QUEBEC CITY -- The day after a commemoration to honour the 10,000 Quebec victims of COVID-19, Francois Legault's Coalition avenir Quebec (CAQ) government published a text praising its achievements.
The unsigned text, posted online on March 12 and entitled "Could another team have done better?", made the leader of the Parti Quebecois (PQ), Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, jump on Tuesday.
He believes that the CAQ is showing arrogance. In a press briefing, the PQ leader spoke of the text as "the work of someone who sees only successes" in the management of the COVID-19 crisis.
To ask the question "Could another team have done better" is to answer it, according to Plamondon. All other Canadian provinces have done better than Quebec, he said.
The CAQ, he continued, is incapable of questioning itself, which makes the case for an independent public inquiry even more crucial, according to him.
"There have been failures," he said. Quebec accounts for half of the victims in Canada, while representing less than a quarter of its population.
In the text, the CAQ answers its own question, stating that, "according to the majority of the population and most analysts," another team could not have done better.
The big heroes of the crisis are the senior civil servants and public health authorities, adds the anonymous CAQ commentator, who makes no mention of health care workers.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 16, 2021
