This campaign gives the impression of looking at a parallel world, almost as virtual as the environment created by COVID-19.
Posted yesterday at 1:00 p.m.
In fact, it is difficult to understand that a cycle of four years is enough to reinvent the world, or at least Quebec society. On the other hand, our mortgages are established on a repayment term of 20 to 30 years, while society strives to review all its foundations in 35 campaign days every four years.
In my field, oncology, every advance is predictable years in advance. The clinical development of a new test or treatment takes between 4 and 10 years. Hundreds of studies report results at periodic intervals, sometimes positive, often negative. This is the reality of development. Fundamental questions are rare, since science generally advances slowly. We don’t invent penicillin every day! This notion of science is historical, while reality is made up of daily hard work, encumbered with failures and eternal resumptions. Shouldn’t the same be true for civil society leaders?
It is therefore surprising to see so many new and revolutionary proposals in their eyes emanating from political parties, and specifically from the one forming the government which has had the opportunity to update its plan and to propose to the population to continue it, or not…
Why are the parties and the population so attached to this content promised almost on the sly, without time for analysis by independent experts in public affairs? And moreover, why does the population receive these floods of proposals when for a few years, politicians were more inclined to attack each other than to work jointly for the development of collective growth?
Like the scientific method, each party would benefit from supporting a program over years with an educational and rallying objective that can hardly be achieved in 35 days. On the contrary, to distinguish themselves during the campaign, one says white and the other says black, whereas the truth or the solution often have a grayish tint.
This militates even more for the necessary disinvestment of deputies in the daily management of the State. Take politics out of the day-to-day management of ministries and stop allowing public assets to be used for electoral purposes. Candidates should present short and medium-term objectives accompanied by a budget and let an independent and competent civil service implement them.
Follow up
Let me come back to oncology. Twenty years ago, in my first years of practice, a relatively coherent cancer program for Quebec was proposed and developed by the medical community and patient associations with the Ministry of Health. Screening, case register, integrated care centre, outcome evaluation, participation in research, access to innovation, palliative care, etc. The numerous pages laid are now being recycled, having served only to furnish libraries and political speeches. The intentions have remained a dead letter and politicians have succeeded without really following up, after having asked for a substantial mobilization of the stakeholders involved in creating this document.
It is my opinion that as a result, Quebec, which is a relatively prosperous society, does not participate to the extent of its abilities in the production of knowledge in oncology and does not adequately assess the quality of care currently provided.
For lack of resources, structure, vision. Especially vision, since the horizon of a politician is only four years. We lag behind advances, we deny patients the right to options, we underutilize medical and professional capacities by burying them in administrative hassles rather than stimulating them to participate in research. This is the type of discussion that an election campaign should offer: taking stock of our place in the world, in oncology, in health, in education, in the environment, etc. But that’s probably asking too much when craving for the epithet of the day matters more to gobble up the attention of reporters who also have limited terms and favor finding a topic for falling to the depth of analysis.
At the moment, everyone in Quebec society is preferentially looking for their candy in the panoply of measures rather than being interested in social development, such as a coherent intervention plan to reduce cancer mortality. This is in line with policy proposals that are willfully patronage. An inclusive and continuous public discourse is necessary to reintegrate politics into a daily life devoid of partisan salvos and which will be able to lay the foundations of a society capable of evolving without restricting itself to an exercise in political leadership that has become futile. , counterproductive, marketed and fake.
Jean-Pierre Raffarin, a French statesman, said elections do not erase problems. How right he is! I would dare to add that primary politics makes them worse, by heightening passions at the expense of conciliation and factual definition of the issues. Meanwhile, the cancer patients I see live on a hope that politics cannot provide, despite the promises. Only science and an updated plan to take care of them.