Coincidence makes things funny.
• Also read: Cockroaches, mice, rats and even a squirrel in the CHSLD
Just as I denounced the health system's inaction in my column yesterday, our investigative bureau informed us that we had been waiting several months in a vermin-infested CHSLD to plug a hole in a wall where mice existed!
Months!
Fill a hole!
Hello?
Go to the pharmacy, buy steel wool, step in the hole and it's over, we don't talk about it anymore!
Cibole!
Do I have to fill out forms in triplicate to fill a gap?
Set up an interdisciplinary consultation table?
Are you asking Éric Caire to publish a tender for the purchase of specific software that will allow all actors in the system to discuss the best strategies to neutralize the invasion of rodents in health facilities in Administrative Zone 03?
WE ARE HERE IN QUEBEC!
Who knows?
The mice and cockroaches that roam the walls of this CHSLD may belong to an endangered species, such as chorus frogs.
They would then have to be caught and returned to their “natural habitat”.
Or destroy them with a bow and arrow to avoid causing them too much suffering.
Remember the story of these parents from Montreal's South Shore who wanted to paint the walls of the school their children attended.
You've been told, “Woah, woah, woah, calm down!” Where do you think you are? In Teutonia? This is Quebec, it's not like that!
“Do you have certificates of competence from the Commission de la construction du Québec? A permit from the building authority? Are you a member of a certified union?
“Does your project comply with workplace safety standards? Is the paint you want to use environmentally friendly? Are you going to climb a stepladder? If so, is the person holding your stepladder a member of the Quebec Stepladder Professional Association?
Result: The parents gave up and returned home.
As JFK said (unless it was Ti-Gus and Ti-Mousse): “Don’t ask what you can do for your country, just sit in your living room and mind your own business.”
LITTLE PONY
As I wrote at the end of my column yesterday when talking about Minister Dubé's future Top Gun: “It's great to appoint a person capable of piloting a Grumman F-14 Tomcat fighter.
But if the control tower is run by Ronald the unionist and Pauline Joncas-Pelletier the bureaucrat, the Top Gun won't get far…”
In 1868, the Hautes-Laurentides were cleared with axes.
One hundred and fifty years later, you have to wait three months to patch a hole in a wall.
To paraphrase Patrick Huard's famous monologue about men, Quebecers went from broncos galloping in the fields and treading on stretchers to ponies circling around a stick.
The best way to kill a people is to suffocate them with bureaucracy…