Quebec premier fuming over government’s response
MONTREAL — Quebec Premier François Legault has often asserted in public that the province has “won the battle” when it has come to fighting the COVID-19 pandemic outside of the longterm care centres and seniors’ residences.
But privately, say sources who have dealt with him directly, the premier has been exasperated with Quebec’s response to the crisis.
Legault is angry that Quebec has reported far more COVID-19 cases and deaths than any other province, the sources told the Montreal Gazette. He’s upset that public health authorities have had to rely on fax machines to collect and transmit data. And he has fumed about delays in declaring deaths.
It’s for these reasons that Legault shuffled Danielle Mccann out of the health portfolio last month, appointing her minister of higher education — a move that was viewed by observers as a demotion. In her place, Legault tapped Christian Dubé, a self-described “numbers guy” who had been in charge of the Treasury Board.
“Legault put Dubé in as minister of health because he wasn’t happy with how Quebec ended up being the hot spot for COVID in Canada,” said a high-placed source, who agreed to be interviewed on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
“He wasn’t happy with Mccann’s performance in handling the pandemic and the fact that Quebec’s COVID numbers were so much higher. That was sitting on Legault’s chest.”
Publicly, Legault has defended Quebec’s record, maintaining that its number of cases is higher than other provinces because it has screened the most people for the coronavirus. In fact, Quebec never tested the most per
Quebec Premier François Legault.
capita. At one point, the province was in second place behind Alberta. Quebec is now in fourth place behind Prince Edward Island, with Ontario testing the most, followed by Alberta.
Legault has also suggested that Quebec’s COVID-19 death toll is so much higher than other jurisdictions because its post-mortem criteria is more expansive. In this regard, Legault is partly correct. On Thursday, the number of pandemic fatalities in the province increased by nine (the highest in a week) to 5,646.
The province with the second-highest death toll is Ontario, with a tally of 2,737, also up by nine.
Another source said Legault was particularly frustrated with discrepancies in the reporting of deaths.
“What was going on weeks ago is that the Montreal CIUSSSES were reporting the number of deaths that they were getting in their institutions, and those numbers didn’t jive with the numbers that Santé publique was giving to Legault,” the source said, alluding to the five CIUSSS health authorities in the metropolis.
“The numbers that Santé publique was using were always old numbers, delayed by two or three days. That’s what really set Legault off, that he wasn’t getting accurate information. At that point, they actually decided that we couldn’t let anybody know what the numbers were, that everybody would have to be referred to Santé publique so that there would only be one set of numbers, even if they weren’t the right set of numbers.”
It was partly for this reason that the Legault government discontinued the daily updates of COVID-19 data, switching to weekly ones. Only days after he was named health minister, Dubé reinstated the daily updates following a public outcry.
Dubé added more statistics to the updates and took steps to ensure fewer delays in the reporting of the data.
Legault was also displeased that public health officials were relying on outdated fax technology. The Gazette reported during the peak of the pandemic in early May that contact tracers in the city’s public health department were relying on the fax machine to print out lab reports, which in turn were entered into a computer.
“The other thing that set him off is he found out that this type of information was being sent around by fax, that there was no electronic way to do it. That really pissed him off,” the second source said.
Santé publique has been working on a quicker, more electronic way to collect the data, the source added. Quebec is not the only jurisdiction to use fax machines during the pandemic. The New York Times has reported that the “choke point” in the U.S. coronavirus response has been the fax machine, citing the example of the Harris County Public Health Department in Houston overflowing with fax paper.