Doug Ford’s campaign tour can turn into a ‘Mission: Accomplished’ banner real quick this fall.

Yesterday, Doug Ford announced he’s going on a campaign style tour across Ontario to visit industries who stepped up to manufacture supplies to help us deal with COVID-19. This is something that normally one would expect of leadership to show gratitude and thanks to people who stepped up to the challenge of our time.

The problem though, is that the challenge is not over. Not even close. Parents, teachers and school boards are struggling to figure out how to reopen our educations system this fall. Right now, it appears there will be some patchwork inconsistent models being looked at. Some boards are wanting to return to 5 days a week in class learning, others are operating on one week off, one week on. This fall is shaping up to be chaotic with parents and teachers left picking up the pieces.

As John Michael McGrath stated in his piece yesterday:

What has left me and a lot of other parents totally confused and verging on furious is that the government has approached reopening bars and restaurants as an imperative — last Friday, during an announcement in Woodbridge, the premier said, “We have to open up the bars. We have to open up restaurants inside … We have to get people back to work.” — while leaving us in limbo on reopening the province’s schools in September.

Ontario needs to take opening schools as seriously as opening bars – TVO July 14, 2020

Taking the summer to do a victory lap around the province to capitalize on the good fortunes he’s been experiencing in the polls, is a good way to undo all that hard work. Trust me, parents are talking and it’s not positive. If we return to schools without a feasible plan to address two parents needing to work, along with the shortcomings of distance education, then his summer tour is going to end up looking a lot more like this: