The email from a deputy minister for seniors entitled "URGENT: Situation CHSLD Herron West Montreal" also contained a "reassuring" aspect, says Quebec Premier François Legault.
The premier made the comments Tuesday in a press scrum at the National Assembly when asked about the outbreak at CHSLD Herron that killed 47 people during the first wave of the pandemic.
He was asked to comment on the email from the assistant deputy minister for seniors, Natalie Rosebush, filed in evidence with the coroner on Jan. 28 and unearthed Tuesday by Radio-Canada.
"Of course, Mrs. Blais, Mrs. McCann and I were pleased to hear that the CIUSSS was taking charge of the situation," he said in English.
On March 29, 2020, Rosebush sent an email to Minister of Seniors Marguerite Blais' chief of staff saying that the CHSLD Herron was experiencing a "very problematic" situation.
There was "almost no staff to take care of the 154 residents," she wrote. Her message was forwarded that night to Blais, while former health minister Danielle McCann obtained a "status report" on March 30.
Rosebush added in the same email that "CIUSSS will take over the CHSLD to provide services while we get things back on track and train the staff."
"The CIUSSS of the West Island is taking charge of the situation in the CHSLD Herron, that's what it says in the email. So that was reassuring," Legault said.
"For me, it was correct," he added in English. "I don't remember being aware of that," he replied.
"But I can well understand that Mrs. McCann, and then Mrs. Blais, when they saw an email that said: 'The CIUSSS is taking charge of the situation at Herron,' that they were satisfied with that," he added.
CALLS FOR RESIGNATIONS
The explanations were not enough for the Liberal Leader Dominique Anglade, who demanded Tuesday the departure of ministers Blais and McCann for having lied to the population.
"Obviously, the two ministers — and perhaps even the premier — knew as early as March 30, 2020 that there was almost no staff to care for the residents of the CHSLD Herron," she said.
Yet, according to the official version, it was only around April 10 that they learned of the disaster at Herron.
"We had ministers who knew about it and who lied to us for two years," said Anglade, adding she felt a mixture of "anger" and "sadness."
Both Blais and McCann told the coroner that it wasn't until a devastating article appeared in The Montreal Gazette that they realized how serious the situation was.
"Herron, we learned about this mainly from the newspaper article, we didn't know the extent of the situation," Blais said in her testimony on Jan. 14.
PQ MNA Pascal Bérubé accused the government of "sitting on this information" for 10 days. I don't know if anyone is packing their boxes today, but I invite people to think about it."
"Look, this is serious," he continued. "Two ministers were aware of what was happening in Herron ten days before. Imagine the impact if we had acted quickly on what happened in Herron."
For his part, the parliamentary leader of Québec solidaire, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, invited Blais to do some "soul-searching."
"She has been in Quebec politics for years and repeats on every platform that she wants to defend seniors. Well how did she find out what was going on at the Herron CHSLD and then do nothing?" he said.
The three opposition parties reiterated on Tuesday their demand for a public and independent inquiry into the management of the pandemic by the Legault government.
A spokesperson for the CIUSSS de l'Ouest-de-l'Île-de-Montréal (ODIM) told CTV News that its hands were tied at the time and could not intervene.
Access to information and equipment critical to the well-being of residents is proving difficult. In particular, the CIUSSS is confronted with the difficulty of knowing the work schedules and the list of available employees, while the CHSLD employees rarely or never show up, all of which forces the CIUSSS ODIM to intervene in an emergency situation at the beginning of each work shift," wrote Annie Charbonneau.
"Several witnesses at the Coroner's inquiry reported that the CIUSSS received daily, sometimes barely 30 minutes before a shift, lists with sometimes only the title and number of employees, sometimes the names of CHSLD Herron employees (often only the first names) which did not correspond at all to reality, and that, in fact, very few of the employees registered on these lists showed up for their shift Despite this, CIUSSS is deploying a minimum of 105 of its resources between March 30 and April 5, 2020."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on April 5, 2022, with files from CTV News.
