Health experts, teachers and parent advocacy groups are reacting to Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s statement on Saturday regarding mask mandates in schools.
In a statement on Saturday, Smith said the province will not permit any further masking mandates of children in Alberta’s K-12 education system.
“The detrimental effects of masking on the mental health, development and education of children in classrooms is well understood and we must turn the page on what has been an extremely difficult time for children, along with their parents and teachers,” she said in the statement.
“It’s reckless and it’s extremely irresponsible and it’s a dangerous and harmful statement,” said Gosia Gasperowicz, a researcher at the University of Calgary and co-founder of Zero Covid Canada. She said she is worried about the message the statement is sending about the use of masks.
The president of the Alberta Teachers Association Jason Schilling wonders why the province would want to take away a tool schools have been using to prevent the spread of infection.
“We may see variants come up in the spring. We could have another pandemic with another entire disease and now we are taking this tool away from people and it makes no sense to me,” Schilling said.
On Thursday, an Alberta judge ruled that an order back in February that lifted the requirement for kids to wear masks in schools was “unreasonable” because it was ultimately made by cabinet and not the chief medical officer of health.
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On Saturday, the premier said she has directed Justice Minister Tyler Shandro to examine whether an appeal of the decision would be appropriate.
“She has just decided that she doesn’t like it and so she’s going to ignore it and public health be damned — the health and safety of workers and kids in our school be damned,” said Alberta Federation of Labour president Gil McGowan. “She’s just saying she doesn’t like it for ideological reasons.”
Wing Li, communications director of Support our Students, said Smith’s statement is an example of political interference in health matters.
“She’s continuing to exert undue influence and power over public health that needs to be based on science,” Li said. “We know that this is an intimidation tactic from the premier to scare school boards and parents with this overly aggressive and heavy-handed rhetoric.”
Lorian Hardcastle is an associate professor who specializes in health law and policy at the University of Calgary. She said it’s unlikely that the government is going to appeal the ruling and finds it problematic that the government wants to take away decision-making from public bodies.
“It makes sense for certain rules to be adopted locally because you can have a very different local context,” Hardcastle said.
“I think her statement about the detrimental effects on health is problematic. I don’t think the evidence is as strong as she suggests — that masks have a detrimental effect on children. Of course, any detrimental effects relating to masking have to be balanced against the detrimental effects of contracting COVID, so it’s a rather unbalanced statement.”
“There will continue to be debate on mandates for public health guidance,” added Dr. Fredrykka Rinaldi, the president of the Alberta Medical Association, in a statement.
“In the meantime, we should follow the scientific evidence. In respiratory virus season experts everywhere agree that masking is a good option in crowded spaces. Even more important is immunization, and we encourage all Albertans, including parents, children and youth, to avail themselves of this protection against serious illness from COVID or influenza.
“Every time we avoid serious illness, we also ease the burden on our overstrained emergency departments and hospitals — not to mention family physician offices where most of these infections are managed in the community.”
As for the schools themselves, the Calgary Catholic School District said it will continue “to prioritize the health and safety of our students, staff and families.” And noted it will continue to support everyone’s mask and vaccination choices, recommend people stay home when sick and continue to implement sanitizing and hygiene protocols.
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