Montreal and Legault are both in turmoil

QUEBEC Analysts generally agree the wheels started to come off the bus in this province around the time the horror of Dorval’s Résidence Herron CHSLD became public knowledge.

Until then, Quebec seemed to have a decent plan for dealing with the COVID -19 pandemic. Locking down the province, closing schools and daycares, pushing social distancing, freeing up 7,000 hospital beds and telling seniors to stay home seemed to be the thing to do.

To this day, Quebec health officials say the decisions taken early in the pandemic helped saved thousands of lives here.

Early on, Premier François Legault earned praise from all sides for his steady, fatherly, things-are-going-to-be-ok tone and decisive management style. It was the same for his gregarious director of public health, Horacio Arruda, who had Quebecers laughing in a tragic time as he talked about recipes for Portuguese pies.

On the night of April 10, reality kicked in when Legault’s crisis team, gathered in the Honoré-mercier Building housing the premier’s National Assembly office, was told about the scope of the losses — 31 dead at the time — at the Dorval residence.

Legault had been warning all along that the virus had to be kept out of such facilities, which house Quebec’s most vulnerable citizens.

“Once this virus enters a seniors’ residence, it’s a little like setting fire to hay,” Legault said on April 23 as his team struggled to control the spread of COVID -19 in hundreds of Quebec’s public and private residences. “Everything burns fast.”

And that’s what happened. Suddenly all seniors’ residences — the weakest link in the health-care system — were under scrutiny.

It was only at the end of March that new studies revealed that a person can be contagious two or three days before symptoms appear. By the time the government grasped that reality, it was too late, with residents of seniors’ homes infected by unknowing personnel who moved from residence to residence. Chronic worker shortages made the situation almost impossible to fix.

Today, 80 per cent of Quebec’s 2,725 deaths have been in such residences.

The calamity in those establishments spelled the beginning of trouble for the government’s battle plan, with Legault offering a mea culpa in mid-april.

And in the last two weeks, it has become clear that unlocking the province is even harder than closing it down.

“We were here five days a week ... trying to explain,” Legault said this week when asked by the Montreal Gazette about criticism of his crisis management.

“I’m trying, and I did my best. Was I perfect? Probably not, but I’m doing my best.”

But the confused messaging has been an issue. On Monday, for example, Legault warned that teachers and daycare workers over 60 should not return to work now that Quebec is lifting some elements of its lockdown.

On Wednesday, with no particular explanation, the government sent out deputy premier Geneviève Guilbault to say only workers over 70 are at significant risk.

At the start of the crisis, Arruda decreed that grandparents should not be asked to babysit their grandchildren so parents can go back to work. On Thursday that rule was out the window, too, with Arruda stating those under 70 can babysit under certain conditions.

In the early days, Arruda said he didn’t think face masks were necessary. That advice evolved into it being a good idea to wear masks when two-metre social distancing is not possible, such as on the bus or métro.

On Friday, arriving to make an announcement about expanded testing in Montreal, Arruda followed his own advice and wore a mask.

As for testing, Arruda promised a week ago that Quebec would hit 14,000 tests by Friday. That did not turn out to be the case. Quebec is mired at about 10,000 tests a day.

And after saying caregivers wanting to visit CHSLD residents would need to be tested before being admitted, Marguerite Blais, minister for seniors, changed the rule Friday and said it is not necessary to do so.

Legault also preached the advantages of herd immunity, only to drop that concept after it became clear Quebecers took offence.

And with Quebec still short of health-care workers — 11,600 at last count — some have asked why Legault waited so long to call in the army to help at residences.

Analysts have noted the inconsistencies and mixed messages.

“Early in the pandemic (Legault) was very clear, and that was an advantage,” political analyst Christian Dufour told the Montreal Gazette on Friday. “Now it’s the opposite. Yesterday (following Legault’s news conference) I had a definite sense things were not going very well.”

Dufour is also critical of Legault’s handling of the age issue, saying he stigmatized older Quebecers as people unfit to work.

Legault and Arruda, however, say their messages changed because situations evolve — even more so in a pandemic.

“I am telling you, there are plenty of armchair quarterbacks out there,” Arruda said Thursday. “It’s normal, it’s part of human nature, but beware of people who bear the truth.”