The candidate of the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) in Marie-Victorin, Shirley Dorismond, has not always endorsed the pandemic management of the government of François Legault. In a video dated May 2021, she draws a direct line between the lack of personal protective equipment in the network and the carnage in CHSLDs.
In a virtual debate organized in May 2021 by the Health and Society Institute of the University of Quebec in Montreal, the trained nurse strongly criticizes the government’s crisis management, particularly in long-term care centers.
“If we had provided adequate protection from the beginning, N95s, gloves, uniforms, and this in all sectors […] I sincerely believe that we would have avoided all these massive deaths in CHSLDs”, can we hear him say in the video, which resurfaced on Tuesday.
“The government made the choice to give the equipment to the hospitals in the first place, she continues. We left the CHSLDs behind.”
Shirley Dorismond will represent the CAQ in the supplementary election in the Longueuil riding. This is not the first time that she has publicly opposed the positions of the man who is now her leader. Last fall, the nurse and health union representative accused François Legault of being “an accomplice in organizational violence suffered by members of [sa] profession, made up of 90% women.
She also said that “there will be no social justice as long as systemic racism exists”. François Legault wholeheartedly denies the very existence of this concept.
“Not funny”
In the excerpt from the debate which resurfaced on Tuesday, Ms. Dorismond does not go out of her way towards crisis management. “I’m telling you: at the start of the pandemic, home support nurses weren’t funny,” she recalls. They couldn’t even have procedure masks. They made fabric masks and put on garbage bags to protect themselves.
We also hear him plead for greater autonomy for public health. In the wake of Horacio Arruda’s departure, opposition groups in the National Assembly recently reiterated their desire to see a Chinese wall appear between the government and public health authorities.
“She should be self-sufficient. Impartiality, the imputable side, we really question ourselves…”, she says.
Sunday, by presenting Ms. Dorismond to the media, Mr. Legault had defended his candidate. “When you are responsible for a union, you are responsible for defending its members,” he said.
François Legault has still not decided on the date of the vote in the by-election in Marie-Victorin. The riding was left vacant in November, when the member who sat there, Catherine Fournier, won the municipal election in Longueuil. The Act directs the government to call a by-election by the summer.