York Region council calls on province to open outdoor recreation facilities, citing mental health concerns

Vaccinate teachers to get kids back to school, councillors say

Yorkregion.com
April 23, 2021
Kim Zarzour

Ontario needs to do more to help families get through these tough times -- starting with schools and outdoor recreation, York Region council members say.

"The kids are having a tough time," Newmarket Mayor John Taylor said during the region’s council meeting April 22.

Taylor, and others on council, are calling on the province to lift the province's COVID-19 restrictions placed on outdoor amenities, and for teachers to be made a high priority for vaccinations.

"Our No. 1 priority, toward moving to any form of reopening … should be getting children back to schools," Taylor said. "It’s very difficult for families, particularly low-income families, single mothers."

Newmarket Deputy Mayor Tom Vegh agreed.

"Speaking to my neighbours … when I ask what is the toughest part this past year, every single one, without exception, speaks about schooling."

Taylor is worried that in a month, when the provincial stay-at-home order is supposed to be lifted, schools won’t be able to reopen because teachers aren’t vaccinated.

He called on the region’s medical officer of health to find a way to speed up immunizations in that group.

Dr. Karim Kurji said the provincial government has indicated it will support Toronto and Peel with respect to teacher vaccinations, with other areas to be supported "subsequently".

Kurji agreed children should be in school.

While some health experts believe immunizing teachers won’t necessarily reduce transmission in schools, and cohorts would still need to be dismissed when cases appear, vaccinations would reduce anxieties, Kurji said.

Most of the region’s 4,000 special education teachers have already been vaccinated, Kurji said, and any teachers who are 40 or older are urged to get AstraZeneca at local pharmacies.

To try to reach all 28,000 teachers in York Region would mean delaying the strategy focusing on COVID-19 hot spots, he added.

"We could think in terms of prioritizing just the teachers in the hot spot areas, which is where the province would probably go for Toronto and Peel … Choices have to be made. The reality is, we just don’t have the vaccines now.”

As for outdoor recreation, Kurji said the science shows risk of acquiring COVID-19 outdoors, when "safely executed", is much less than indoors, "and we have always believed that folks should have access to outdoor recreational facilities as much as possible for mental health and physical health reasons".

The majority of regional council members voted in favour of a motion asking the province to reopen outdoor amenities.

Markham Mayor Frank Scarpitti disagreed.

"We’re in a major crisis," he said, adding "see-sawing" rules are not helping.

"There’s nothing that stops a parent or an adult within the same household bubble to go out and take a walk through the park to kick a soccer ball around with a child … It’s not that I don’t support, obviously, our recreational facilities being used … but these places will be inundated the second it gets warm."

Municipalities don’t have the manpower to police or control COVID-safe use of the facilities, he said.

It's a small risk, Taylor said, and worth it.

"I’ll tell you right now, if we don’t open some things up … because there’s nothing else to do, we’re going to have people glued arm to arm on every trail.

"We have to give people a way to survive all of the other restrictions and to help them through."