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Ontario’s Covid-19 Response Has Been Shockingly Anti-Child (Opinion)

My daughter’s birthday was at the end of June. Being just at the start of Ontario’s “Stage 2” re-opening, the “party” we held was essentially a handful of kids in the park eating individual pizzas, which I dutifully doled out with freshly sanitized hands, while wearing a mask.

We all stared wistfully at the playground equipment wrapped in caution tape. Even though we could meet in the park, the children couldn’t actually do anything in the park—a frustrating restriction, given we now know transmission of COVID-19 happens through airborne respiratory droplets, not sitting on a swing or going down a slide.

Surprisingly, the ban on park play continued for several weeks after my daughter’s party, only lifting when we entered Stage 3 in July. Indoor dining areas of restaurants, bars and gyms all re-opened at that point too. Like many parents, I felt it was all happening too soon and too fast, especially since a clear plan on how to keep schools safe had not yet been formulated. The hashtag #schoolsbeforebars started trending on Twitter.

I was one of many parents who begged the provincial government to make serious investments to reduce class sizes to no more than 15 and ensure proper air quality in classrooms. It all felt too late when we began our advocacy and the province only released money to school...

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