We have learned a lot about preparation in CHSLDs during the first wave, in recent weeks. With coroner Géhane Kamel, with protector Marie Rinfret and in the media: the more you learn, the more embarrassing.
Embarrassing improvisation, disorganization. Embarrassing, too, because it was written in the sky: the Quebec health mammoth, whose lack of agility has been denounced for decades, failed in the task in the first months of 2020.
Coroner Kamel’s work is continuing, her report will follow in the coming months. Protector Rinfret’s report is out, it’s a remarkable investigative job. And the media are releasing beefy scoops on the management of the first wave.
Recently, we have therefore known the how and why of the negligence of Health in preparing to face this bizarre virus that was born in China, from the first days of 2020. We have known how the CHSLDs have been ignored in the plans of Quebec.
Quebec is not the only territory to have neglected its retirement homes. It must be said. France, Italy, New York and several American states have experienced massacres. The fact remains that in Canada, Quebec has been distinct in its catastrophic record in this regard.
But all the same, the Ombudsperson asked unpleasant questions: why did Alberta and Manitoba have the foreknowledge of ordering protective stocks like masks for their hospital staff …
And not Quebec?
And we have known, in recent days, that the former Minister of Health Danielle McCann had spoken a falsehood when she said that in January, her ministry had ordered the health network – including CHSLDs – to prepare for face the virus (1). The directive she was referring to struck me as as vague as the divinations of a fortune teller.
Then, on Tuesday, we learned from Radio-Canada (2) that an association representing 59 CHSLDs had repeatedly warned an Assistant Deputy Minister of Health, Natalie Rosebush, that her establishments urgently needed equipment, such as masks, from mid-March. Those days, the politician – PM Legault in the lead – yet publicly assured that Quebec was not lacking in masks.
For all these reasons, a public inquiry would make it possible to find out who did what, when, during the infancy of the pandemic. And we could have recommendations to avoid the repetition of such a slippage. I have already been skeptical about the relevance of such a survey. I’m not anymore.
But I repeat that we are learning a lot these days about the management of the first wave, thanks to the Quebec media, thanks to Coroner Kamel and thanks to the protector Rinfret. The Quebec government – political and bureaucratic – has gone through x-rays, and that is healthy.
Do you know who is doing remarkably well in this accountability?
Ottawa.
Yes, health is a provincial jurisdiction. No, the federal government does not manage Quebec CHSLDs. And no, Ottawa has nothing to do with the day-to-day operations of the provincial health and social services networks.
But the federal government is not completely absent from health in the country. And Ottawa even had an action plan to deal with a pandemic like the one that has raged around the world and in Canada, and that action plan has been around since 2006.
Document (3) is entitled Canada’s Pandemic Influenza Preparedness: A Guide to Health Sector Planning. It is over 500 pages long. It was designed as a kind of simulation, after the SARS crisis in 2003.
And several passages read very exactly like what happened in Canada 14 years later, when the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus landed: infected hospital staff, lack of ventilators, lack of personal protective equipment, speed of recovery. community transmission and successive waves of the pandemic, made up of ups and downs, over the years.
There is a federally administered “National Strategic Emergency Reserve” in Canada. This must store medical equipment in case – as its name suggests – of national emergency.
And in the 2006 federal report, what did the authors recommend?
They recommended that Ottawa be able to count at any time on a stock equivalent to the country’s needs in masks and other protective equipment for… 16 weeks (4).
I do not recall the existence of this report again – I mentioned it in Press last February – to put the disaster of the shortage of personal protective equipment in the Quebec health network on Ottawa’s shoulders. The provinces are responsible for meeting their personal protective equipment needs.
But Ottawa was responsible for storing said equipment in an emergency, and Ottawa has failed in that responsibility. If the federal government had stored enough N95 masks for 16 weeks, as recommended by its own 2006 pandemic anticipation report, the provinces – like Quebec – would have avoided a great deal of suffering …
And maybe even many deaths.
Who, today, blames Ottawa for not having these reserves of N95, sufficient reserves to hold 16 weeks?
Anybody.
We could also talk about the catastrophic management of borders and quarantines at the start of the pandemic: Ottawa was then entangled in a noxious laissez-faire.
Who today blames him for that?
Anybody.
I insist: I do not recall these facts to absolve the management of the Quebec state. I call them back because in the examination of conscience which is initiated in Quebec, Ottawa is completely evacuated from the exercise… As usual, or almost.
As I often say, Ottawa is a long way, a long way from the hustle and bustle. The pandemic is another example of this reality.