On Saturday, my colleague Isabelle Hachey threw me on the floor with her column entitled “Sacrifices on the altar of virtue”, which dissects the spiral of confusion and awkwardness that led to the dismissal of two nurses from a CLSC in Joliette. , in March 20211.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
Little reminder…
September 2020: Joyce Echaquan dies at the Joliette hospital, overseen by the CISSS de Lanaudière. The Atikamekw mother documents her death on video. The case forces a national awareness, challenges the politician.
March 2021: Jocelyne Ottawa makes a Facebook status to denounce two nurses who, according to her, treated her badly at the CLSC de Joliette, also overseen by the CISSS de Lanaudière. They encouraged her to sing, called her “Joyce”. Mme Ottawa takes offense. Her status is going viral.
Voices are rising everywhere to denounce the situation. The politician is agitated. It’s selling hard. The Assembly of First Nations Quebec-Labrador is angry. Everyone thinks back to the death of Joyce Echaquan. In Joliette, in the same CISSS!
The CISSS de Lanaudière acts: bam, fired, nurses.
Case closed ?
Maybe not. The nurses challenged their dismissal before the Labor Arbitration Tribunal. For a year, Isabelle Hachey has attended eight days of hearings, she has brought back hundreds of pages of notes and…
And the story is more complicated than we thought.
What sealed the dismissal was popular anger, we find at the Arbitration Tribunal. Not the facts, not the context.
By treating M’s painme Ottawa, the nurses interacted with her by applying…lessons learned in an Aboriginal cultural awareness workshop offered by their employer.
PHOTO FROM THE FACEBOOK PAGE OF GILBERTE DUBÉ
Jocelyne Ottawa, Atikamekw from Manawan
Jocelyne Ottawa even testified in court, saying she now regrets her words… and the dismissal of the nurses.
In short, a mess.
There are lessons for everyone in Isabelle Hachey’s story. I include myself in that. Isabelle includes herself in this, she had very harsh words in her chronicle for these two nurses, shortly after Jocelyne Ottawa’s Facebook status.
I’m not saying that we must always wait for the conclusions of the parity committee, the Tribunal or the commission of inquiry. I say it’s case by case. Sometimes all the material is there — testimonials, corroborations, images, documents — to draw conclusions. And be indignant.
But in the case of Jocelyne Ottawa’s Facebook status?
We only had that: a Facebook status.
In the case of Joyce Echaquan, we had the images and words of contemptuous neglect, it was hard to ignore.
I understand the dynamic of popular anger that drives people up the curtain. Which pushes activists to ask for accounts, loudly. And no doubt, nine times out of ten, all these people are right.
However, it seems that the story of the dismissal of the two nurses for “racism” towards Jocelyne Ottawa is THE time out of ten when we were all in the field. I understand citizens who want change. I understand the activists, too: this fed up with injustice sheds light on their reaction, the tenth time…
I even understand the mental dynamics of the columnist, who lives in the same society as his readers. I have already echoed a popular anger, me too… Which prompted me to apologize because I was in the field2.
Another time, I resisted this popular anger. It was in the Camara case, named after this poor man mistakenly accused of attempted murder of a police officer, in January 2021.
Everywhere, it screamed racial profiling. I wasn’t so sure. Verification made, I became certain that racial profiling was not in question3.
Later, an investigation by Judge Dionne will confirm that Mr. Camara was not the victim of profiling4. This does not mean the absence of police error.
I recall the Camara case because at the time, popular anger almost demanded that it be a case of racial profiling. It would have redeemed a thousand other previous injustices involving a thousand other black people and a thousand other police forces…
Popular anger has always existed. Now amplified by digital mobs, it quickly becomes a tsunami.
In the storm, it is up to the institutions to find the strength and the wisdom to resist, when popular anger demands someone’s head.
Strength, because it sells terribly in the offices of institutions, when popular anger gets carried away. The crowd wants culprits, heads rolling.
Wisdom, because sometimes, yes, heads have to roll, people are responsible. Sometimes it’s very clear.
And sometimes, no.
Strength and wisdom lie in stepping back to decide — on a case-by-case basis, I insist — which case we are dealing with, this time around.
despite popular anger.