The least we can say is that the testimony of the Minister responsible for Seniors and Caregivers, Marguerite Blais, before coroner Géhane Kamel did not dispel the detestable impression of having been taken for a suitcase by the former Minister of Health and Social Services, Danielle McCann, her Deputy Minister Yvan Gendron and Dr.r Horacio Arruda.
Before the same coroner, last November, Danielle McCann affirmed that, as of January 2020, her ministry was well aware of the risks posed by COVID-19 for the elderly in CHSLDs and that, during At a meeting on January 22, 2020, she alerted the CEOs of the CISSSs and CIUSSSs, asking them to prepare a plan to deal with the pandemic, including specifically for the CHSLDs. Deputy Minister Gendron went in the same direction, declaring to the coroner that the message to the leaders of the network was to prepare, particularly with regard to vulnerable people in the CHSLD. From the end of January, the minister and her machine knew what to expect and had neglected nothing, were we to understand.
Marguerite Blais maintained that, on the contrary, the CAQ government had no particular concerns about seniors in CHSLDs before mid-March and that she had not been informed before March 9 of the risks that the coronavirus made the elderly and vulnerable run. CHSLDs are used to managing outbreaks of all kinds, he was also told.
Monday again, during the hearings of the coroner’s inquest, another testimony came to contradict the version of McCann, Gendron and Arruda. The former manager of civil security at the Ministry of Health and Social Services Martin Simard argued that the risk for CHSLDs was not “a named issue” before March 11. The letter of January 28, sent to the coordinators of civil security, that Minister McCann brandished as proof of her statements is not one, pointed out the former manager. Rather, it is a “general scope” request and there was no question at the time of considering the elderly in CHSLDs in a particular way.
If we trust what François Legault said on the show Everybody talks about it broadcast on Sunday, it is the version of Marguerite Blais which is the good one. ” […] in January and February, it is not true that someone in Quebec said that a huge storm was coming to CHSLDs. We were talking about a virus in Asia, but no more than that.
Moreover, at the end of February, the Dr Arruda was in Morocco, where he gave two lectures in front of an audience of pharmacists and where he allowed himself to make jokes about COVID-19, while minimizing the risks presented by the virus. In February, it was “a small snowfall”, in March, it is “a historic storm”, illustrated François Legault in front of Guy A. Lepage. It couldn’t be clearer.
The managers did not prepare the CHSLDs as they did for the hospitals, indicated Marguerite Blais in front of the coroner. Last November, when submitting her report on the first wave of the pandemic in CHSLDs, the ombudsman, Marie Rinfret, made a similar observation. It was only in April that the government became aware of the extent of the crisis in CHSLDs. “At the time of the development of the strategy in response to the pandemic, no risk analysis adapted to the Quebec accommodation model and its particularities was carried out,” she wrote. “This is why the CHSLDs were not taken into account by any scenario. »
Faced with these inconsistencies, faced with this refusal of Minister McCann and consorts to recognize the facts, coroner Géhane Kamel is right to be exasperated. She is surprised that the authorities do not recognize that the CHSLDs were in their “blind spot”.
The explanations provided by the Minister McCann and consorts are both absurd and pitiful. On the one hand, we are told that the ministry had a plan for CHSLDs and that we had prepared for what was to come. On the other side, there is the bleak reality, these thousands of deaths in CHSLDs. If one were to believe that such a plan existed, obviously, it did not work. What is the lesser evil? Incompetence or inconsistency? The coroner said she thinks of the bereaved families who are without answers, who cannot count on “a story that stands”. The Legault government should accept the fact that the time is no longer for half-truths, or even lies, and that the population has the right to valid explanations.