“Forcing” municipalities to return to in-person public meetings represents another example of pretending COVID is over

The Quebec government continues to dig its head in the sand, doing away with COVID-19 measures as if this is a race.

Public Health Director Luc Boileau said today that he may delay the lifting of the mask mandate past mid-April. Well,  that makes sense. We are now officially in a sixth wave. Hospital workers are out in big numbers. A number of restaurants and pubs have had to shut down and while the hard to get PCR testing numbers show over 3,000 cases a day, Boileau  admitted that the real number of daily infections in Quebec is likely closer to 30,000.

Some people from our government do indeed have their heads in the sand.

I know it is an election year for the Quebec government, but if the governing CAQ continues to act like COVID does not exist they are removing the incentive for people to get vaccinated or boosted – and just watch as hospital emergency rooms go beyond capacity.

As a city councillor in Côte Saint-Luc,  I am at loss to understand why municipalities have just been advised that we are now being forced to return to in-person public meetings.  For the past two years we have been convening virtually. The process has worked exceptionally well and while we all want to do this again with the public in attendance and for them to be able to ask questions directly to us, it really is all about timing. Since we now have live webcasts of these meetings, more people than ever are tuning in.  And nobody can argue about the safety factor.

As this sixth wave begins,  no less than nine Members of the National Assembly – including the Premier and the Deputy Premier- sit home isolating because of COVID. Would it not make more sense for the government to leave this choice up to each municipality? Clearly they are spreading the new variant among each other in Quebec City.

Today, Health Minister Christian Dubé spoke about not entirely lifting the State of Emergency; that the government still requires the power to make some urgent decisions. He took a lot of heat for this. Well, here is a perfect opportunity for him to grant municipalities to return to public sessions at the very least when this sixth wave subsides.

Here is the memo municipalities received

À la suite des derniers développements concernant les mesures de la COVID-19, le ministère des Affaires municipales et de l'Habitation confirme que l'arrêté 2020-029 du 26 avril 2020, qui permet la participation à distance des membres de toute réunion, séance ou assemblée d’un organe délibérant (dont le conseil d’un organisme municipal), a été abrogé le vendredi 25 mars dernier par l’arrêté ministériel 2022-024. Dans ce contexte, l’ensemble des séances du conseil doit de nouveau se tenir en présentiel, conformément aux règles prévues, entre autres, à la Loi sur les cités et villes et au Code municipal du Québec.

Le site Internet du MAMH sera mis à jour sous peu pour tenir compte de cette abrogation.

I was interviewed by CTV Montreal News. You can see the report here.

CBC also did a report. You can see it here.