Plante, Drouin relieved after premier’s decision
Legault’s visit to city helps calm tensions, but his next decisions will be crucial
Like a prodigal son returning home, Premier François Legault was treated to a gracious reception Thursday when he set foot in Montreal for the first time in two months.
During his daily briefing on the pandemic, held in an empty concert hall at Place des Arts, Legault noted how nice it was to sleep in his own bed, how glad he was to be back in the same city as his two sons, and how proud he is of his Ste-anne-de-bellevue roots, where his mother still lives.
There were smiles, thank yous and polite niceties exchanged as Legault sat on stage at a socially safe distance from Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante, his stalwart sidekick Dr. Horacio
Arruda, Quebec’s top public health official, and Dr. Mylène Drouin, Montreal’s director of public health.
But behind this sunny backdrop on this sunny day is a notso-sunny predicament. Montreal is the centre of the COVID-19 epidemic, not only in Quebec, but in Canada, with 20,633 cases and 2,154 deaths.
And the crisis is far from under control, with a reported 100 per cent of residents at the Vigi Mont Royal nursing home now infected and community transmission spreading disease in dense, disadvantaged and diverse neighbourhoods like Montreal North. Alarming epidemiological projections forecast 10,000 new cases and 150 new deaths a day by July if social-distancing measures are relaxed too quickly.
So it was less with excitement over the premier’s return and more with a huge sigh of relief that Montrealers — foremost among them surely Plante and Drouin — greeted Legault’s announcement that he has cancelled the reopening of schools on May 25 for the city’s elementary students. The restarting of daycare is postponed until June 1. Small businesses, which have been slammed by the economic shutdown, may get the OK to open May 25 if matters improve. And the Quebec government will foot the bill for face masks to distribute to transit users in the entire Montreal region.
These are important concessions to Montreal. Without them, the premier threatened to hinder rather than help the city’s tenuous ability to contain COVID-19. His determination until now to relaunch Quebec’s economy and reopen schools and daycares, even in the face of serious doubts about Montreal’s ability to cope, risked undermining the work of local public health officials and overwhelming the health care system, where there is no lack of beds, but shortages of staff.
Legault’s homecoming to the city was clearly intended to signal that the premier now has Montreal’s best interests at heart. But it was also an operation in damage control.
Legault has been under fire for putting the impatience of regions of Quebec, spared the worst of
COVID -19, ahead of the welfare of the city where the outbreak is worst. His hurry to be first to reopen the economy when Montreal remains first among coronavirus hot spots in Canada has been criticized across the country.
Plante and Drouin, who reports to Arruda, Legault’s closest COVID -19 adviser, were conspicuously quiet about this — probably fearing speaking up would make a difficult situation worse. Fortunately, common sense ultimately prevailed. At least for the moment.
Montreal isn’t out of the woods yet, though. There is a long way to go to flatten the curve. Legault may have swooped in to give the city some much-needed breathing room, but he has by no means saved the day.
The premier has also been known to flip-flop, lose patience and blame others when he starts feeling the heat.
He also has a divisive streak, which he has mostly kept under wraps during the pandemic. But hints have emerged lately, in his promise to protect Quebecers in the regions from contaminated Montrealers, or pointing the finger at the Montreal Gazette for the high levels of unease among anglophones and allophones over the government’s pandemic response.
Legault may have said the right things Thursday to calm tensions in Montreal, but his next actions will speak louder than his words.