Prime Minister Legault had already endorsed two of the three points of the triangle in which Robert Bourassa saw the image of his policy. The first was economic development; the second, to the place of Quebec in the federation.
To justify his retreat on the “contribution” he wanted to impose on the unvaccinated, Mr. Legault invoked the third point of Mr. Bourassa’s triangle, namely “social peace”, which the former Prime Minister had made a point of. true obsession, from the October crisis to that of Oka, passing through the imprisonment of union leaders and the period of linguistic tensions in the second half of the 1980s.
After the spectacle offered by the truckers who took Ottawa hostage and the collective release to which it gave rise, we can only share the apprehension of the mayor of Quebec at the prospect of seeing Rambo and his friends arrive in town for the opening of the carnival.
Mr. Legault may have accustomed us to sudden changes of course, his latest volte-face is enough to disconcert many. To hear it, the non-vaccinated were a bunch of irresponsible people who risked blowing up the health network. Now is the time to be respectful of their fears and reach out. This sudden empathy seems suspect, to say the least.
Of course, no head of government wants disorder. With less than a year to go before an election, the concern to avoid “dividing” the population is, however, becoming a concern that we did not suspect to be so intense.
In politics, one learns to have sincerities which follow one another according to one’s interest of the moment and to express them with equal ardour. Unfortunately, people may confuse this development with hypocrisy.
From a strategic point of view, the health contribution might seem like a good idea, insofar as it had the support of a clear majority of voters and would only have affected about 300,000 people.
The problem is that it would have been perceived only in the spring… 2023, when the virus will probably have been defeated or the population will have learned to live with it. The perfectly valid arguments that the Prime Minister had made to justify it would likely have lost all relevance when the next election was called.
The leader of the Conservative Party of Quebec, Éric Duhaime, has an undeniable talent for capitalizing on the frustration generated by two years of pandemic, but it was reasonable to believe that his party’s newfound popularity would diminish as life would resume a more normal course. Maintaining a contribution that had become obsolete would have given it an unexpected breath of fresh air.
Despite its good performance in the polls, the PCQ does not constitute an imminent danger for the CAQ, but it would be ill-advised to let it take hold. By seeking to reposition the PLQ further to the left, Dominique Anglade allowed the CAQ to occupy all the space to the right of center. What interest would she have in sharing it with a newcomer?
Mr. Legault’s about-face will not be enough to silence the challenge to health measures, which goes far beyond the health contribution. This success may even encourage him.
It’s probably best to back off when you’ve made a mistake, but it shouldn’t become a habit. Admittedly, no one had foreseen the multiple twists and turns of the pandemic, which forced all the governments of the planet to continual readjustments, but the decision to penalize the unvaccinated was more a matter of politics than of health.
This might have encouraged some to get vaccinated, but it was mainly to appease the grumbling of those who were already vaccinated. This time, we can hardly blame the opposition parties for crying improvisation. Obviously, we were looking for an immediate political gain, without having assessed the longer-term effects.
As they engage in a new showdown with the government, which wants to regiment them into its appointment system, general practitioners have certainly watched the latest events with great interest.
In the same way that the non-vaccinated do not want to be held responsible for the fragility of the health network, the Federation of General Practitioners of Quebec refuses that its members become “the scapegoats for the negligence of the ‘state of the organization of general medical services’.
They will have taken good note that we can make this government back down by remaining inflexible. On two occasions, he had to give up imposing compulsory vaccination on health care workers for fear that their absence would put the network at risk. Without the cooperation of doctors, it will also be necessary to give up any “refoundation”.