What does Quebec know that the rest of Canada doesn’t?
Quebec first to reopen economy
Quebec, which has seen the most COVID-19 cases and deaths in the country, plans to reopen businesses and schools faster than any other province.
The schedule announced Tuesday stands in sharp contrast to Ontario and other provinces that are moving more slowly — even provinces where new cases have effectively disappeared. New Brunswick has reported zero new cases for 10 days in a row, but is still taking more gradual steps than Quebec, which reported 775 new cases and 83 new deaths on Tuesday alone.
Quebec Premier François Legault announced that most retail stores will be able to reopen on May 4, except in Montreal, which will be a week later. The construction and the manufacturing sectors will be allowed to start reopening May 11. This follows Monday’s announcement that daycares and elementary schools will resume on May 11, albeit with smaller classes.
“Our challenge is to gradually restart the economy without restarting the pandemic,” Legault said, adding that more sectors will be reopened over the next few weeks.
“The idea is to gradually add workers and analyze the effect on the contagion. But one thing is clear: If we want our plan to work, we need to continue our efforts of physical distancing, and we need to continue to protect the most vulnerable.”
Horacio Arruda, Quebec’s public health director, said the virus will continue to circulate and needs to be carefully managed, but said it’s also important to balance other health objectives such as mental health that are affected by shuttering the economy.
With 23 per cent of Canada’s population, Quebec has accounted for half of the country’s identified COVID-19 cases and nearly 60 per cent of COVID-19 deaths. However, its numbers have largely levelled off over the past week or two, and officials believe they’re seeing the peak of the initial wave of infections. The province’s epidemic has been mostly centred in Montreal, and longterm care homes have been hit especially hard.
About 1.2 million Quebecers have lost their jobs since lockdown measures were implemented and the new measures may bring about 450,000 of them back, said Quebec’s Economic Development Minister Pierre Fitzgibbon. However, Legault also cautioned that closures may have to be reimplemented if the virus starts to spread widely again.
Legault thanked the business community, saying, “I know these have been terrible weeks; it’s been hell financially.”
One of Quebec’s biggest manufacturing firms, plane and rail maker Bombardier Inc, announced it would gradually resume manufacturing on May 11. It said nearly 11,000 employees — accounting for most of those put on furlough — were expected to be back at work within the next few weeks.
Company precautions like daily employee temperature checks, tool disinfecting stations and the installation of Plexiglas shields show an effort to protect workers, said Serge Dupont, assistant to the Quebec director of the union Unifor.
“Are people concerned? It would be a lie if I said no,” Dupont said. “But the majority are happy to go back to work.”
Next door in Ontario, there is still no date to reopen workplaces. Premier Doug Ford unveiled a threestage plan on Monday, but it was almost devoid of detail.
Ford called it a “roadmap, not a calendar.”
Ontario reported 525 new cases on Tuesday, a slight rise from Monday. Ford’s plan said there should be a two-to-four week decline before reopening is considered.
Asked on Tuesday what he thinks of Quebec’s plan to reopen elementary schools, Ford said each province will have to make its own decisions.
“That’s going to be up to Premier Legault,” Ford said. “We’re taking the advice of our chief medical officer and our health ( advisory) table and our health experts, and we don’t want to put our kids at risk. That’s really what it comes down to.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was also careful in his response when asked, saying that “many people want to see the economy reopening” and a return to normality, but that the country as a whole isn’t there yet.
Asked if he would send his own children back to school in Quebec, Trudeau said it depends how the situation looks in two weeks. “I’d want to know what the school was planning on doing, whether the desks were going to be properly spaced, whether there will be plans at recess in terms of keeping people separated.”
Jack Jedwab, president of the Montreal- based Association for Canadian Studies, said part of the reason for Quebec going its own way could be because francophones are just less fearful of the virus, and it shows up starkly in Quebec’s overall attitude toward COVID-19.
His organization has worked with the polling firm Léger Marketing to track weekly public sentiment during the pandemic, and in the most recent round they found just 47 per cent of francophone respondents were afraid of getting the virus, compared to 59 per cent of anglophone respondents. As a whole, 51 per cent of Quebecers were afraid of getting the virus compared to 64 per cent of Ontarians, 53 per cent of Albertans and 52 per cent of British Columbians. Quebecers were also far more likely to support relaxing of social- distancing measures for those under age 65, with 61 per cent in support.
“I think there is also a cultural dimension to it, but you know, it’s hard to measure that dimension,” Jedwab said.
For now, the rest of the country will be watching Quebec’s experiment closely over the next few weeks. On Monday, when Legault announced schools would reopen, he listed five reasons why he decided to do it. The fifth reason was a simple one: “Life goes on.”