Writer and committed citizen, the author has taught literature at college, is president of the governing board of an elementary school and member of the editorial board of Quebec letters. She co-directed and co-wrote the collective essay Shock treatments and tarts. Critical assessment of the management of COVID-19 in Quebec (All in all).
The coverage of the pandemic led us to believe, but an analysis has just confirmed it: Quebec is doing poorly in terms of access to information. “Dunce among the dunces”, told us The duty on June 22. The province ranks at the bottom of the pack in Canada, which ranks itself at the lackluster 53e world rank according to the Global Right to Know Index (RTI). A performance incompatible with the creation of a journalism prize by a governance that too often restricts access to full and complete information… a few months before the elections.
As we know, the pandemic has revealed existing problems. Despite daily press briefings, his management in Quebec has been marked by opacity, half-truths and lies. Several journalists paid the price. Thomas Gerbet of Radio-Canada, in particular, has repeatedly come up against the darkness of government agencies, which have given him heavily – or even completely – redacted documents. This was the case for the ethical opinion on the curfew, in January 2022, but also in the scandalous air quality file, whose emails sent to him were two-thirds grayed out.
The mystery will also have long hovered over how Quebec spent the $432 million paid for schools by the federal government. The journalist from Sun Elisabeth Fleury hounded the government on this issue. Faced with the State’s refusal to open its books, The sun spoke to the Access to Information Officer on January 21, 2021. Verdict? The documents reviewed could not be given to the media “because they contain information the disclosure of which could prejudice the conduct of relations between the Government of Quebec and another government”.
The information will have ended up being leaked to a journalist from The Press a long year later, in January 2022, as the government slowly but surely began to extinguish the indicators of COVID in Quebec. We now had to “live with the virus”; easier to pretend that all is well when the data is scarce. Having shied away for months in the name of federal-provincial relations (the Access to Information Act as formulated having allowed it to do so), the Legault government disclosed this information at a time that did not jeopardize too, helping pandemic fatigue, neither his popularity nor his electoral calendar.
Since then, almost all the indicators have fallen: we gave meat to the people on one side while cutting the floodgates on the other. Of the 432 million there is hardly any left, while 45% of schools are still without mechanical ventilation.
The triumph of hypocrisy?
We will remember the treatment that the Prime Minister reserved for Aaron Derfel at the start of the pandemic… Publicly attacked three times in three months by François Legault for his coverage of the health crisis (the latter accused him in particular of lying), the veteran to the health of The Gazette said in August 2020: “I will continue to do my job as a journalist, asking tough questions in this pandemic. […] The people deserve nothing less. »
However, two years later, the truth about what happened at the CHSLD Herron turns out to be even more outrageous than what was initially revealed. Not only did we learn that the CIUSSS de l’Ouest-de-l’Île-de-Montréal had enlisted the services of TACT Intelligence-conseil, with whom CEO Lynne McVeigh was on a conference call when she called 911 on the night of April 10 to 11, 2020 to “demonstrate [sa] proaction”, on the advice of Deputy Minister Yvan Gendron… but also that the firm had been under contract since 1er previous April!
Aaron Derfel, whom the Prime Minister described as a “journalist”, in quotation marks, had only done his job, which consists in revealing the truth, as unpleasant as it is for a government which likes to give itself perfect marks. Yes, the population has the right to know when a governance seeks to save its reputation before saving lives.
The director general of TACT, Daniel Desharnais, was also offered the position of assistant deputy minister for special projects at the Ministry of Health and Social Services (MSSS) on the following April 20. The elephant in the room is an elevator returning… Desharnais is still on duty. It is he, today, who oversees access to information at the MSSS.
Last March, the Professional Federation of Journalists of Quebec (FPJQ) called for an overhaul of the access to information law. “Passed 40 years ago, the law was supposed to bring more transparency to the machinery of government. It’s time to dust it off, so that […] people no longer have to fight to obtain public documents”, demanded its president, Michaël Nguyen.
Until that is done, the creation of a new journalism prize must wait, even if it is piloted by some “independent” committee, even if it is supposedly established in memory of René Lévesque. Impossible to create such a price when elevator referrals permeate the government apparatus; when the Director of Public Health and the Deputy Minister of Health wear the same hat; when the opinions of Public Health are still not formulated in writing; when the person responsible for supervising access to information at the MSSS helped us lock up corpses in our cupboards.
You can’t hamper the work of journalists on the one hand and send them flowers on the other – unless you think that hypocrisy is in order in this election year… and that the benefits of displaying your pride alongside those who fight against disinformation outweighs the risk of seeing the shields raised.