectors to destroy the reports? How were we able to get rid of such information when they were experiencing the worst crisis in history? ”Asked the party leader, Dominique Anglade, on Wednesday.
During her testimony at Coroner’s Kamel public inquest on Tuesday, Assistant Deputy Minister for Seniors Natalie Rosebush revealed that the government did not keep the notes of inspectors who visited institutions during the first wave.
Information supported by the deputy minister responsible at the time, Yvan Gendron.
Verbally
If he received a daily table indicating the number of inspections carried out each day in the establishments, Yvan Gendron affirms that he was not informed of the details of these. Rather, the inspectors made their recommendations verbally, he confirmed on Wednesday.
“Shocked” by these testimonies, the Liberal spokesperson for seniors and caregivers, Monique Sauvé, considers that it is therefore “imperative” to hear these inspectors, just like the minister responsible for seniors, Marguerite Blais.
Remember that her testimony was canceled since she is still on sick leave.
“We are entitled to wonder where the elderly are in the order of priorities of the CAQ government,” said Monique Sauvé.
January warning
During his testimony on Wednesday, Deputy Minister Yvan Gendron explained that the health network had been made aware at the end of January of the vulnerability of CHSLDs in the event of the spread of COVID-19 in the population, a scenario institutions had to prepare for.
During a meeting held on January 22, 2020, the CEOs of the CISSS and CIUSSS were then asked to update their plans in the event of a pandemic based on the one prepared for the H1N1 flu in 2009.
It was then “obvious that the elderly would be affected by their condition,” said Yvan Gendron.
The coroner, Géhane Kamel, then reacted by pointing out the gap between “your directives, your meetings, your 18 hours a day” and the situation in certain CHSLDs where “people [étaient] to war with no weapons, no ammunition ”.
“The organization on the ground, it belongs to them”, replied Yvan Gendron about the CISSS and the CIUSSS. “I dare to imagine that they put all the energies, but it seems sometimes that as long as it does not affect us, we do not put all the energies”, he added.
Recall that Yvan Gendron was dismissed from his post as Deputy Minister of Health at the end of the first wave of COVID-19, in June 2020, shortly after a cabinet reshuffle during which the Minister of Health at the time , Danielle McCann, was entrusted with the responsibilities of Higher Education.
The latter is due to testify Thursday at the coroner’s hearings.