Premier surprised at criticism from city’s health director
Rejects assertion that bureaucracy made the pandemic ‘impossible to manage’
Premier François Legault has dismissed criticism from Montreal’s director of public health, who says the COVID-19 crisis should have been managed from Montreal and not from the provincial capital.
Clearly miffed by the dagger fired by Mylène Drouin, Legault said he spoke to Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante Friday and that they were both “surprised” by Drouin’s remarks, made in an interview with La Presse.
He also rejected Drouin’s criticism that Montreal’s elaborate health-care bureaucracy made the pandemic “impossible to manage,” and said the last thing he wants to do is add a new co-ordinating structure, even if Drouin says something needs to be done, because she has no real authority.
Montreal remains the epicentre of COVID-19 deaths in Canada. More than 2,600 people have died in the city, which represents onethird of Quebec’s deaths and nearly 40 per cent of deaths in Canada.
“We were both surprised by this statement,” Legault said at a pandemic news conference held in the hard-hit Lanaudière region Friday. “I have difficulty understanding her remarks. I think (the crisis) was well-managed.
“Honestly, that our crisis cell was in Quebec or Montreal ... it was in a room, we followed the situation in all the CHSLDS, where there were many infections. I don’t think anything would have been different if the command centre was in Montreal or Quebec.”
Drouin touched off a controversy Friday with her remarks, in which she said Montreal was in trouble from the get-go in its handling of the pandemic.
She said she told Quebec public health director Horacio Arruda as early as March 9 that the crisis centre should be based in Montreal and not Quebec City.
“He should have been there, where it was going to flare first,” Drouin said. “I’m not afraid to say it. And if there’s a second wave, it’s going to be big again in Montreal.”
Arruda also responded to the remarks Friday, at a separate event.
“Dr. Drouin did say that she
would have preferred I be in Montreal because we could have seen each other physically, ( but) I don’t think she wanted to say the crisis was poorly managed because I was in Quebec,” Arruda said.
He added he was in touch with Drouin “almost every night,” and his team had all the information it needed to know what was happening in Montreal.
He said now is not the time to start pointing fingers.
“When you try to find one guilty party, one cause, it’s off base.”
Even though Quebec declared a health-care emergency way back in March, Arruda did not set foot in Montreal until May 8. Legault did not visit Montreal until May 14.
Drouin is the first high-profile health-care personality to speak out about the way Quebec has handled the pandemic. She was refusing further interviews Friday, but in a public clarification issued Friday night she said: “I reiterate my confidence in the management of the COVID -19 crisis by the government of Quebec.
“It is normal that the overall management of the crisis, which involves all of Quebec’s regions and the various ministries, should be done from Quebec City, where our government sits.”
While in Lanaudière, Legault had some good deconfinement news. Starting June 15, hair salons, barbershops, estheticians, tattoo and body piercing shops, plus manicure, pedicure and hair removal operations will be allowed to reopen in the greater Montreal area and Joliette region.
When Quebec announced such personal-care services would reopen outside Montreal as of June 1, many in the city were disappointed because no date was set for Montreal, Laval and the South Shore.
This was Legault’s first visit to Lanaudière, which is where the first cases of COVID -19 in Quebec showed up.
While Montreal had 25,043 confirmed COVID-19 cases as of Friday, Lanaudière — with a much smaller population — had 3,922, placing it fourth in Quebec. There have been 182 deaths in the region.