Ford Has Failed Ontario’s Children … Again

January 3, 2022

Premier Ford’s behaviour, policies, funding allocations, decisions, and lack of leadership have failed students, parents, families, teachers, and education workers time and again during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A quick overview of the past few weeks in Ontario’s public education:

  • After a press conference on Friday, December 17th announcing an initial plan to handle the challenge of Omicron, Premier Ford was absent from the public eye over the holiday season. During that time, the Omicron variant was wreaking havoc in Ontario, causing fear, and raising many questions and concerns.
  • On December 28, Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer was meant to make an announcement, but this announcement was delayed.
  • On December 30, Ford’s government announced a two-day delay in school starting, suggesting that schools would somehow be safe for in-person learning by Wednesday, January 5th, as the Omicron variant continued to wreak havoc in Ontario.

Ottawa Citizen columnist Brigitte Pellerin raised many excellent points after this December 30th announcement in her piece entitled, “Doug Ford’s absence on school re-opening is an abdication of leadership: It’s not too much to ask for a government that treats school children and the people who teach them as a priority”. She notes that this government is not making kids the priority they need to be and that “the worst part is the silence”. She goes on to paint a picture of what leadership in this province could look like if Doug Ford had the courage to actually lead:

He would look us in the eye and say something like, “There are no easy answers. Omicron is worrying everyone. We are watching the following indicators to tell us whether we need to delay going back to school but either way we will make a decision by Dec. 27 so everyone has at least one week to prepare. And on top of buying N95 masks for every teacher and school staff not working alone in an office, we are sending truckloads of rapid antigen tests to school boards everywhere. I’ll be back here tomorrow to update you again, even if the situation hasn’t changed. And I will do my best to answer questions.”

  • Following Ford’s December 30th announcement, grave concerns immediately began surfacing from many experts, parents, teachers, education workers, politicians, and education advocates about the wisdom of the proposal to have 2-million children return to in-person learning on January 5th.
  • On December 31st, we learned that the memo sent by our Ministry of Education to school boards following the December 30th announcement outlined that Ontario would stop collecting COVID-19 numbers from schools, and suspend reporting of cases, continuing a longstanding Ford government tradition of lack of data and transparency.
  • Early on Sunday, January 2, the general public heard rumours of a 4 pm Cabinet Meeting.
  • As the day progressed on January 2, we continued to hear rumours about the Cabinet Meeting – and that a possible outcome was a switch to online learning for Ontario’s students.
  • We awoke on Monday, January 3rd only to continued speculation, and news of a press conference at 10 am by the Ford government.
  • The 10 am press conference was delayed to 11 am, and Education Minister Lecce was not going to be in attendance.
  • The 11 am press conference started almost 30 minutes late, and confirmed rumours that Ontario’s public education sector would, once again, have to pivot to online learning until at least January 17. Despite numerous questions from the press about what specific steps the Ford government would be taking in the coming two weeks to ensure that students could return to in-person learning after January 17th, no clear steps were outlined by the Ford government.

We agree with epidemiologist and advocate Colin Furness that online learning is dreadful and also a massive burden to so many families without the flexibility and/or resources to support at-home learning. We also agree that this decision was needed to help with infection control and child hospitalization.

Fix Our Schools recognizes that the past two years have been challenging for all governments. Governments, after all, are comprised of mere humans, and we have compassion that all humans have found the past two years challenging at times. However, with a more proactive, respectful, collaborative, and competent provincial government, we do believe that Ontario’s children and families would have been better served to date during the COVID-19 pandemic.

To that end, we look forward for a moment to June, 2022 when we have the opportunity to vote in a more proactive, respectful, collaborative, competent provincial government. Follow closely each of the parties that could govern our province, and demand platforms from each of these parties that reflect your priorities, and demand behaviour from these parties that reflects your values.

In the shorter-term, the Ford government is in charge of public education in this province for at least the next few months. With this in mind, now is the time to demand that Premier Ford start prioritizing students, schools and education. Ontario Parent Action Network (OPAN) is making it easy for all of us to take action so please take the time to call Premier Ford’s office in the coming days to let them know what you expect of his government.

https://twitter.com/parentaction4ed/status/1478073559532584960

Ontario’s students have always deserved safe, healthy, well-maintained schools that provide environments conducive to learning. After being an afterthought by the Ford government since March, 2020 amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, Ontario’s students deserve this even more today.