An analysis by the Investigative Journalism Bureau has found that over the past four years, nearly half of Ontario’s public schools have had at least one test for toxic lead in drinking water exceed the federal guideline. The Ford Conservatives are saying this isn't a problem because lead levels meet provincial standards, but the provincial standards are twice as high as the federal safety guidelines.
Our kids should not be exposed to lead in schools or daycares.
We know that lead has many detrimental effects on health and brain development, especially for young children. These impacts can be lifelong. However, the Ontario government has refused to adopt the federal guidelines for lead exposure and continues to insist that a level twice as high is safe for our kids. This is unacceptable.
To fix this situation, we have to eliminate the repair backlog in Ontario schools, which now exceeds $16.8 billion. Schools are already struggling to prioritize urgently needed repairs to address floods, mold, leaking roofs, and other hazardous situations with insufficient funds.
We are calling on the Ontario government to:
- Adopt the federal guidelines for lead exposure
- Immediately create a lead remediation strategy for our schools and properly fund it
- Eliminate the school repair backlog by providing the necessary resources to fix our schools
You can take action by downloading this paper petition and returning signed pages to our office to be read in the legislature: PRINT HERE
The Investigative Journalism Bureau has a database where you can search your local school or daycare which you can use here: https://ijb.utoronto.ca/school-daycare-lead-tracker/. We did a scan for University–Rosedale schools and daycares and here's what we found. If your school or daycare is missing from this data set, please let us know so we can update our records. Results are alphabetical.
