Allison Hanes: Jean-François Roberge’s words are not reassuring at all

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Famous last words.

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Education Minister Jean-François Roberge assured students, parents and teachers on Wednesday that he is “fairly confident” that schools will resume in-person learning as planned on January 17. track record for failing to deliver on promises, nullifying science, and misleading the public, we too might now resign ourselves to the fact that our children could be stuck at home facing the grim reality of remote learning well beyond this deadline.

After all, “COVID is COVID,” Roberge warned, giving himself enough leeway to move the goalposts in the last minute, as he has done so many times before.

The highly contagious Omicron variant, which has overwhelmed all of Quebec’s defenses with astonishing speed, is largely to blame for the uncertainty about when schools can safely reopen. But Roberge also bears a large part of the responsibility for repeatedly refusing to do his homework early in the pandemic.

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The measures it unveiled on Wednesday are a good example.

After promising to install carbon dioxide meters in classrooms last year by fall and waiting until mid-summer to place a late order, the elusive detectors have finally materialized. Well, some of them, anyway. Roberge says 50,000 of the CO2 readers will be distributed before the scheduled return to school on January 17, or enough for 54 percent of classrooms. As a former teacher, the minister should know that it is not even a passing grade, especially given the urgent need to improve air circulation in Quebec’s dilapidated public schools, about half of which are not mechanically ventilated.

Whether or not the monitors will be installed by that date is another matter. Roberge promised that they will not be left in the unused boxes, they will be in place within 11 days. But it seems like a tight deadline for such a massive deployment and this would not be the first time the minister has made empty promises or stretches the truth to lull us into a false sense of security.

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The Ministry of Education carried out failed air quality test protocols last year that earned reprimand from public health experts and showed incredibly optimistic results. Roberge misrepresented the truth about its scientific validity for months until he was called in, doing little to build confidence.

Now, while praising himself for the late delivery of half an order for the errant CO2 monitors, instructions on what teachers and principals should do if readings show abnormal CO2 levels in their classrooms remain in short supply. . Stay tuned, urged the minister. If it took so long to purchase a bunch of detectors, how long will it take to fix the real problems that decrease air quality?

Meanwhile, Roberge, backed by Dr. Horacio Arruda, Quebec’s national director of public health, doubled down in denying the usefulness of air purifiers and N95 masks in schools, even as Ontario rushes to implement both, stat .

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Roberge has been scorning air purifiers ever since English school boards proactively ordered units last school year. He then banned French-speaking service centers from doing the same in a move that smelled to save face rather than doing the right thing for school-age children.

Arruda goes on to insist that air purifiers can backfire if not fitted correctly and that higher quality N95 masks are difficult to wear all day. (I’m sure it has nothing to do with the fact that they are in short supply.) His claims, criticized by medical experts as absurd, only fuel speculation that his role as scientific adviser to the government has morphed into providing political cover. .

Instead, Quebec students will get more procedural masks beyond their two-a-day quota. They will also get faster tests., which the government plans to deliver once the children return to school on January 17.

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With Omicron’s official tsunami submerged testing capacity, these DIY home tests are the only tool schools have to determine how many COVID-19 cases are among students. At least school staff will soon be eligible for the more accurate PCR tests, which have been restricted to priority groups. Authorities may be moving from daily case counts to hospitalizations as a key indicator of the epidemiological situation, but it appears administrators, teachers and parents are being told to fly blind.

Prime Minister François Legault’s “calculated risk” of keeping schools open for most of the past year may have paid off. But that was despite Roberge’s incompetence, not because of his leadership. Now, while the government claims that getting students back to classrooms is its top priority, the education minister has done too little too late as schools face some of their biggest challenges yet.

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