Throne speech recovery plan must be just, green and intersectional
Let’s make sure we emerge as a better country.
“Petronas, the world’s fourth-largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, has already flagged production cuts and cost savings to mitigate the impact of the pandemic,” Reuters reports. “It will now seek to expand its renewable energy portfolio, and reassess its oil and gas positions.”
Maren Aukerman, University of Calgary
It’s not yet clear how the federal government’s Aug. 26 announcement of allotting $2 billion to support safe school openings will change provinces’ existing plans. With many schools poised to start soon, some leaders across Canada have been struggling to convince a skeptical public that reopening schools is safe.
Alberta, with the highest per capita active case rate in the country, is a case in point.
Premier Jason Kenney and Education Minister Adriana LaGrange are trying to convince Albertans that schools should reopen under near-normal conditions, insisting that the recommendations of Alberta’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Deena Hinshaw, are being followed.
While the province has put enhanced hygiene measures in place, including masks for students Grade 4 and up where social distancing isn’t possible, per student funding is actually down from pre-pandemic levels.
No provincial funding has been provided to reduce class size. According the most recent estimates, in some schools, classes can be as large as more than 30 students, particularly in high school. The Calgary Herald reported LaGrange said officials are “reviewing the program details” of Canada’s recent announcement of $262 million to Alberta. However the province allocates these funds, more disclosure about priorities and decisions is warranted.
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If the province is making data-driven decisions informed by expert advice, then the data and consultative process backing choices should be made transparent. If science, realism and high-quality problem-solving are at hand, people will probably trust decision-making more; research indicates that the public has greater trust in data that can be openly accessed and is vetted by independent review.
Perhaps not surprisingly, 72 per cent of Alberta parents are worried about children returning to school, and up to 48 per cent say they will keep their children at home rather than risk infection, according to a web survey conducted by polling and marketing research firm Leger. The survey was conducted with a representative sample of 1,510 Canadians.
Right now, the public has been given little information on the science being used to shape provincial policy, other than summaries of general information. The province has released limited information about international school reopenings held up as successful (Sweden) and no epidemiological modelling. Alberta officials have also failed to explain how and why some studies that might appear to call into question current recommendations are apparently discounted — such as recent research indicating children may be more active COVID-19 spreaders than previously believed.
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And although LaGrange has suggested she is in dialogue with “education partners” and on Aug. 19 she publicized a meeting with the Alberta Teachers Association (ATA), no named advisory committee appears to be guiding the reopening, despite calls for such a body by the ATA at the beginning of August.
LaGrange should disclose the epidemiological models used to anticipate consequences of both the current reopening plan and several alternatives, so they can be accurately compared.
The public has the right to hear how Alberta’s plan incorporates up-to-date data, verified by districts, about realities in schools. These include factors like class and room sizes; data on which mitigation measures such as smaller class size, better ventilation or medical-grade PPE for teachers could help stem viral spread and their costs. Where good data about the consequences of reopening don’t yet exist, there should be transparency, too.
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We should also know what experts have been consulted, what concerns, ideas and recommendations they generated and how these were addressed and evaluated.
These times require out-of-the box thinking to consider solutions ranging from outdoor schooling to using surplus community space and changing the number of hours of in-person instruction — but if leaders don’t investigate innovative solutions, they’re unlikely to find them.
If no one but the chief medical officer was consulted, then it is high time this happens, even if it means postponing the first day of school, as British Columbia is doing.
Transparency about data and expert recommendations are vital to an informed public. Transparency allows discussion and critique, and allows concrete conversation about risks the public is being asked to accept.
What is the prospect that children, family members or teachers will be hospitalized or die? What are best- and worst-case scenarios in terms of resultant casualties and community spread? The public should know what risks or potential costs everyone is being asked to bear.
Transparency also allows parents to make informed choices and to develop a sense of confidence in how decisions are made not only now, but going forward.
Israel, for example, failed to reduce class size and saw an outbreak at a high school when schools reopened that infected hundreds. There were instructions for mask-wearing by students in Grade 4 and older, open windows, frequent hand washing and physically distancing students when possible. But with up to 38 children in classrooms, physical distancing was impossible, and under a heat wave, officials permitted windows closed for air conditioning and allowed a mask-wearing exemption. Are similar outcomes or decisions possible in Alberta?
So far, parents have been told only to expect some cases in reopened schools.
Transparency also matters as it allows people to evaluate whether plans address and fund ethical requirements pertaining to school staff: adequate provisions so reopenings work logistically, adequate protection that ensures reopenings are maximally safe and adequate compensation for staff who are assuming risks.
We need answers to questions such as: How much does teachers’ risk increase in classrooms where social distancing cannot be maintained? Given risks, is hazard pay in order for school staff? If it isn’t — hopefully because projected risks are low — then how about a provincial payout for those who may nonetheless suffer serious illness or death in conjunction with a COVID-19 school outbreak?
That seems only fair and could contribute to confidence in what to expect.
In the end, transparency allows us to hold leadership accountable. Politicians and scientists can be wrong. If the public knows what the province’s projections are and accepts them, then it can be prepared for predicted bumps without losing trust in leadership. If the models turn out to be inaccurate or ethically unacceptable, the public deserves a change in course.
If requests for transparency go unanswered, Albertans must assume either that the scientific expertise behind decisions to open schools is inadequate, or that the education minister is failing to base her decisions on scientific expertise. Neither option is acceptable with so many lives at stake.
Maren Aukerman, Werklund Research Professor of Education, University of Calgary
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
While Fighting the Virus, We Must Fight for Our Rights | The Tyee
Let’s run through a list of governments eroding democracy under cover of pandemic — and don’t be surprised to find Canada in there, edging towards membership.
Doug Ford, Ontario premier
Now into the third year of its mandate, the Ontario government under Premier Doug Ford is being assessed for its handling of the COVID-19 crisis. The impressions are mixed.
On a personal level, the premier’s responses to the pandemic have generally been regarded favourably. He has at times conveyed deep personal empathy for those affected by COVID-19 and their families.
At the same time, the province has struggled to provide effective responses to the COVID-19 crisis, seemingly uncertain of what direction to take or of the scope of its own authority and capacity.
Controversies over the government’s plans to reopen elementary schools without reducing class sizes are the latest in series of stumbles in managing the crisis.
The Ontario government was initially slow to recognize the scope of the pandemic and the risks it posed. COVID-19’s global spread was apparent by early March, yet the premier confidently advised Ontarians to “go away” and “have fun” over the March break holiday.
By the time a provincial lockdown was imposed on March 18, most of those travellers were already back in Ontario. Some brought the virus with them, where it began to spread into the community, most critically to long-term care facilities.
The disaster that ensued in long-term care centres has been well-documented. More than 1,450 long-term care residents have died of COVID-19. More may have perished due to neglect as portions of the care system, particularly in for-profit facilities, effectively collapsed.
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The province was again slow to respond, despite well-known risks in the sector, especially its increasing reliance on part-time itinerant staff, and more general concerns over the quality and level of care being provided in long-term care facilities. Many of these issues had been highlighted less than a year earlier in the July 2019 report of the inquiry into the murders of nursing home residents by nurse Elizabeth Wettlaufer.
The province’s promise of an “iron ring of protection” for care facility residents failed. The government then studiously avoided a formal judicial inquiry into the COVID-19 care home disaster, opting for a less formal commission, which will lack public testimony, under oath, by key officials in system.
Early warning bells were also sounded around the potential risks to large numbers of temporary foreign farm workers employed in Ontario. Crowded, unsanitary living conditions, as well as the vulnerability to deportation for workers who lack permanent resident status if fired by their employers, were again well-known long before the arrival of COVID-19.
Yet the province failed to take proactive action, despite having substantial legal authority to set and enforce standards and practices for farm operators under occupational health and safety, public health and agricultural legislation.
Those responsibilities were left to the ad hoc efforts of local health units, most notably in Windsor-Essex. The result was more than 1,000 cases of COVID-19 among temporary farm workers and at least three deaths.
The government’s latest missteps have been around the reopening of schools in September. Major concerns are being raised by health experts, school boards, teachers and parents about the government’s approach to opening elementary schools.
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Coronavirus outbreaks are inevitable as Ontario plans to reopen schools
The government seems to be proceeding on a largely business-as-usual model with normal, pre-pandemic class sizes. Personal protective equipment will be provided for teachers, and masks are required for students in grades 4 to 8, and are recommended for younger children.
But health experts and public health authorities have highlighted the need to reduce class sizes to control COVID-19 in schools. With smaller classes, any outbreak would be limited to a smaller group. Teachers are also far more likely to be able to manage the behaviour of their students in smaller classes.
The Ford government, overall, has presented an image of deep concern and empathy for the victims of the pandemic. But it’s flailing when it comes to delivering the kinds of concrete, proactive measures that COVID-19 requires. The premier’s own management style remains more like that of a city councillor — someone who is genuinely trying to help his constituents, but suggests he’s up against forces beyond his control.
This is an odd stance for a premier who once declared that he had “final sign-off on everything in this province.” At times the government has seemed unable to grasp the scope of the many tools at its disposal to deal with the pandemic.
The province is spending nearly $6 billion annually to keep hydro rates artificially low. In that context, it should be able to find the means to implement a safer and more effective plan for reopening public schools, where there are significant risks of triggering a second wave of COVID-19.
Despite its challenges in dealing with COVID-19, the province has been quietly efficient in the ongoing pursuit of its pro-business agenda. In fact, in many ways, that agenda has accelerated under the cover of the pandemic.
The land development industry continues to be a favourite of the government. Proposed revisions to the Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe region released in June would compel municipalities to make land available to developers to accommodate doubtful projections of population growth to 2051.
The same proposed amendments would permit aggregate extraction operations (for example, gravel pits and quarries) in the habitat of endangered and threatened species. The province’s environmental assessment process, in place since the mid-1970s, was largely dismantled through the government’s omnibus “Economic Recovery Act” pushed through the legislature in July.
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Where the government’s combination of empathy, administrative ineptitude and responsiveness to whatever developers and other industries seem to ask of it will lead is unknown. But that doesn’t serve the interests of Ontario residents very well. Nor does it provide a very strong basis on which to head into an election less than two years away.
Mark Winfield, Professor of Environmental Studies, York University, Canada
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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