Abuse of Executive Powers Will Come Back to Bite Quebec Government
- Pierre Chénier -
Health care workers organize a day of action across Quebec, May 27,
2020, under the banner "Mortes de Fatigue" demanding the Quebec
government respect their vacations
and work schedules.
Using COVID-19 as the excuse, the ruling elite is
making broad use of executive powers to attack workers during this
period of crisis. This is particularly blatant in Quebec where the
executive power has passed a series of orders-in-council and
ministerial orders, including the Minister of Health and Social
Services' infamous Order 2020-007, dated March 21, 2020. This order
gives the government full power to unilaterally cancel the collective
agreements of workers in health care and social services and change
their working conditions at will. Notably, it provides the minister
power to unilaterally suspend or cancel workers' leaves and vacation
time and assign personnel wherever administrative bodies decide,
irrespective of the person's position or shift or any other provision
restricting the mobility of personnel. At no time did the executive
power ever explain why it was necessary to pass such an order. Since
the beginning of the pandemic, workers in health care and social
services very clearly said that they would consider changing some of
their working conditions if that was what the situation warranted,
while pointing out that they want to have a say and exercise control
over such deployments to make sure they are not abusive and inhuman.
They point out that they have been very cooperative, even when they
felt different deployments were required, but that they cannot be taken
for granted.
 While the workers
are motivated by ensuring the full weight of their numbers and
organization are put behind protecting people's health and containing
the pandemic, the government is motivated by making sure the workers do
whatever they decree and are not able to mobilize themselves in defence
of their rights and the rights of all. Use of the executive power is to
affirm that the people are powerless and this is done to make sure they
do not present any obstacles to the programs which pay the rich. This
is why they are ignored, their concerns are marginalized, their voice
is silenced and they are even criminalized when they dare to speak or
act against the deterioration of conditions in the health and social
services network.
It is important to understand how this process
operates. The ministerial order affirms the power to cancel collective
agreements and unilaterally change working conditions. It is then left
to the Minister and to health administrations to impose these changes
in the actual health care facilities.
On May 20, during the cabinet's daily press
conference on the pandemic, the Deputy Premier and Minister of Public
Security referred to "yesterday's information on the vacations our
nurses will be able to take this summer. So I want to be very, very
clear on that. Our nurses will be able to enjoy a well-deserved rest
this summer. There is no question of preventing our nurses from taking
vacations."
If there is no issue of preventing nurses from
taking vacations, then why is it written in Ministerial Order 2020-007
that "the sections relating to leave of any nature, with or without
pay, including vacation time, are amended to enable the
employer to suspend or cancel leave already authorized, and to refuse
to grant new leave."
(Emphasis added.)
Nurses organized within the Interprofessional
Health Care Federation of Quebec (FIQ) have already begun
reporting the suspension and cancellation of leaves in various
health care facilities. On May 15, ten Confederation of National Trade
Unions (CSN) health and social services sector locals in Montreal and
Laval warned the Quebec Premier against any suspension or cancellation
of vacation time covered under their collective agreements. Nurses on
Quebec's North Shore and in Northern Quebec have also informed that the
CEOs of various facilities are telling them that by way of the
ministerial order, they have the power to do as they please and do not
need any input from nurses.
This use of executive powers to suspend or cancel
vacation time and dictate working conditions is actually a trademark of
the anti-social offensive and rule by decree imposed by government,
which is abusive and aimed at ensuring that the aims of the rich to get
richer are not hampered. When the Liberal government imposed its health
care system reform in 2015, it created mega-institutions directly under
the control of the Health Minister. The Minister became the sole
deciding authority of the budgets allocated to these institutions that
were considered seriously insufficient by workers to cover the needs of
the system. The government's reform was peppered with provisions
prohibiting institutions from running budget deficits and requiring
them to eliminate staff and cut services. This meant that although huge
cutbacks were made in institutions, the executive power could claim its
hands were clean.
 The same thing is
taking place today in the government's negotiations with the health
care sector unions. The threat of having one's working conditions
decreed is omnipresent. Under the fraud of insufficient funds, and the
hoax of increasing the wages of patient attendants, which indeed must
be drastically increased, the Quebec government is basically proposing
a cost of living increase and the status quo on working conditions for
all other workers in the sector. On the basis of this fraud, it fails
to address the urgent need to improve the wages and working conditions
of all. This fraud diverts attention from the substantive issue of who
decides what funds are available and for what.
The government recently proposed that sectoral
committees be formed with the trade unions to examine working
conditions. It is unclear how this would translate into actual
negotiations taking place. Using the ruse that this is a crisis
situation and not an appropriate time for lengthy negotiations and that
the plight of patient attendants has to be dealt with urgently, the
sword of Damocles of a decree on wages and working conditions continues
to hang over everyone's head. Whatever the workers do not agree to will
be used as an excuse to blame them for the unnecessary deaths which
take place in the health care system, pandemic or no pandemic. This is
the cowardly option Doug Ford resorted to, blaming inspectors in
Ontario for the disasters in LTC homes, claiming they were not doing
their jobs, when the government itself had abandoned even once-a-year
minimum quality inspections of each LTC facility with an arbitrary
decision that they were for the most part "low risk."
Besides this abuse of power against those who do
the work and the public at large, the common thread running through all
the examples of executive rule is the fend-for-yourself dictate imposed
on workers. Workers who are arbitrarily deployed in every which
direction have no backing whatsoever from the authorities in charge of
their sector, or the administrations where they are deployed to and
from, and their unions are not permitted to intervene in their defence.
These workers' sense of duty towards the health and safety of the
population is challenged each and every day from the moment they show up for
work. They rightly speak out in their own name individually as well as
through their unions and Workers'
Forum and
TML Weekly also play an important role in smashing the
silence on what is really taking place.
 
Public sector workers demonstrate outside Premier Legault's office, May
28, 2020.
The abuse of executive rule is a feature of a
totalitarian regime in the service of the financial oligarchy which
must not be permitted to take any further hold. On the contrary, it
must be relinquished and this must become a fundamental demand of the
workers' movement. As it stands, the abuse of executive powers is sure
to come back to bite the Quebec government.
This article was published in
Volume 50 Number 19 - May 30, 2020
Article Link:
Abuse of Executive Powers Will Come Back to Bite Quebec Government - Pierre Chénier
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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