Return to in-person schooling in doubt as Omicron cases spike across Ontario
CBC
Just days before students are set to return to the classroom in Ontario, the province's back-to-school plan is clouded with uncertainty and critics are calling for more details.
Most publicly-funded schools are scheduled to return on Monday, but with a surge in cases of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 straining public health testing and contact tracing resources, whether students enrolled in in-person programs will return to class is very much in doubt.
On Tuesday, Premier Doug Ford said cabinet ministers will meet soon to make a decision.
"They're going to be coming out. I know the minister [of health] has been sitting down at the table along with the minister of education … and we will be having an announcement in the next couple of days," Ford said. "But we just want to see how things go and obviously speak to the chief medical officer, Dr. [Kieran] Moore."
Waiting for that decision — there are no announcements scheduled for Wednesday from the premier or his top ministers — has some concerned that parents will be left scrambling to prepare for a transition from in-person to virtual instruction.
"It's a problem if schools move to online and it's a problem we don't know," Gabrielle Brankston, a mother of three school-aged children who is also is a PhD candidate in epidemiology at the University of Guelph, said in an interview on CBC's Metro Morning.
"Aside from the fact that my own kids don't want this online learning again, I worry about the equity issues. I worry about the single parent who can't work from home and they have to ... sort out childcare and online learning with really short notice."
Brankston said her kids, aged five, 11 and 13, felt disengaged from online learning when schools closed last year, but she worries about sending her them back with community transmission so high.
She said she would feel more comfortable with smaller class sizes, HEPA filtration inside every classroom, vaccine mandates for students and teachers, better masks provided to all and free rapid tests for every family and education worker who wants them.
Many of those ideas were echoed by opposition leaders on Wednesday, who called for more clarity from the Ford government regarding its back-to-school plan.
NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said it's "ridiculous" that families still don't know whether classes will resume in a few days and that the government should have used the holiday period to make schools safer with plans for regular testing, better masks and improved ventilation.
Speaking at a virtual news conference, Liberal Leader Steven Del Duca said that the government hasn't taken enough measures to make schools safer after closing them for long periods of time earlier in the pandemic.
"We should not be in a position right now where parents have this much anxiety, where frontline education workers don't know for sure what's happening, where people are so tired, so exhausted and so burned out from Doug Ford being missing in action," Del Duca said.
Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner accused Ford of leaving parents and students "in the dark" about the return to school.
Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations Gary Anandasangaree has formally apologized to Inuit in Nunavik for the federal government's role in the mass killing of sled dogs in the region in the 1950s and 1960s.
High winds and rain caused power outages to hundreds of homes and businesses in Prince County on Saturday.
Northerners will soon see RCMP officers with cameras on their person, as training for the body-worn cameras roll out for Mounties across the country.
Dozens of Indigenous women with a desire to learn how to hunt and to use traditional methods to prepare the animal will meet this weekend for the first-ever all-female deer hunt on Oneida Nation of the Thames territory.
A disgraced real-estate lawyer who this week admitted to pilfering millions in client money to support her and her family's lavish lifestyle was handcuffed in a Toronto courtroom Friday afternoon and marched out by a constable to serve a 20-day sentence for contempt of court, as her husband and mother watched.
A provincial child-care advocacy group says governments need to commit to pushing $10-a-day child care forward in Canada, but a conservative think tank says data shows it isn't working as intended in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Diane Sims has already written her own obituary.
Thirty years after her murder in 1994, Halifax police are still looking for Kimber Leanne Lucas's killer.
When Kevin Campbell took a 1991 Chevy truck in trade at his dealership on Moncton's Salisbury Road in early November, he didn't have it for long.
Quebec mayor says 'one-size-fits-all' language law isn't right for his town where French is thriving
English is not Daniel Côté's first language but he says it's integral to the town he calls home.
As their role in health care continues to grow, nurse practitioners across Canada are looking to Alberta, where nurse practitioners recently formed their own union — but on P.E.I., the nurses' union that represents them says it's doing its job.