Thank you for your question.
Under the plan, I set up an important committee. The council has 14 members on the pandemic committee. The committee is made up of health care, education and public works stakeholders, as well as members of the council and the community's general administration. We meet every morning via Zoom to assess the situation. We developed a plan accordingly, but the challenge always lies in implementation.
That's where we ran into a few issues. To enforce some of the guidelines and measures we put in place, we needed police help. Certain people didn't want to co-operate. We imposed a curfew in the community, we set up a checkpoint, we developed a quarantine policy, and we placed people in quarantine. When the time came to implement the measures, the Sûreté du Québec told us that we couldn't do it without a decree from Quebec's department of health and social services.
We applied for one and we obtained Dr. Sobanjo's support. She's the region's public health authority. She submitted her recommendation to the Quebec government, which has been slow in granting the decree. We filed the application five or six weeks ago, but we were told that other communities in Quebec were also seeking a decree.
We can appreciate that, but the problem is that communities like Winneway have neither reserve status nor their own police force, and they can't make their own regulations. The people of Winneway are in a pretty unique position. That's why we don't think we should be mixed in with the rest of—