Elementary schools, daycares in Quebec may soon reopen
Victims’ relatives want answers on issues such as RCMP response
MONTREAL—Premier François Legault launched the first step of Quebec’s recovery plan from COVID-19 on Monday, saying that as long as the health-care system doesn’t become overwhelmed between now and then, elementary schools and daycares in most of the province will reopen in two weeks.
Legault set May 11 as reopening day for schools and daycares outside greater Montreal, with Montreal to follow suit the next week on May 19. He said attendance won’t be mandatory.
High schools, junior colleges and universities in the province will remain closed until September.
Legault said he will present the second part of his recovery plan, regarding how to reopen the economy, on Tuesday.
Quebec is experiencing two separate worlds in the COVID-19 pandemic, Legault said, trying to explain his rationale for opening up parts of the province despite hundreds of new cases of the virus being reported every day.
Long-term care homes and seniors residences continue to be devastated by COVID-19 — 80 per cent of Quebec’s 1,599 COVID deaths come from those two types of facilities. But everywhere else, Legault said, particularly in the province’s hospitals, “the situation is under control.”
He added that the virus typically doesn’t seriously affect children. Therefore, he said, if the outbreaks don’t escape seniors residences, and intensive care units of hospitals continue to be manageable, the province can slowly begin to reopen.
Legault and his province’s director of public health, Dr. Horacio Arruda, had been pushing the idea of so-called “herd immunity” or natural immunity, as an argument in favour of reopening schools. That strategy involves exposing children to the coronavirus in a measured, gradual way, to help them develop a natural immunity.
That notion was criticized on the weekend by Canada’s chief public health officer, Theresa Tam, who said younger people are still at risk.
On Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said there is no conclusive evidence that people who have recovered from the virus have antibodies that protect them from getting infected again.
But Legault said Monday his decision to reopen schools was not based on a strategy of developing natural immunity.
He said his reasons are that special needs children need to be followed closely by the teachers; the risk to young people from COVID-19 is limited; COVID-19 admissions in hospitals are under control; and public health has agreed the schools should open.
The final reason is that “life needs to continue,” Legault said.
HALIFAX—Nova Scotians struggling with the devastating aftermath of a mass shooting are looking for a commitment from the province’s leaders to set up a public inquiry to help answer a long list of unanswered questions.
Nick Beaton, the husband of a continuing care assistant who was killed on her way to work during this month’s massacre, said Monday an inquiry is needed to examine a number of issues, including the way the RCMP communicates with the public during a mass shooting.
Beaton said that had there been an emergency alert issued after the shooter left the Portapique area — where 13 people were killed — he believes his wife Kristen would still be alive.
“There definitely needs to be an inquiry, no mistakes about it,” he said in an interview, adding that a lack of clear information about the weekend’s events has led him to start his own investigation.
“How do we know? We don’t know anything because they’re not telling us anything.”
Beaton said he feels the RCMP’s upper management failed to communicate the extent of the threat by detailing it in a series of tweets, rather than an emergency alert that would have appeared on smartphones and television screens.
But the issue of the emergency alert is just one of many arising from the rampage that resulted in 22 deaths in five communities over the weekend, Beaton said.
Police have said the attacker, Gabriel Wortman, had access to a handgun and long guns he didn’t have a licence for, including some weapons obtained in the United States, but they haven’t released details of how Wortman gained access to them.
It’s also unclear how the denturist managed to slip through a police perimeter around Portapique.
RCMP have also yet to say how he came to own at least four replica police vehicles, including the one with a light-bar and accurate paint job he drove on the days of the killings.
Meanwhile, an online campaign has begun seeking to change the name of a Nova Scotia high school to honour the RCMP officer killed during last week's shooting rampage that claimed 22 lives in the province.
A petition is calling for Prince Andrew High School in Dartmouth to be renamed for Const. Heidi Stevenson.
The 48-year-old Stevenson was killed in a confrontation with the gunman, who was driving a mock police car and wearing an RCMP uniform.