Like Éric Duhaime, the Parti Québécois (PQ) and Québec solidaire (QS) believe that it is abnormal to undergo such strict confinement when so few patients are enough to clog the health network.

On Monday, the Conservative leader had said that "we cannot continue to prevent Quebec from living to save the health system forever."

PQ leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon said it was "not normal."

"We can't make all decisions based solely on the number of hospitalizations," he said at a press conference on Tuesday, the day the National Assembly resumed in Quebec City.

He referred in particular to the number of visits to emergency rooms for mental health reasons which he said is "accelerating."

The parliamentary leader of QS, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, also maintained that this was "not normal" in his opinion.

"We entered this crisis with one of the lowest hospital capacities of all the G7 countries," he said.

"There are several countries in Europe, proportionally speaking, where there are more cases and more hospitalizations, but this puts less strain on their health system, because their hospital capacity is greater," Nadeau-Dubois argued.

For his part, St-Pierre Plamondon called for either increased hospital capacity or, if not, the consideration of criteria other than hospitalizations to manage lockdown measures, in the event that we have to "learn to live with the virus," as the government puts it.

"People are not doing well: we feel more and more in the population a dropout, a fatigue that is legitimate, because Quebecers have done everything right, but remain among the confined and there is not even an explanation."

Premier François Legault condemned the positions of QS and the PQ.

At a press conference Tuesday afternoon, he said he was "not surprised" by the Conservative Party's positions, but that he was surprised by the similarities with the PQ and QS.

"It surprises me. This is not the Parti Québécois that I know," the premier said

"When I hear the Parti Québécois, and even Québec solidaire, say that, according to them, there are too many restrictions, well, I find that irresponsible."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on Feb. 1, 2022.