I have two children and never once during their entire school years did I wonder if there would be a properly trained teacher to teach them French and math. Today I know parents who ask themselves this question.
Posted at 5:00 am.
Will we adapt to this new reality as we have become accustomed to the fact that getting an appointment with our GP within a reasonable time is practically a miracle?
People around me are becoming more and more cynical when talking about their experiences with various ministries or agencies. They complain about the endless wait times, the voicemail boxes with endless options, the hospital that still needs a fax, the immigration file that won’t be expunged… It makes you wonder if we don’t take a perverse pleasure in… to complicate life. And I’m not talking about the advanced deterioration of certain schools, streets, certain hospitals…
When more and more citizens turn to the media to solve their problems with the government apparatus (hello, Paul Arcand!), something is wrong.
Is the defect to blame?
A disabled man is deprived of one of the two weekly baths he is entitled to. CISSS decision. His mother, a 70-year-old woman who looks after him, takes over the management – at the risk of injury. She doesn’t want her son to lose his dignity. This is one of the cases reported in the annual report of the Public Protector, who intervened with the authorities concerned. Result: We restored the second bathroom.
Last year almost 50,000 people contacted the Public Protector for a variety of reasons. For good reason: when this institution intervenes, the problem is almost always solved as if by magic.
Don’t tell Mr Marc-André Dowd, Ombudsman, that we have to accept the loss of essential services due to a labor shortage. He rejects this argument.
If a restaurant closes on Tuesdays and Wednesdays due to a labor shortage, it can be considered inevitable. But when we talk about essential public services, especially for vulnerable people, this is not an acceptable position.
I Marc-André Dowd, Ombudsman
In other words, the labor shortage is a problem, but there are limits to blaming it for the overall failure of the system.
Éric Bélanger, a full professor in the political science department at McGill University, notes that managing government services has become more complex. “Since the Quiet Revolution, the state has taken on more tasks and offered more services. »
At the same time, we are experiencing a bureaucratization of public services. “A whole system has developed that makes the delivery of goods more complicated and difficult,” he believes.
“The pandemic has shown that our approach was not so effective,” Bélanger continues. We are still feeling the effects of this crisis. Maybe things will calm down at some point, but we may also be facing the end of a governance model. »
How did we get here?
In addition to the lack of labor and the complexity of the state apparatus, there is also the resignation of the active population, which partly explains the lack of resources. Myriam Moore, a researcher at the Institute for Socioeconomic Research and Information, remembers that the crisis we are in was predictable.
The labor shortage has been discussed for a long time. The Quebec Institute of Statistics and Statistics Canada are there for a reason. We have to admit that we lacked vision.
Myriam Moore, researcher at the Institute for Socioeconomic Research and Information
PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, LA PRESS ARCHIVE
The shortage of teachers in Quebec schools may jeopardize students’ academic success.
“In the case of the SAAQ or the Passport Office, we were understanding, but when we talk about a shortage of teachers in the classrooms, it is much more serious,” believes Stéphane Paquin, full professor at the National School of Public Administration.
The problem, in his opinion, is that “in Quebec we don’t use scientific data and we don’t think long-term. And between crises we don’t evaluate ourselves.”
Mr. Paquin has a good knowledge of Swedish society (yes, Sweden again!). “There,” he said, “we are always striving to improve.” However, the culture of evaluation has not yet taken hold in Quebec. Our Auditor General’s powers are limited and parliamentary committees are working urgently. The classic case in Quebec is a commission that pushes the issues and when the report is ready they are entitled to a first class funeral. »
Are we partly responsible?
I wondered if this feeling of constant crisis is partly because we are more impatient and demanding.
“It is true that increasing the level of education makes us better informed and able to make more sensitive judgments about the state of governance,” notes Professor Éric Bélanger, who believes that the environment that media and technology require from the Government must be constantly responsible. “Citizens are more critical and it is more difficult to govern than before,” he adds.
Same story from Guylaine Saucier, President of the Board of Directors of the Institute on Governance (IGOPP). “Communication technologies have improved so much in the last decade that we can immediately identify any problems,” she believes. It doesn’t help perception. »