You and me, dear Me Géhane Kamel, we essentially lost our day last Friday. You in Trois-Rivières, me in front of my screen on a Teams link, listened for a few hours to the Minister responsible for Seniors and Caregivers, Marguerite Blais, explain to us how upset she had been by the events of the first wave. Could it be, you asked him, that in a rush, a “mistake” had been made? Madam Minister did not like the word. We did the best we could with the data we had, she said. But with what we know now, we would do things differently.
This is exactly the defense put forward by the Legault government since day 1. It’s terrible, but we didn’t know, so we couldn’t do better. Toll: 4,000 dead. Like nowhere else.
Your efforts seem totally focused on the moment from which the authorities became concerned about the fate of the CHSLDs. Late January, mid-February, early March? No offense, dear coroner, this dating is of little importance. The main thing is to know how the crisis unit chaired by the Prime Minister can affirm that it only became aware of the CHSLD disaster on April 20, through a newspaper article, when alarm bells were audible in the machine since March 12. “The information was circulating” to the cell, said François Legault Sunday evening. It would be very serious if it were true. This would prove that he ignored crucial information.
We have the demonstration that on March 20 our health authorities show a total incomprehension of the risk run by our elders, because it is on this date that the transfer, to their homes, of hospital patients, many of whom are carriers of the virus, begins. . How could they have known, on March 20, that the CHSLDs were at risk, under-equipped and understaffed?
We now know that eight days before, on March 12, the director of the association of private CHSLDs, Annick Lavoie, had asked to stop all admissions to CHSLDs. Then, the day before the decision to begin these transfers of patients on the 20th, she describes the situation as “critical” and foresees a “catastrophic scenario”. Deputy Minister Natalie Rosebush, who receives this information, therefore does not inform her boss, Marguerite Blais? The Deputy Minister of Health, Yvan Gendron? The crisis unit?
On March 29, the CIUSSS team dispatched to the CHSLD Herron noted that there were only three employees left to see to the health of 133 residents. The info goes back to Deputy Minister Gendron. Not to the minister? Not in the crisis cell? Montreal Public Health believes in writing on April 3 that there is “a real threat to health” in this place. Doesn’t it go back to Horacio Arruda? Between April 5 and 10, 23 residents pass from life to death. How do you explain that the members of the crisis unit only become aware of this disaster by reading the Gazette April 10?
A few months after the disaster, in an interview on the show Investigation, Marguerite Blais seemed to have a vivid memory of the calls for help that she herself had launched in this central place of decision. “I was on the line at 7 a.m. in the morning. I gave my point of view. Maybe what I said was taken into consideration a week or two later, but I said it. In the Ministry of Health, there are many doctors. So we worked with the opinions of the doctors who were in place. Our perception was very hospital-centric. »
It rings true. It is unlikely that M.me Blais, who worked full time on these issues, was not informed daily by his deputy minister, his chief of staff and the stakeholders themselves of calls for help, of problematic cases, clearly reported March and early April. It is unlikely that she did not relay these fears with all her might to the place where decisions were made: the crisis unit.
Friday, she tried to make you believe, Me Kamel, that his interview at Investigation had been given when she was in a trance, under the influence of emotion, and that it was necessary to take no account of it. I expected you to help him sort out emotion and memory by asking him to detail his interventions in the crisis unit. What did she say? When ? How many times ? What was the answer to him?
What does her chief of staff say, who was to prepare her for these interventions? What do the other members of the cell say about it, the prime minister’s chief of staff, his communication advisers, the prime minister himself?
You tell us that you are about to end your hearings. Thank you, no! You are missing a whole component, perhaps the most important. Don’t stop on such a good path. Especially since it is more than likely that, given the prime minister’s stubborn refusal to hold a public inquiry, yours will be the only one ever held on the subject.
Only by working your way up the chain to the top of command, hearing from everyone who attended these encounters of which, inexplicably, there are no records, can you tell the true story of the disaster of the first wave. To understand why cries for help were not heard or, if they were, not heeded. We count on you.
jflisee@ledevoir.com ; blog: jflisee.org