Quebec ‘Cancels Christmas’
Written by Paul Graif on 3 December 2020
Premier François Legault has announced that the two gatherings initially allowed during the Christmas holidays, are now officially canceled. With the positive Coronavirus case numbers steadily climbing, the CAQ government felt that there was no other alternative than to backtrack on the initial decision, where they had hoped that a moral contract with Quebecers would have somehow deterred people from letting their guard down vis a vis the virus.
Gatherings in the province’s hard-hit “red zones,” which take in most of the province, will be prohibited over the holidays, that decision taken after a sharp rise in positive cases, hospitalizations and deaths in the Province.
Meanwhile in Kahnawà:ke, ‘The COVID 19 Task Force’ is still recommending gatherings of a maximum of 2 families per household over the upcoming holidays.
Lisa Westaway is the Executive Director of the KMHC and she joined us on the Morning D today on K1037:
“I just want to correct the word “allow,” we are making recommendations that we feel will mitigate risk as much as possible over the holidays. I would like to transmit this information because it’s really important: the next 2 months are the biggest fight that we have to keep ourselves safe. Meaning the first wave we were extra cautious, everyone was nervous and on-guard. We did everything we had to do, it was a lot easier to stay safe. Right now, we have many people who no longer listen to us, I mean on the radio, Facebook Live, like we don’t have as much followers, we don’t have as many people who are as concerned. People, you know it’s normal, we’ve been in this for eight months, so it’s been normalized, this is part of our life, so it’s a little bit, we’re less cautious and we’re tired, we don’t want to hear about it anymore and so we’re letting down our guard, it’s normal, we all face that right now and for that reason it makes the next few months even more important.”
Westaway saying that the numbers are rising and it will only get worse over the holidays with increased contacts all around us, clarifying that it’s not about “not allowing” gatherings, rather it’s a recognition that for the benefit of mental health, people need to see one another, so the Task Force tried to give the community a way to have safe gatherings. It is entirely possible that through the on-going monitoring of statistics, that gatherings may once again be restricted.
