Tuesday was a bad day for the Quebec health system. And a bad day for the government that administers this system.
First for the political: in the early morning, Thomas Gerbet, of Radio-Canada, released a new (1) who has finished contradicting (2) what the former Minister of Health, Danielle McCann, had said to the coroner Géhane Kamel, who is investigating the death of the first wave in some CHSLDs.
No, the inspection reports in these CHSLDs particularly affected by the virus were not made verbally. Yet that is what the former minister said. Radio-Canada presented these forms. A deputy minister, Natalie Rosebush, also said the reports were verbal.
If Mme McCann had been the only one to mention verbal inspection reports, one might think of something like an oversight on her part. But when a deputy minister also says the same thing, it smells of the memorized spin, it smells of varnish.
Then, in the middle of the afternoon, the Ombudsperson Marie Rinfret presented her own investigation report on the hecatomb in CHSLDs in the first wave, in early 2020. Mr.me Rinfret received 1300 testimonies and interviewed 250 people.
The main finding of the Ombudsperson was already known: by preparing in an emergency, the Quebec health system has staked everything on the protection of hospitals, neglecting CHSLDs.
There are systemic reasons for this: the system, already hospitalocentric, was even more so.
And there are specific reasons: the Italian scenario – hospitals so submerged in March 2020 that they could no longer function – weighed on the minds of Quebec managers, in the first days of the pandemic.
Quebec did not shine more than others by its preparation and its foresight. It must be said, and the protector makes a difference. But still, Mme Rinfret details how the Health mammoth – my expression, not his – shone with its heaviness before and during the first wave.
Yes, the Italian scenario frightened the spirits, at the beginning of March 2020. But British Columbia, she had nevertheless secured its CHSLDs and other “care homes” with sturdy measures, from the beginning of March.
The Ombudsperson mentions several times that the health mammoth did not have reliable data to act, at the beginnings of the pandemic, whether it concerns the number of cases in CHSLDs or among employees.
Example number one: “At a certain point, the authorities, poorly supported by information transmitted, minimized the outbreak in CHSLDs. ”
Example number two: “In March 2020, Quebec health authorities did not have any information infrastructure enabling them to carry out effective health surveillance, essential to the management of a pandemic. ”
This “information infrastructure” has always been worthy of the third world in the Quebec health system, which raises the unpleasant question of knowing whether we can correct systemic ailments if we cannot even identify them …
Then, the protector talks about how the “top-down” management approach in Healthcare – everything is decided from above, top down – which was consolidated under the Liberals in 2015 sowed confusion in the CHSLDs: “This has generated a certain paralysis in living environments constantly bombarded with revised and modified guidelines. ”
(Parenthesis: I submit to the curious reader this column of March 2020 (3), which illustrates how the whole network is conditioned to the management top down, when Montreal doctors were criticized for having protected their hospital … before receiving instructions from Quebec.)
In short, in terms of information and data, what was true outside a pandemic was even more true in a pandemic: the health mammoth did not know that its rear was in fact a bumper of Lada tied with spit. He did not have the data to find out this basic fact, available only by fax.
We read this report from Mme Rinfret and we want to uncork one or two bottles of scotch: the mammoth of Health suffers from a spectacular lack of agility. The scotch is to better accept that it is not tomorrow the day before that things will change …
We read this report and it is difficult to see how the PQ, the solidarity groups and the Liberals would have done better than the Caquists, if they had been at the helm of the State at the start of 2020. I quote the protector: “To the extent that the The unpredictable nature of the virus complicated any decision-making, citizens’ expectations regarding the management of the first wave must be realistic, considering among other things limited resources and means. ”
No, the sin for the CAQ is one of cover-up these days. I referred to statements by former Minister McCann and Deputy Minister Rosebush, all of which were contradicted by the facts.
Well, in addition, Protector Rinfret confirmed yesterday that contrary to what ex-Minister McCann, ex-Deputy Minister Yvan Gendron and current National Director of Public Health Horacio Arruda told Coroner Kamel , no, the Ministry of Health did not warn the CHSLD network to prepare to face the virus that was raging in January 2020.
Instead, this directive came on March 9.
It is therefore a falsehood to assert the contrary, a snake that the coroner tried to swallow (4).
Again, if either of Mme McCann, M. Gendron or Dr Arruda spoke of a directive in January, we could plead the forgetting of a person …
But when these three witnesses tell the same falsehood to Coroner Kamel, it smacks of concertation to give a positive spin to something that is not, to blame subordinates in the CISSS and in the CIUSSS.
The worst, in this falsehood sung in chorus by M.me McCann, M. Gendron and Dr Arruda?
It is useless: everyone would understand what the protector understood, which is to say that decades of dysfunction tripped our health system, in early 2020, as many other systems in the West have tripped.
But the PM team, obsessed with comms and his image, is made that they think they have to spin even the things that cannot be faulted.
(1) Read the Radio-Canada report (2) Read “CEOs were alerted in January 2020, according to Danielle McCann” (3) Read the column “Small boxes in the time of the coronavirus” (4) Read the column ” Health mammoth snakes »