I’m back and I am angry! It is now confirmed, through e-mails jointly obtained by the Capital Daily and Burnaby Beacon, that the PHO knew all along that schools were not safe. The PHO knew that schools were sources of high transmission of the Covid virus and yet on numerous occasions the PHO repeated that schools were not sources of transmission! The health Ministry and Government were complicit as they also knew that the public was being given false information. The Premier went so far as to claim children do not transmit the virus! How long do we allow this to go on? In any other endeavor, blatantly misleading the parents and community and endangering children would result in a firing. Not so with the NDP!
Our schools remain unsafe and still little is being done when numerous options exist to make them better environments for our children and grandchildren. The Government knows that upgrading the HVAC systems will improve the air quality and decrease transmission. Yet few schools are scheduled for the much-needed upgrades. Creative scheduling of student timetables holds a great deal of promise for putting fewer students at one time in enclosed indoor spaces, but school leaders and Superintendents have shown no initiative to make these changes. And our PHO and School Boards have refused to implement the simple, yet powerful, step of requiring masking indoors. The result is we have another surge of Covid throughout the schools in our province. When will we learn?
I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised. Since this Government has been in power not one metric has improved. We have a shortage of qualified teachers, and our school system is failing us. We have a shortage of medical personnel, from paramedics to nurses to doctors, and our medical system is in free-fall. One million citizens without a family doctor is outrageous and the Government has failed to address the archaic system of compensation for the family practitioner! This is unacceptable!
Forestry is a mainstay in the province and the policies of this Government have driven investment out of the province. The leaders in this industry in the world are located right here in BC but their current investment dollars are being spent in the US, in Sweden and even in Alberta. This government has a propensity for additional taxes and more regulation that is killing small business as well as our mainstay forest industry.
The opioid crisis continues to get worse and crime in the home city of our Government, Victoria, has risen exponentially as it is doing in many of our urban areas. The climate crises is treated with platitudes. Witness the lack of action on the known problem of diking in the Fraser Valley and the subsequent disastrous flooding that resulted. Housing, which was a key platform of this Government, has gone from bad to worse with the number of homeless increasing annually.
It has become clear that the dishonesty of the PHO is simply a reflection of the Government as a whole and there is no accountability for such action. This Government represents a lack of transparency, propagandized information and a complete inability to address the root of these pressing problems we face. It has become very clear that this Government will not hold anyone accountable even if they are dishonest and endanger our schools.
We need a new approach, an approach with is designed to protect our citizens rather than one that protects our bureaucrats. Our health care and our school system should be at the top of the priority for action, honesty, and improvement. In my opinion anyone that votes for the status quo represented by the present Government should have their head examined.
Oops, that might not be possible because it is unlikely there would be a family doctor available in this province to do the examination!!
Doug Player, October 26, 2022.