Tag Archives: SickKids

How the Ford Government Has Failed Us

January 26, 2021

On January 21, 2021, SickKids released this updated version of their Guidance for School Operation During the Pandemic document.

In the release of this updated document, Dr. Ronald Cohn, President and CEO, SickKids, and co-author of the document stated, “When considering public health measures aimed at curbing community transmission of COVID-19, it is our strong opinion that schools should be the last doors to close and the first to open in society. The current school closures need to be as time-limited as possible. It is therefore imperative that bundled measures of infection prevention and control and a robust testing strategy are in place. Additional delays will inevitably further exacerbate the harms to children and the inequities caused by school closures.”

In the summary of this updated document, the most significant changes include testing recommendations, enhanced physical distancing and non-medical mask use, emphasis on cohorting, and updates to the section on mental health and wellness.

Ironically, on the same day, the Toronto Star published an article by Rachel Mendleson entitled, “Internal government documents show how Ontario ‘watered down’ its strategies to keep COVID-19 out of classrooms“, where over 450 pages of briefing notes, memos, and reports from the senior civil servant in the Ministry of Education (read: unelected and nonpartisan!) to Minister Lecce (read: elected and partisan!), that had been obtained via a Freedom of Information request, were examined and commented upon:

“It looks like, originally, they (unelected, non-partisan civil servants) had a lot of things covered, but what they (elected, partisan politicians) ended up implementing … was ‘plan lite.’ You know, let’s take it, but massage it so it’s not as stringent, not as costly. It’s frustrating to see things watered down.” – Andrea Grebenc, Chair of the Halton District School Board

After reviewing the documents that include proposals for safety measures that did not come to fruition related to testing, symptom screening, and class sizes:

“Given where we are right now, it’s hard to look back at that, and think about potential alternate universes where we might have done all of these things that were recommended. It’s like we had these branch points and we picked the wrong path to take.” – Ashleigh Tuite, an epidemiologist from the University of Toronto

Last week, Fix Our Schools addressed a question that had been posed many times,  “Is Premier Ford “doing the best that he can”, given these very challenging circumstances?, and the answer we delivered was, unequivocally, no. In fact, we would go so far as to say the Ford government has failed students, teachers, education workers, families, and communities.

Fix Our Schools has consistently argued that Premier Ford and Minister Lecce could have (and should have) done more to ensure Ontario’s students could learn safely in-person back in their classrooms. So, on a day when SickKids emphasized the importance of in-person learning for Ontario’s children, we were particularly struck by the findings outlined in the Toronto Star article presented above. These findings certainly rendered meaningless the claims by both our Premier and our Minister of Education that “no expense was being spared” and that “everything possible was being done by this government to ensure Ontario students could safely learn in classrooms”.

In a January 25th CBC article, the provincial government shared that its plan to reopen Ontario’s schools “has been informed by the best medical and scientific minds in the country, including SickKids and other hospitals.“. Wow. This is a shocking statement by our government, given that we know only a fraction of medical and scientific advice on the safe operation of schools amidst this pandemic has been heeded by this government.

The role of Ontario’s Auditor-General, seems well-suited to examine this glaringly negligent behaviour of the Ford government, and we call upon her office to critically examine what this government has actually done to ensure the safety and well-being of students, teachers, and education workers amidst the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.