Quebec ex-health minister under fire for focus on hospitals over long-term care

Quebec Premier Franois Legault and Danielle McCann, the former health minister, are facing growing criticism for their decision to prioritize hospitals over long-term care homes during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A scathing report released Tuesday by Quebec's ombudsman, Marie Rinfret, found it took the government weeks to react to the crisis in long-term care homes,where most of the 3,890 deaths in the first wave took place.

McCann held a news conference Tuesday morning in the room where she, the premier and public health director once provideddaily updates for the public and the media.

McCann, now the minister of higher education, is being scrutinized for having failedto actsooner, with opposition parties requesting a debate on the matter in the National Assembly on Wednesday afternoon.

It was a rare solo appearance by McCann, who paused before starting, saying, "I'm just getting settled."

"What is being said about me in the public sphere is concerning to me," she said.

McCann shared a letter she said proved her ministry acted in late January 2020 to warn local health board officials to prepare for a new coronavirus. She noted that long-term care homes fall under the purview of those officials.

The three-page letter makes nomention of CHSLDs, the French acronymfor long-term care facilities.

"We did everything in our power to prepare with the information that was at our disposal," McCann said. "I can assure you we prepared to the best of our knowledge, and did not spare our efforts."

The publication of the ombudsman report comesas a coroner's inquiry into the similar topic of what went wrong in long-term care homes has entered the phase in which it questions top officials on the role their policies played in the crisis.

Both investigations have shed light on just how slow the government was to respond and increased criticism ofgovernment officials, like McCann, who were in charge at the time.

Reinforcements only arrived mid-April

The report by theombudsman, released in full Tuesday, said seniors in long-term carehad been "cast aside" while the government was distracted by beefing up hospital resources, based on crisesin Europe.

Rinfretsaid the government's transfer of hundreds of seniors into long-term care homes, to free up hospital beds, had pushed theshort-handed residences over capacity even before people started getting sick.

When outbreaks began to occurin the homes around March 23, Rinfret said it took weeks for the government to reactonly acknowledging the extent of the crisis and sending reinforcements to already decimated staffs by mid-April.

By then, hundreds had died or been left for days at a time without basic care, such as hygiene, feeding and hydrating.

McCannsaid the Quebec government had followed the pandemic plan at its disposal, which advised elderly patients to be transferred out of hospitals to make space for a potential surge of patients infected with the virus.

But Rinfret told reporters Tuesday what the government failed to do was to evaluate the risks of those transfers since it knew long-term care homes were under-resourced.

Legault responded to criticismTuesday, sayinghindsight has made it easy for people to say things should have been done differently.

At the time, he said, no one anticipated the pandemic would take on such magnitude.

"We did not have any indication until March that there would be such a tragedy in the CHSLDs. We knew there was a virus and that there were problems in hospitals in Italy," Legault said.