There’s an old saying that knowledge is power.
That’s not entirely correct. Knowledge is nothing if it’s not combined with context and the critical thinking to categorize it properly. However, it’s a pretty big piece of the puzzle.
These past few weeks, the regional health authority have been stonewalling about a small outbreak of COVID at one of the local long-term care facilities. It required several . . .
requests before they would even acknowledge that anything was amiss at the CAP.
We have no idea how many employees tested positive (thankfully, as of Monday there have been no positive tests among residents). However, it could be one worker, it could be five. The CISSSO will only state that “five or less” have reported positive.
Why?
Why is this still par for the course a year into the pandemic? They know how many cases there are, why can’t the public be trusted with the information if it’s in the low single digits? The excuse is that if people were singled out, they would be stigmatized. Sorry, at this point, there’s very little motive for stigmatization. There’s been nearly 7,000 people in the Outaouais alone that have tested positive. There’s no reason for this kind of half-baked secrecy anymore.
At the last MRC meeting, Pontiac’s warden said that she was concerned that the health authority was not more forthcoming with information. She has every right to be concerned. However, it’s exactly what you get dealing with CISSSO’s communications team. Journalists have known for years that contacting the media line in Gatineau is a nightmare, now everyone is living with that reality.
Want to talk with a local health care employee about efforts to cheer up residents of a long-term care facility? Even if you know the person you want to talk to and have their number, you’ve got to email some flak in Gatineau to request permission. Want to speak with a local manager regarding ballooning overtime hours at local institutions?
“Sorry, no one that speaks English is available.”
When you ask to speak with someone in either language, there’s suddenly no one available at all.
A recent request by THE EQUITY for further details on certain professions with significant overtime increases recorded in 2020 was given the stiff-arm for over a month. When they finally responded, it was with vague, two sentence answers. No interviews allowed with anyone that knows anything, the public might learn some truth.
Remember back in February 2020 when the obstetrics unit closed? The press conference was announced only a few hours beforehand, and held entirely in French. Perhaps we were lucky they even bothered to leave the city.
It’s obvious that we don’t really matter in the grand scheme of this bureaucracy. CISSSO has an annual budget of nearly a billion dollars a year, and the Pontiac is undeniably small potatoes. It’s not surprising that they want to keep a tight handle on any public communications coming out of their shop, especially when dealing with issues that can be life and death. However, just like with other, more important aspects of health care in this region, the local managers are given huge amounts of responsibility, but have very little autonomy. We should applaud every one of the employees that have spoken to media, on and off the record, about what they see happening to our facilities. Without them the public would be even more in the dark than we are now.
It should also be said that CISSSO’s communications team is pretty small (two or three people) for a region of this size, so the flaks may not be entirely to blame. While this set up may save a few pennies in the budget, it doesn’t deliver adequate service to the people in this area or elsewhere in the region.
If you want the public to buy into constantly changing public health directives during this pandemic, transparent, effective communication is the bare minimum.
Caleb Nickerson
