Internal government documents show how Ontario ‘watered down’ its strategies to keep COVID-19 out of classrooms

Last summer, as Ontario’s schools were preparing to reopen, the Ministry of Education drafted a memo to school officials, highlighting COVID testing as critical to keeping classrooms safe.

Ontario will expand public health capacity to “test, track and support” anyone in the school community who might be COVID positive, and allow for “substantial surveillance testing,” said a draft of the memo, never before seen by the public and obtained by the Star through freedom of information legislation.

“There will be a proportional investment in lab capacity to ensure timely processing of tests,” the memo states.

This is not what happened.