In the News April 18
Human-Centred Solutions Are Urgently Required
Quebec Bill on Ending the Public Health Emergency Endorses Ministerial Immunity
On March 16, the Coalition Avenir Québec government tabled Bill 28, An Act to terminate the public health emergency. Special consultations and public hearings on the bill took place on March 31, and April 6 and 7.
Under the public health emergency of the COVID-19 pandemic, a series of ministerial orders have been decreed by the government executive, the first issued on March 13, 2020. The Quebec government invoked the Public Health Act at that time, which allows it to declare a state of health emergency when a serious threat to the health of the population requires the application of certain measures to protect public health.
Since the initial decree of March 13, 2020, the state of emergency has been renewed by decree 117 times as of April 6, without the consent of the National Assembly and notably, without the consent of Quebeckers, who have protested relentlessly against this governance by decree and the arbitrary powers provided to the government executive.
Amongst the most hated decrees is the one announced on March 21, 2020, that is still in effect, which declared the collective agreements of health and social services workers null and void, allowing administrations to unilaterally change workers’ conditions. This decree continues to be used to attack the working conditions negotiated by health and social services workers.
Bill 28 provides for an end to the public health emergency once the legislation is passed, however it maintains governance by decree, ministerial immunity and certain specific measures.
For example, the bill states that measures provided for by the orders or decrees of the Minister of Health and Social Services with regard to workers’ collective agreements will remain in force until December 31, 2022.
The unions have firmly denounced the bill, and this measure, in particular.
“With the tabling of its bill to end the public health emergency, the government is using the health crisis to unilaterally modify health and social services network workers’ working conditions and promote the private sector in the network by extending its contracts,” they wrote on the same day that the government tabled the bill. “This is a violation of union rights: the right of association and the right to collective bargaining. It is a denial of checks and balances and an abuse of its executive power.”
Many have raised the issue that a government that maintains decrees and orders while announcing the end of the health emergency, will not hesitate to extend them again or bring them back next year, especially since a general election is to be held this October.
The bill reiterates what all the orders and decrees have stipulated: no judicial proceedings may be brought against the Government, a Minister or any other person for an act performed in the application of the orders in council and ministerial orders.
Bill 28 also provides that, despite any contrary provision of the Act respecting contracting by public bodies or of any other Act or any regulation, all contracts entered into by the Minister or the administrations of health and social services institutions during the health emergency may be extended until December 31, 2022. They may even be extended up to five years after the end of the state of emergency if the government deems them to be necessary for public health.
The fact that the government is specifying that it will take action despite the Act’s provisions regulating the contracting of public bodies shows that it is giving itself free rein to extend or sign contracts with the private sector without even calling for tenders.
The bill also gives the Minister the power to order that any person, department or body give the Minister access to any record the Minister considers necessary to protect public health, even in the case of personal or confidential information, without the knowledge of the person concerned. How that information will then be used is not stipulated in the bill. The only thing that is stipulated is that if these bodies do not give that confidential information to the Minister they will be penalized.
Many people have expressed concern that the government intends to pass on this confidential information to private interests, such as the pharmaceutical monopolies and their research centres, to facilitate their control over drugs and treatments and enable them to siphon off even more public health resources for their own private gain.
Finally, Bill 28 provides for a series of fines for any person or organization that acts in contravention of the measures or encourages a person or organization to contravene them.
Whether in the name of lifting or declaring the public health emergency, the use of rule by decree to place the decision-making power in an ever smaller number of hands in the service of narrow private interests continues. The National Assembly is dismissed, as are the workers and people, who are criminalized because their organizations are declared to be special interest groups that do not have the public interest at heart.
The struggle of the workers and the people for a decisive say in all matters that directly affect them targets this concentration of power in the service of interests over which the people exercise no control.
Workers’ Forum, posted April 18, 2022.
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