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Quebec Commissioner of Health, Joanne Castonguay (Photo : Twitter)

By email and mail

November 18, 2020, +JMJ+

Commissioner
Joanne Castonguay
880, chemin Sainte-Foy, suite 4.40
Quebec, Quebec
G1S 4X4

Madam Commissioner,

I am writing to you as President of the Campagne Québec-Vie / Quebec Life Coalition, a non-profit association that aims to make its contribution so that Quebec can once again become a Christian society that protects faith, family, and life, from conception to natural death.[1]

I learned from an article in La Presse that the Minister of Health, Christian Dubé, had mandated you “to examine the performance of the health network, especially elder care, during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic” and that this study would be similar to a commission of inquiry, less punitive powers.[2]

Your mandate as defined by Mr. Dubé suggests that this spring’s fatalities are all caused by the coronavirus, and that your work will consist solely of identifying gaps in the health care system that would explain why our seniors and other vulnerable people have not been sufficiently protected from a deadly virus. However, we believe that this assumption of a very lethal virus from which we would not have been sufficiently protected is not the only one, nor even the most probable one. We are therefore writing to encourage you to consider, in your report, other scenarios that would better account for the increase in “all-cause mortality” observed in Quebec this spring[3].

In our opinion, the vulnerable people who died in Quebec this spring in unusually high numbers are not only, or even for the most part, dead from a virus with a case-fatality rate close to that of a strong seasonal flu[4]; they mostly died for other reasons[5], including the following:

• Gross neglect caused in part by an acute labour shortage in long-term care facilities, which was in large part the result of a media scare campaign that created panic among long-term care employees; [6]
• A stressful situation caused by isolation and other health measures, weakening the immune system of people who are already very fragile, and making them more likely to succumb to what in normal times amount to relatively benign illnesses; [7]
• A triage policy for seniors, denying them, during the crisis, access to hospital services that were normally available to them; [8]
• Contamination of senior care facilities by sick elderly people who have been evacuated from hospitals (to “free up” 7,000 beds, including those of 1,400 patients who were still sick), in anticipation of a “wave” of “higher priority” patients that never materialized; [9]
• A suspension of several surgeries and other interventions, again in order to “free up” beds to deal with the crisis; a pause in care that may have indirectly caused several deaths this spring; and [10]
• The establishment of euthanasia-like protocols. [11]

Commissioner, you will be required to table a report on how the crisis was managed by the end of summer 2021. We believe that the credibility of your report can only be strengthened if you do not stick to the implicit assumption imposed by government authorities that the emergency measures put in place this spring including the lockdown have “saved lives”. It is our earnest hope that your report will take into account the aforementioned hypothesis, which we believe is more plausible, that health measures, far from having protected the population, actually contributed to the hecatomb : by stressing our seniors, resulting in a fall of their immune systems; by exposing them to patients expelled from hospitals and laden with nosocomial viral loads; by isolating them and making them lose their will to live; by causing their famine and dehydration in care homes from which a large number of long-term care center employees fled in panic because of the fear-mongering campaign by government authorities and the media, and finally by euthanizing them under the guise of “palliative care” made necessary by lack of access to hospital care.

Commissioner, a huge task lies ahead of you. We wish you all the courage and strength you need to successfully complete it. It goes without saying that in addition to offering you our logistical support in your endeavours, we are committed to praying for you and your team, hoping that your work will bear fruit, not only for the sake of the Quebec health care system, but also so that justice will be done for elderly and vulnerable people for whom the deaths this spring were in many cases perfectly preventable.

Yours sincerely,


Georges Buscemi, president
Quebec Life Coalition

This letter has been published on the Campagne Québec-Vie / Quebec Life Coalition website (https://en.cqv.qc.ca) and sent to various organizations and media.

Electronic copies of this letter were also sent to the following individuals:

• Marguerite Blais, Minister responsible for Seniors and Informal Caregivers ([email protected])
• Pascale Descary, Chief Coroner ([email protected])
• Christian Dubé, Minister of Health ([email protected])
• Christian Lépine, Archbishop of Montreal
• Alex Schadenberg, President of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
• Dr. Patrick Vinay, President of Living with Dignity

[1] For more information about our organization, please visit https://en.cqv.qc.ca/ who_we_are

[2] Source: https://www.lapresse.ca/ actualites/2020-08-19/ covid-19-la-commissaire-a-la-sante-fera-enquete.php, consulted on November 18, 2020.

[3] According to the data from the Institut de la statistique du Québec (see https://www.stat.gouv.qc.ca /statistiques/population-demographie/ deces-mortalite/nombre-hebdomadaire-deces_an.html, consulted on November 18, 2020), there was indeed excess mortality in spring 2020 in Quebec. In fact, from year to year we observe a seasonal cycle of death rates, with the rate increasing in winter (with the flu season and other respiratory diseases) and decreasing in summer. In Quebec, approximately 1300 people die each week (186 per day). In 2020 this fluctuating and seasonal mortality rate drastically increased in April, which coincides with the Covid 19 crisis in the province. It is therefore tempting to conclude that these deaths were caused by the coronavirus. However, in our opinion, this is an erroneous conclusion, as we will explain later.

[4] The mortality rate from seasonal influenza is estimated to be 1 in 1000 affected people (see: Fauci, Lane and Redfield [2020], online at: https://www.nejm.org /doi/full/10.1056/ NEJMe2002387, accessed Nov. 18, 2020) while the median covid 19 infection fatality rate is between 2 and 3 in a thousand, according to Ioannidis, John PA (2020), online at : https://www.who.int/bulletin/ online_first/ BLT.20.265892.pdf; accessed November 18, 2020 (Back-up link, here).

[5] There are good reasons to believe that the official figure of 6,710 deaths “due” to Covid 19 as of November 18, 2020, is significantly inflated. For more information on this “statistical inflation”, read the comments of Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, Dr. Horacio Arruda, etc., quoted in the following article, from the section entitled Gonflage statistique des décès dus au covid ?: https://www.cqv.qc.ca/ libre_opinion_sur_la_pandemie_2020 - gonflage, consulted on November 18, 2020.

[6] Among many examples, there is the situation at the Herron and Sainte-Dorothée residences, as described in this article from the Journal de Montréal: https://www.journaldemontreal.com/ 2020/09/23/ les-problemes-de-personnel-ont-engendre-lhecatombe, consulted on November 18, 2020. Another example from the documentary Mourir dans l’angle mort produced by Radio-Canada, which described the situation in the Herron residence as follows: “31 deaths, but, above all, residents found lying in their feces, without care, dehydrated and starved due to a lack of staff. (This quote ends at 9 minutes 42 seconds in the documentary available at the following address: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=S8dhFPfTWP4, consulted on November 18, 2020.)

[7] On the significant impacts of stress on mortality observed during spring 2020 in different communities, see Rancourt, Denis (June 2020) : https://www.researchgate.net/publication/ 341832637_All-cause_mortality_during_COVID-19_ No_plague_and_a_likely_signature_of_mass_ homicide_by_government_response, consulted on November 18, 2020. This article has been translated in French here: https://lesakerfrancophone.fr/ mortalite-toutes-causes-confondues- pendant-la-covid-19, consulted on November 18, 2020.

[8] An example of such a protocol can be found here: https://www.lapresse.ca/ covid-19/2020-04-18/ un-plan-de-triage-pour-faire-les-choix-dechirants, consulted on November 18, 2020.

[9] At the beginning of the crisis, Health Minister Danielle McCann announced having “freed up” 7,000 beds, including 1,400 patients sent to CHSLDs and other institutions, thereby exposing thousands of vulnerable people to contagious, nosocomial and other diseases. See Mourir dans l’angle mort at 1:49 : https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=S8dhFPfTWP4, consulted on November 18, 2020)

[10] Ibid.

[11] Many Western jurisdictions, in Canada, Sweden, and France, have implemented long-term care facility protocols in times of pandemic that are, in reality, disguised forms of euthanasia. See the following articles for Canada: https://www.cqv.qc.ca/ mort_de_faim_et_de_soif_a_cause_des_mesures_ anticoronavirus, Sweden: https://www.cqv.qc.ca/suede_euthanasie_ dans_les_maisons_pour_personnes_agees_protocoles_eugeniques, and France: https://www.medias- presse.info/gouvernement-et-coronavirus-ouverture-a-leuthanasie-deguisee-en- recommandant-des-usages-letaux-du-rivotril/119441/, each consulted on November 18, 2020.