The municipal authorities’ criticism of the Girard budget turned out to be rather harsh, contrasting with the silence of the school service centers (CSS) and the integrated health and social services centers (CISSS).
It must be said that over the past two decades, successive governments have worked to eliminate democracy in these public institutions by abolishing elections for school boards and the boards of directors of health establishments.
Contrary to the stated intention of bringing the decision-making center closer to the place of action, the Liberals and the CAQs have increased centralization. Decisions are taken far from places of education and care, making ministers the directors of all establishments in their respective fields.
We should not be surprised by the docility of the members of the boards of directors of the CISSSs and CSSs designated by Quebec, who are not beholden to the population.
By eliminating checks and balances, governments have created an environment that allows them to proceed with the quiet dismantling of our public institutions to cede part of them to the private sector.
Cultivate inefficiency
Usually, cultivating has a noble meaning that refers to caring for and promoting production. This is the impression that the government wants to give by claiming that education and health are its priorities.
However, the ills that afflict our public institutions are the result of government decisions in recent decades. The increase in budgets has not kept pace with the increase in health and education costs. Former Minister Gaétan Barrette has been transparent on the subject recently.
Paraphrasing Jacques Hébert, I accuse the governments of the past two decades of having weakened our public institutions to facilitate their commodification.
Behind the maintained illusions of the importance they attach to these sectors of activity, they have contributed to fueling criticism by showing concern for performance while gradually depriving the networks of the means to achieve the dictated targets.
The ministers can bug us with their dashboard and their search for data that looks like a witch hunt, but they don’t really want to know, because it should act more efficiently.
State of emergency
Despite the size of the sums allocated to these sectors in the Girard budget, analysts are already warning us that they will not reach system costs.
An additional deterioration is to be expected with an increasing deprofessionalization of the personnel working in these sectors.
For example, there are more than 30,000 non-legally qualified teachers in our schools. The quickest route to qualifying them will be ineffective and their desertion rate even higher, adding to the constraints of staff shortages.
Faced with governments that sabotage our institutions and an absent democracy at the local level, we should not be surprised at the shortages of personnel in these sectors constantly under the spotlight of criticism and the devaluation of the professions.
