Robert Libman: Quebec Elder Care Leadership Needed

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Wag the Dog is a 1997 film about a high-ranking political doctor hired by a presidential aide who, in collaboration with a Hollywood producer, fabricates a war in Albania to distract from a political scandal. In politics, creating a twist to promote a more favorable narrative or a distraction to divert attention are ways of dealing with devastating events that can damage a government and its credibility. However, no matter how successful these tactics may be in softening the initial political shock, if the issue is important enough, it can become a recurring or persistent problem that gets worse.

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Last Tuesday, the Quebec ombudsman released a scathing report blaming the government for making the unfortunate decision at the start of the pandemic to transfer hundreds of elderly hospital patients to long-term care homes (CHSLDs) to free up beds. of hospital in advance. Patients with COVID-19. Many people died as a result, in large part because the CHSLDs and the system were poorly equipped and unprepared.

On the same day the report was published, Prime Minister François Legault decided to make a major announcement about the launch of vaccination for children aged five to 11 years. On that day, his government also announced that high-speed internet would be available throughout Quebec in September and launched its ad campaign to counter racism, which sparked its own mini controversy, as the French and English versions differed. Also on Tuesday, the commission charged with studying the controversial Bill 96 language article by article was launched. Along with the mayor of Montreal, the prime minister also called on the federal government to ban firearms. Then on Thursday, the government released its upbeat economic update. Certainly enough noise to drown out the bad news for now.

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The opposition has been criticizing the government for negligence in not anticipating the CHSLD crisis and whether the health minister at the time, Danielle McCann, had lied by claiming that she had sent directives to the CHSLD to prepare them. The ombudsman’s report contradicted McCann. The prime minister was defensive at first and then attacked his critics, as he usually does. The debate in the National Assembly on Tuesday degenerated into partisan disputes. The next day, Legault went on to defend the position that at the start of the pandemic, the belief was that hospitals and emergency rooms would take the hit, and that few anticipated that the virus would affect older people in nursing homes as strongly. as it did. He went on to suggest that hindsight is 20-20, rather than accepting responsibility for mistakes made or acknowledging the strong wake-up call about the precarious situation in Quebec CHSLDs and caring for the elderly.

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The serious problems in the care of the elderly exposed by the pandemic serve as an indictment to this and all previous governments, who share the blame for allowing the problem to get worse. Whichever party was in power when the pandemic took hold, it would have faced the same excruciatingly difficult decisions and uncertainty as rapidly changing circumstances around the world.

Quebecers understand that, so Legault and his government are likely to relax a bit if he accepts responsibility and responds to the report’s release promising to tackle the elderly care crisis head-on.

The flip side of the twist or distraction is leadership. For such an important issue, citizens must see that their prime minister is committed to deploying all the resources at his disposal to address shortages of personnel, training, salaries, conditions, equipment, privatization and other problems. Organizing such a crusade would serve him well in the next election.

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Quebecers want leadership. Rather than spin around, taking the right path would have been the best damage control tactic, and more importantly, a step in bringing the care of the elderly the care it so desperately needs.

Robert Libman is an architect and building planning consultant who has served as a leader of the Equality Party and MNA, as mayor of Côte-St-Luc, and as a member of the Montreal executive committee. He was a conservative candidate in the 2015 federal elections.