Tag Archives: Drinking Water

Drinking Water in Schools – Another Failing Grade for Canada and Premier Ford

Before the COVID-19 pandemic took centre stage in our lives, lead in drinking water had been in the headlines. A 2019 Toronto Star article entitled, “We can do better. Province concedes it must be more transparent about lead in school water“, featured a massive investigation revealing over 2,400 schools and daycares in Ontario with exceedances of lead in drinking water over the previous two years. At that time, the provincial government had acknowledged it could “do better”.

Almost two years later, an investigative piece published on June 11, 2021 in the Toronto Star revealed that “a third of Ontario schools still have dangerous levels of lead in drinking water – two years after Province pledged to fix it.” According to this recent data, one in 10 water tests from Ontario schools and daycares showed levels of lead above Health Canada’s maximum accepted concentration of five parts per billion (ppb). Schools and daycares are not required to tell parents and students when lead exceedances are found.

Lead can have many negative impacts, including lowering IQ and triggering behavioural disorders. According to a March 2021 study published in the Annals of Epidemiology, students in Ontario schools with lead exceedances between 2008 and 2016 scored lower in reading, writing and math testing, compared with students in schools without lead exceedances.

If high lead levels are found in a school’s water supply, as per provincial guidelines, school staff must flush the pipes by opening the tap and letting cold water flow for at least five minutes, or in some instances install a filter, and in other cases decommission the tap for use. Routine flushing of pipes is the most common solution, and many experts, such as Bruce Lanphear, a leading Canadian water researcher at Simon Fraser University, view flushing as only a short-term fix that does not prioritize the health of students. Lanphear suggests that what is actually needed is to eliminate taps or fountains with lead contamination. However, removing lead pipes that wind their way through building walls and floors is expensive. Given that Ontario’s schools rely upon provincial funding for repair and renewal of schools, and given that Ontario’s schools currently have a $16.3-billion repair backlog, it is difficult to imagine school boards having the means to properly address lead in school drinking water without additional provincial support – in the form of both funding and policies.

When parents send their children to school or daycare, they presume that the drinking water available to them is safe and free from any lead. Clearly, this is still not the case – even though this issue was clearly identified back in 2019. We’d suggest the same changes we recommended years ago are urgently needed today:

The Province must institute a policy mandating all school boards to report lead exceedances to parents and students. As one school principal said in this Global News report, “a clear ministry policy would help guide schools in what they should be communicating to parents and students”. Fix Our Schools believes that transparency about the state of our children’s schools is extremely important. While certain school boards, such as the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), have committed to being transparent by routinely publishing and updating disrepair data, and by starting to publish drinking water results, this is not the norm. Therefore, we urge the provincial government to institute a clear communication policy on drinking water safety in schools and daycares to ensure full transparency. In the spirit of transparency, we’ve also been routinely calling on the provincial government to update and release its disrepair data for all of Ontario’s publicly funded schools.

The Province must provide adequate funding that is designated specifically to addressing lead in drinking water. There is currently no provincial funding provided to school boards (or municipalities) to specifically address lead in drinking water. Given that most school boards face many urgent repairs every day such as leaking roofs, unless funding is provided to address lead in drinking water, the solution in many instances where exceedances are found may just be to cap off drinking water sources and place “handwashing only” signs on sinks in classrooms. Therefore, if we want safe drinking water to be available in schools and daycares, adequate provincial funding must be provided to fix the root causes of lead in drinking water.

 

The Province must develop and fund a Standard of Good Repair for Ontario’s schools. There is currently no standard of good repair for Ontario’s schools that would outline the metrics that could be used to measure whether a school is, indeed, in an acceptable state for children to spend their days. While our provincial government has been diligent in collecting disrepair data in schools, this data does not reflect lead in drinking water, asbestos issues, rodents and vermin, classroom temperatures, indoor air quality, nor is disrepair tracked and reported on any portables.

While the above solutions focus on what Ontario’s provincial government must do to ensure safe drinking water in provincial schools and daycares, we must also address safe drinking water for Canada’s Indigenous Peoples, including access to safe drinking water in schools. A May 6, 2021 article in TheTyee.ca entitled, “My Community’s Boil Water Advisory Is Almost as Old as Me“, author Valerie Ooshag starts by reflecting on her remote fly-in community of Eabametoong First Nation, which has been on a boil water advisory since August 2001. Ooshag also takes a broader look to note that there were 52 long-term advisories in effect as of April 2021, impacting 33 communities. This unacceptable situation continues to exist despite a 2015 commitment by Prime Minister Trudeau to lift all boil-water advisories by 2020.

Ooshag states, “Canada is a first world country, with Indigenous populations and communities having to live under boil water advisories, with some children and youth never having had access to clean drinking water in their entire lives. In the 2015 election campaign, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau vowed to lift all boil-water advisories by 2020. It is now 2021, and yet there are still these 52 advisories affecting 33 communities that don’t have access to clean drinking water.”

Inconceivably, there is no new target date for the government to keep its six-year-old promise. We recently gave Canada and Premier Ford a failing grade and continue to do so in relation to the issue of safe drinking water for all citizens. Both Canada’s federal government and Ontario’s provincial government can and must do better on this issue.

Students Shocked by High Levels of Lead

In a Toronto Star article published on February 28, 2020 ,Ursula Franklin Academy students Emma Stuart-Kiss and Jack Wilson state, “we were shocked. (We) are very concerned with the lead levels in our school and the lack of transparency surrounding them”.  After reading a series of November 2019 Toronto Star Articles about lead in drinking water, the two students began investigating further.

Stuart-Kiss, the editor of the school newspaper at Ursula Franklin Academy, recently wrote an opinion piece for the newspaper stating, “through the deflection of blame and failure to surpass the low bar of Ministry regulations, it becomes apparent that without action and outcry, nothing will change. Apparently, safety and accountability are too much to ask for.”

 

 

Over the past three years, dozens of schools and daycares have logged dramatic lead spikes above 1,000 parts per billion (ppb), when Health Canada’s guideline states a maximum level of 5 ppb. Experts suggest that levels at this extremely high level can immediately impact blood lead levels in a child and cause harm in cognitive development. Despite Health Canada adopting a 5 ppb threshold, Ontario continues to use a 10 ppb threshold for lead in water.

Elevated Lead in Water Taps at Schools and Daycares

According to a Star Investigation cited in the February 28, 2020 article entitled, “A third of daycares, schools show elevated lead in water taps“, 36% of schools and daycares that tested for lead in the last three years had at least one exceedance of Health Canada’s guideline of 5 parts per billion (ppb). More than half of public schools that tested in the last three years registered at least one exceedance and, apparently, dozens of exceedances have been recorded at private schools such as Upper Canada College. It appears that no Ontario child is immune to the risk that they may ingest lead, a neurotoxin linked to negatively impacting cognitive development, while at their place of learning.

 

The February 28, 2020 Toronto Star article followed up on initial reports back in November, 2019 examing how much lead is in our drinking water.

Despite lead in drinking water being a very  serious health concern, there is no provincial policy that mandates school boards and schools to report lead exceedances to parents and students. When the Toronto Star recently contacted the Ministry of the Environment, Minister Jeff Yurek declined an interview. However, a written statement from the Ministry was sent to the newspaper saying, “the Province has provided $1.4-billion in funding in the 2018-19 school year to renew Ontario schools and ensure that major repair and replacement work can be undertaken, which could include replacement of plumbing systems and fixtures.” 

Fix Our Schools would like to point out that when school boards are facing a total of $16.3-billion of disrepair in their schools (which does not even include addressing issues such as lead in water, asbestos, classroom temperatures), $1.4-billion of provincial funding in a year does not go very far. In fact, given that our provincial government has been allocating $1.4-billion/year in funding for school repairs and renewal since June 2016 and total disrepair has increased during that time rather than decreased, it is safe to presume that $1.4-billion is not nearly sufficient to even take care of the disrepair that is included in the $16.3-billion school repair backlog.

For the provincial government to suggest that school boards have the choice of using the $1.4-billion to address lead in water is disingenuous and serves only to lay blame at the feet of school boards, when school boards rely exclusively on the provincial government to provide adequate and stable funding. We look to our provincial government to take responsibility, given that they are the level of government with responsibility over both funding and policy around lead in our children’s drinking water at school. With great power comes great responsibility, as we first wrote in 2015.

Fix Our Schools had hoped we’d moved beyond the unproductive dialogue of our provincial government blaming school boards for issues with school conditions. However, given the Ministry’s latest written response to the Toronto Star, it appears we have not. We urge both Environment Minister Yurek and Education Minister Lecce to take lead in drinking water very seriously and to take the steps needed to ensure not only proper communication about this issue but also to ensure adequate funding to school boards and municipalites to properly address the large infrastructure requirements needed to deal with lead in drinking water once and for all.