Excerpts
Premier Doug Ford didn't rule out implementing standards around air conditioning in child-care settings after parents raised concerns about their young kids burning up in "sweltering" daycare classrooms.
"It's terrible that kids have to sit in the boiling hot heat. And I'm all for putting window air conditioning units in and helping them out ... any way they can. But this has been going on for decades and decades and decades, and we need to help the young kids any way we possibly can," Ford said at an unrelated press conference in response to a question from The Trillium about whether the government would consider setting maximum temperatures for child-care classrooms.
Toronto parents have told The Trillium that staff are having to keep babies in just diapers and that kids are complaining of feeling sick due to the heat. While some have window or portable air conditioning units, parents say these are not enough to keep the rooms cool.
"But I can't answer if we're putting 'em into standards. And we did that with the long-term care, now they all have air conditioning, and so we'll look at it with the kids as well," Ford said on Wednesday morning.
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Following Wednesday's press conference, Bennett called Ford's response "insufficient" and said she would have wanted to "hear more action" from the premier on the issue.
"Not that, 'We're going to look into it,' not ... a response where it sounds like he's deferring to look at it at a later date, but to have more of a response that he wanted to act now would have been more what I was looking for," she said, adding about the premier's mention of window A/C units that the ones in her daughter's child-care centre aren't adequate.
"Looking at it doesn't resolve the immediate issue. We need action now," Bennett said.
Lyndsay MacKay echoed Bennett's comments, saying she was "disappointed in the lack of concern and urgency."
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