THUNDER BAY – The Lakehead District School Board has asked the local health unit to extend a provincial mask mandate in its schools, in a repudiation of the Ford government’s move to lift the rule by March 21.
School board trustees voted 6-3 in a special meeting Friday to send the request to medical officer of health Dr. Janet DeMille, who is empowered by provincial legislation to impose public health orders locally.
Several trustees suggested the province’s decision to lift the mandate seemed motivated by politics, not science, noting a large number of public health experts – including some chosen to advise the government – have spoken out against it.
Many also pointed to the fact that Thunder Bay appears to be several weeks behind provincial trends that have seen case counts and hospitalizations fall off dramatically.
Board chair Ellen Chambers cited advice from Ontario’s COVID-19 Science Advisory Table, a coalition of children’s hospitals including SickKids, and other health experts that it’s still too early to lift mask rules.
Instead, the board will ask DeMille to make an order under Section 22 of the Health Protection and Promotion Act to extend the mandate “until regionally appropriate” at LDSB schools (The Thunder Bay Catholic District School Board said Friday it had no plans yet to make the same request).
It could simply be a matter of an extra couple of weeks, Chambers said, with several councillors saying they wanted assurance March Break, next week, won’t lead to a surge in cases.
“Our infection rate is much higher in Northern Ontario than it is down east,” said trustee Trudy Tuchenhagen. “I think this is a very poor time to do away with it, particularly since we’re starting the March Break. People will be travelling [or] in contact with many people. I can’t see anything wrong with asking the health unit to extend the period of masking for a couple of weeks.”
The decision Friday didn’t come without dissent.
Scottie Wemigwans, the board’s elected Indigenous trustee, said the message from community members he’d spoken with was clear.
“I talked to a lot of the people I’m representing, mostly people from Fort William First Nation, and they’re of the opinion that it should go the way the government wants it to go, on a voluntary basis,” he said. “It’s up to individual people to choose if they want to wear a mask for their additional safety. If people feel they shouldn’t need to wear a mask, that should be up to them at this point.”
Trustee Ryan Sitch said the board’s previous decisions to sometimes push against the grain of provincial policy had been justified.
“We were one of the only boards last year to push back against the government when they wanted schools open when our cases were through the roof and the worst in Canada,” he said. “We have gone against the government, and I think this is a case again where we need to.
“This wasn’t a scientific decision made by the government. The top science table was not even engaged; the lead doctor on the science table recommends continuing to wear masks; chief medical officer [of health Dr. Kieran] Moore in his announcement indicated he will continue to wear masks in public. So to say the science is on the side of the government today seems ill thought-out to me.”
Student trustee Mehar Mago expressed uncertainty, but indicated a decision to keep masks could hit student morale.
“To be quite honest, I don’t know what the right decision is at this moment, because it’s so uncertain,” she said. “But I just wanted to add that [the province’s] announcement has created a glimmer of hope within the student body that we will be returning to normalcy soon… This has been an incredibly difficult period for both students and staff who are trying to learn and navigate their way through this.”
Some other school boards have also pushed back against the province’s decision and sought to extend mask mandates, including the Toronto District School Board and Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board.
The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board is also reportedly considering extending its mask mandate.
The Ontario Principals' Council has also joined the two major public school unions, the ETFO and OSSTF, in urging the province to wait.
