Public services are crumbling everywhere as the private sector interferes in these actions supposed to protect people made vulnerable by risk factors that are increasingly present worldwide. Pandemic, economic crisis, climate crisis are just examples of the upheavals for which we wish to ensure the protection of as many of us as possible. The social fabric must not, as is currently the case, be a source of financial profit for a minority of elites for whom the common good does not exist.
The transformation of the health system has been taking place since the Quiet Revolution. In mental health, for example, our area of expertise, changes in the State’s service offering are giving way to greater privatization and more and more room for control measures that violate rights! Under the guise of doing things differently, in community with people, this reform of the mental health system was, ultimately, only a way of cutting money and transferring part of the population’s responsibility from the government to the first person concerned and those around them.
These savings were to be invested, at the time, in measures to support integration into the community. These means never came and we have fewer tools to support what was, basically, an excellent idea for weaving a solid social net!
The effects today, in our towns and villages, you see them as we do in daily life. The management of “mental illnesses” through control measures that violate rights has its effects! Do you feel that the social fabric serves the mental health population in Quebec well?
We demand that we finally invest massively in community action in mental health in Quebec and in the improvement of living conditions which determine health more than disease control measures.
The transformation of the school system also took the same path. The brilliant idea of integrating children with particular challenges into normalizing classes was an excellent idea. Such as supporting people experiencing issues that affect their mental health in their communities with the support of them. In both cases, investments had to follow the patient, to use a fashionable political expression.
In these two typical cases, the money never followed and the means of our ambitions only became a resounding failure, little by little undermining the social fabric supposed to protect our fellow citizens who are going through more difficult times. Stop depriving the Quebec population of the rights to health and education by privatizing them, because that is what is happening right now. Do you support changes in the provision of public services that attack the rights to education and health to save money?
We want a system that produces more health than it treats disease. We want an education system that globally supports universal support for education. Invest in access to studies, housing, the fight against poverty, invest in improving living conditions for Quebecers.
Mr. Prime Minister Legault, Mr. Ministers Dubé and Drainville, it is high time to provide real social leadership by mobilizing all citizens to express to you their greatest dreams for Quebec. The Quiet Revolution brought us this national pride in a strong social fabric to take care of us all. Since then, we have been working to destroy little by little what little social justice we have left. Do you really want to continue selling it individually?
We support the public sector employees who are currently telling you loud and clear that these systems have just hit the wall in recent years! React diligently, thinking first of those made vulnerable by decades of unjust and misleading political choices.
Mr. Prime Minister Legault, Mr. Ministers Dubé and Drainville, can we count on you?