Good morning! Wendy Cox in Vancouver today.
One of the many, many disconcerting features of living with COVID-19 is the pace at which information changes. In June, as students finally finished school terms that sputtered to an uncertain end, British Columbia was celebrated as a province that was successful in bending the curve downwards. Now, B.C. has been stacking up record numbers of daily new cases – 84 between Monday and Tuesday, which is slightly down from the 100 the province reached a few days earlier.
Alberta’s success in testing and contact tracing was something to note in the spring, but this week, the province announced its hiring of 120 new contact tracers as cases surge in that province – particularly in the Edmonton area.
There wasn’t much public discussion in June about the resumption of school in September. Maybe there should have been.
With just three weeks to go before school, and with the case counts on the rise, B.C. reversed its earlier stance and announced Monday that middle-school and high-school students would be required to wear masks in common areas and on school buses. When the back-to-school plan was announced at the end of July, masks were recommended but not mandated. For the lower grades, Provincial Health Officer Bonnie Henry has calmly explained masks can hinder learning. Masks on those grades remain optional.
The mask rules are for the students who plan to go back to classes. But some parents are nervous about sending their child to school after months of physical distancing. In B.C., elementary grades will be sorted into cohorts of 60 while high-school students will be in cohorts of 120.
More than 35,000 people have signed an online petition calling for the option to allow children to complete their studies with their classmates online. But B.C. parents won’t know whether that will happen for a while yet: School districts were required to submit their plans to the Ministry of Education this week, but the district deadline for communicating the plans to parents isn’t until Aug. 26.
Globe and Mail reporter Xiao Xu tried to get an idea of what’s in the works at major school boards in British Columbia.
The Vancouver School Board replied that its plans would be revealed this week. As of Monday, district staff were “actively working” on the plan. Similarly, a spokeswoman for the North Vancouver school district urged The Globe to follow up after Aug. 26. Kelowna promised more information “in a week or two.” The Prince George district said families would get a communication by middle of next week, though it was hoping to do it sooner: “We know there is a lot of angst in the community,” said board chair Tim Bennett in an e-mail.
In Alberta and Ontario, parents are having to lock in their decisions on whether to send their kids to their bricks-and-mortar school, or withdraw them to learn online. At the Calgary Board of Education, students can move from remote to face-to-face learning in February, but are not permitted to go from in-class to online after Sept. 1. Students at Edmonton schools can switch at the beginning of each new quarter period.
Parents in Ontario have a similar dilemma. The Peel District School Board – one of the largest school boards in Canada – asked parents to submit their decision by Aug. 17 and said that after the first week of school, secondary students will not have the option to change until the next quarter. Parents of students in the Toronto District School Board received automated calls last week asking them to choose a learning model.
B.C. Premier John Horgan has repeatedly assured parents that if they don’t want to send their children into classrooms, online learning and homeschooling are an option. But it’s unclear whether parents who want to school their children online would have to take them out of their regular catchment school.
After repeated questioning in the legislature last week on the matter by opposition Liberal Leader Andrew Wilkinson, Horgan said the Vancouver School Board’s plan “will have a mix and a hybrid” but the details of that are not yet available.
Stefanie Marotta spoke to several parents who are deeply worried about what comes next.
Edmond Luk, who launched the online petition, said the short runway for decision-making and lack of remote options have his family considering homeschooling for his seven-year-old daughter, who is supposed to start Grade 3 at a French immersion school in Burnaby. But with his two senior parents at home, sending her to school with a cohort that could have as many as 60 children would put his family at risk, he said.
Luk inquired about distance learning in Burnaby, but all classes were full.
Pulling his daughter out of her school would cost her a spot in one of the few institutions of its kind in the area, he said. ”We’re still on the edge waiting.”
AROUND THE WEST
COLLEGE ADMISSION CONVICTION: A former federal Liberal cabinet minister is working to ensure his friend, businessman David Sidoo, can serve a 90-day fraud sentence in the U.S. college admissions scandal in Canada, arguing that forcing Sidoo into a U.S. prison, as planned, would put him at undue risk of COVID-19. Herb Dhaliwal, whose posts under former prime minister Jean Chrétien included revenue and natural resources, said Sidoo is prepared to pay the price for his conduct, but his safety is at risk given the intense outbreak of COVID-19 in the United States. Sidoo’s lawyer acknowledged COVID-19, but said his client is prepared to go to jail, as scheduled.
CRACKING DOWN ON HOUSE PARTIES: Strata councils and property managers are asking for special regulations to deal with COVID-19 outbreaks, a policy on masks and safety procedures after parties at two B.C. condo buildings over the past three weeks resulted in significant numbers of new infections. It’s unclear exactly what the rules are for sanitization procedures if there has been an outbreak in a building or even for simpler situations such as using pools, gyms and common areas. Tony Gioventu, executive director for the Condominium Home Owners Association of BC, said a task force is working with the province to issue guidelines on three major issues – outbreaks, mask policy and pools – to give everyone guidance. More than 1.5 million people in B.C., out of a population of five million, live in strata-titled homes.
DEVELOPER CONTRIBUTIONS DRY UP: The hundreds of millions in developer “contributions” that the City of Vancouver has relied on for years to pay for housing, parks and child-care centres has dried to a trickle as builders refuse to agree to the same levels of fees in a collapsing real estate market. Builders say they have not been able to move projects forward because the city is still asking for the same kinds of contributions that were being negotiated at the height of the market. That flow of money, which depends on leveraging Vancouver’s valuable real estate by allowing more density on key sites in exchange for developer payments out of their increased profit to pay for needed community services, has dried up in the past 18 months. It dropped from $706-million in 2018 to $86-million in 2019 and a dribble so far in 2020, according to city reports and industry analysts.
ALBERTA, B.C. COVID CASES RISE: British Columbia and Alberta racked up hundreds of new coronavirus infections over the weekend, a surge among young adults that set a new pandemic record in B.C. and has made Edmonton a national hot spot for COVID-19. B.C., in an effort to stamp out community spread, on Monday said it is examining the legal tools it has to crack down on people partying on private property, a break from the government’s light-handed approach. B.C. counted 236 new cases over the weekend, bringing active cases to 743, a new high for the Western province. Alberta added 359 new cases bringing the provincial total to 1,132 active cases. The Edmonton region counted 593 active cases as of Sunday, with the number of cases in the capital surpassing those in Montreal by a factor of four, when adjusted for population.
SASKATCHEWAN EFFORTS IN HUTTERITE COMMUNITIES: Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe says most of the new COVID-19 cases reported in the province over the past few days are from Hutterite communities, but he suggests there’s reason for optimism. Moe said in a tweet Sunday that of the 97 new cases reported over the previous four days, 87 are from Hutterite communities. But the same time, Moe tweeted that many of the Hutterite communities with earlier outbreaks are now down to almost no active cases, so he said the efforts of those communities working closely with the province’s health authority are working. Last month, Moe called on Hutterite communities to adjust their communal living lifestyle and follow public-health advice to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus.
MANITOBA WAGE FREEZE: The Manitoba government is appealing a court ruling that quashed a wage freeze for 120,000 public-sector workers. Premier Brian Pallister’s government has filed notice with the province’s Court of Appeal that it intends to challenge a lower-court ruling that said the wage freeze violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. A bill passed by the legislature in 2017 included a two-year wage freeze in each new collective agreement, followed by pay increases of 0.75 per cent in the third year and one per cent in the fourth. The bill was never proclaimed into law, but public-sector unions said it was affecting all collective agreement talks. Finance Minister Scott Fielding said the appeal is aimed at clearing up what governments can do to control costs.
SENTENCED IN DEATH OF FLOWER STORE OWNER: Jordan Martin Cushnie, 25, pleaded guilty in May, 2019, to manslaughter in the death of Iain Armstrong. Armstrong had tried to stop Cushnie from robbing a cash box from a cosmetic kiosk outside outside Armstrong’s Bunches florist shop at Edmonton’s Southgate Centre a year earlier. On Monday, Justice Eldon Simpson sentenced Cushnie to six years in prison. The wife of the flower store owner says her world collapsed when she got a hysterical call saying her husband was bleeding on the floor of a shopping mall. Sharon Armstrong, who was married to her husband for 37 years, said in a victim impact statement during Cushnie’s sentencing hearing earlier Monday that the morning of April 17, 2018, was a normal one as her husband headed off to work at their family-owned business.
VIGIL FOR ALBERTA DOCTOR: Close to 2,000 people, including doctors wearing white lab coats and others dressed in white shirts, gathered outside Red Deer City Hall to honour 45-year-old physician Walter Reynolds. Some sat in lawn chairs. Most were wearing masks. Alejandra Rojas, a former patient, spoke. Over the years, Rojas said Reynolds became a friend. He helped her when her mother died. And when she learned she may have to leave Canada, he wrote a letter of support for her and sent it to immigration officials. “He was humble, caring and always understanding,” Rojas told the crowd.
OPINION
John Panusa on access to justice: “The expansion of specialized courts such as drug courts, mental health courts, Indigenous courts and so on provide off-ramps for those for whom traditional justice measures are costly and wouldn’t be effective.”
Editorial board on the Site C hydroelectric dam under construction in northeastern British Columbia: “Site C is supposed to deliver electricity that could power a half-million homes for many decades. Dams have supplied years of low-cost energy to B.C. But they are an antiquated and destructive technology – Site C will flood 55 square kilometres of land – at a time when the cost of wind, solar and other renewable energy have plummeted.”
This is the weekly Western Canada newsletter written by B.C. Editor Wendy Cox and Alberta Bureau Chief James Keller. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for it and all Globe newsletters here. This is a new project and we’ll be experimenting as we go, so let us know what you think.
Wendy Cox
James Keller