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It's a typical weekday in Beth Acton's Montreal home. Two of her children are at school, but another, 12-year-old Connor, is asleep upstairs under a pile of Squishmallows.
Acton logs on to an app on her phone to report Connor's latest absence to his school, something she's been doing regularly since the fall of 2022, which was the second time Connor got COVID-19.
"He is ill very, very frequently. You know, kind of catches anything that's going around," she said. "He sometimes just can't even complete the school day."
Connor, who is struggling to pass his Grade 7 year, has not been diagnosed with a chronic condition, but his delicate health has meant he's missed most of the last four weeks of school.
Connor's case is extreme, but exclusive data compiled by CBC News suggests he is far from alone in missing considerably more school than before the pandemic. In multiple districts across the country, rates of chronic absence — the percentage of students who miss at least 10 per cent of the school year, or two full days a month — are up significantly.
There is no data as to why. Interviews with experts and those affected suggest there are many reasons — from illness to bullying to a lack of support services — which vary by district and even by school.
CBC's analysis found more children missing school in every district or province that was able to provide data compared with pre-pandemic. In six districts, the rate of absence or chronic absence more than doubled. In Newfoundland and parts of New Brunswick, more than half of high school students are chronically absent. But the most significant increases were among elementary students.
It's an issue that's flown under the radar in Canada because there is no publicly available national data on how many kids miss large amounts of school or the reasons why.
This is not the case in both the U.S. and the U.K., where the number of students missing significant amounts of school is being called a national crisis.
The lack of data makes it almost impossible for policy-makers to get a sense of the scope of the problem and take action, says Maria Rogers, a child psychologist and Canada Research Chair in Child Mental Health and Well Being at Carleton University.
"If we don't have the data to show that our children are missing tremendous amounts of school, far more than they have in the past … then it's easy to look the other way," she told CBC News.
Children who attend school regularly generally have better emotional health, better relationships with teachers and stronger social connections, Rogers added.
"We know that academic achievement, broadly speaking, is one of the top predictors worldwide of a healthy adulthood."
It's possible, experts say, that the pandemic has had a lasting impact on attitudes toward school attendance. Some parents, more likely to be working from home themselves, may be keeping their kids home with milder symptoms for longer than they would have pre-pandemic.
For others, the extended periods of online school has shown they don't always need to be physically present to keep up with their work. And then there are the kids who began their school experience during the pandemic.
Rogers says there's just been this normalization of school attendance problems, a change she's noticed in her own home. "Even my own kids will sometimes say, 'Well, I'll just check Google classroom,' right?"
In the U.K., research from the Centre for Social Justice found one in five students were persistently absent in spring 2023, which represents a 60 per cent increase compared with pre-pandemic. The think tank also found the rate of severe absence among vulnerable children, or those receiving free school meals, was triple the rate of those not eligible for the free meal program.
In the U.S., Stanford University professor Thomas Dee compiled and analyzed data on chronic absenteeism in 40 states. His research, which compared 2018-19, the last pre-pandemic school year, with 2021-22, found an increase in every state. A large majority of states collect annual data on chronic absenteeism and use it as a performance indicator mandated by the federal Every Student Succeeds Act, Dee wrote in his research paper.
In Canada, there is no such body mandating the collection or publication of this data. As a result, absence data is collected inconsistently, if at all, by provinces or territories, school boards or individual schools, using different indicators that are not comparable across jurisdictions.
CBC News asked 41 Canadian school districts with more than 30,000 students for rates of chronic absenteeism for both pre- and post-pandemic school years. We received complete data from eight districts, two provinces and found publicly available data for two territories. Four additional districts provided data for only one time period, either pre- or post-pandemic. Twenty districts were unable to provide data and eight did not respond to our request by deadline.
In Newfoundland and Labrador, two-thirds of secondary school students were chronically absent in 2022-23, up from just under half in 2018-19, according to figures provided by the province's Department of Education. For elementary students, the rate more than doubled, from 23 to 50 per cent over the same period.
The number of children missing school in the province was already a concern before the pandemic, with the province's child and youth advocate releasing the results of an investigation into it in 2019. It identified learning disabilities, mental health problems for children and their parents, racism, poverty, substance abuse and violence in schools as some of the contributing factors.
Multiple parents in Newfoundland, who did not want to be identified, said in social media messages that their children faced significant bullying that made them afraid to go to school.
Don Coombs, president of the Newfoundland and Labrador Federation of School Councils, says the factors keeping children away are so wide-ranging it's impossible for schools to address them in isolation.
Families, local governments and provincial departments of education and social services must work together to find out why children are missing school and help them, Coombs said, citing bullying as one example.
"Communities have to be involved. People should not feel intimidated to go walk through the doors of the school. It's a place of learning and it has to be a safe and friendly environment," he said.
The interruption of school during the COVID-19 pandemic may have made things worse by further weakening some students' already tenuous connection to school.
"I think once you become disconnected with school, it's hard to reverse," Coombs said. "These children often lose their social connections. You know, they drop behind in the curriculum and … it's hard to catch up."
Without data, it's impossible to know for sure, but from her vantage point as an academic and child psychologist at Carleton, Rogers says it's likely children who were struggling before the pandemic with things like learning disabilities, ADHD or anxiety account for at least some of the post-pandemic increase in absenteeism.
"The research is showing that a lot of those kids did not do well with online learning, so they're now further behind. There's an increased learning loss for some of those children, so you can imagine that that would also make it harder to get back to school," she said.
Staff shortages across the country also made it difficult for districts to provide such students with the help they needed in the classroom, Rogers added.
Fredericton parent Laurel Richmond experienced this first-hand. Her son, now 10, was in kindergarten and Grade 1 during the pandemic. Richmond noticed he was having trouble reading and discussed it with his teacher, who she said took a wait-and-see approach. But as the weeks went by, Richmond became concerned.
"You could see his demeanour was changing. He didn't want to go to school," she said. "He fought me most mornings. He oftentimes had stomach aches, headaches, body aches."
Richmond said her son told her he feels like he's stupid and that everyone seems to get it but he's just pretending to understand what's going on.
Richmond got her son privately assessed and the results showed he had dyslexia (difficulty reading) and dysgraphia (difficulty writing). The school offered some assistance, Richmond said, but did not have anyone with experience dealing with these conditions who could provide the help he needed.
All of this, combined with a disruptive months-long pandemic closure at the end of kindergarten and a bullying situation that was causing her child further anxiety, led to Richmond's difficult decision to pull her son out of the system in Grade 1 and home school. He is now much more confident and reading almost at grade level, she said.
Richmond's district, Anglophone West, saw significant increases in chronic absence at all grade levels
The sense of anxiety Richmond describes in her son is something Rogers sees regularly in her practice as a child psychologist. Mental health deteriorated significantly for everyone since the pandemic, but it's especially true of youth, she said, and it could be one reason they're missing school.
"Some people in my field are calling it a mental health crisis amongst youth worldwide," Rogers said. "We don't have the services to provide to meet those needs either in the community or in the school system."
And then there's illness. Back in Montreal, Acton, a CEGEP teacher, says her department has had to devote permanent classroom space to people writing makeup exams because they've been home sick.
Acton says her eldest son Jacob, who is 15, has told her there are a lot of kids that are absent quite frequently from his Grade 9 class. Acton also says her daughter Tessa who is 9, had a day in December where less than half her Grade 4 class was present.
As for Connor, Acton suspects he has long COVID, but he has yet to get an appointment with a clinic that could make that diagnosis. Acton says she looks forward to having his health challenges resolved so he can get back in the classroom. Every day, she says she feels forced to choose between her child's education and his health.
A new report says the federal government is providing billions of dollars in financial support for the fossil fuel industry, despite measures announced last year to limit certain types of subsidies for the oil and gas industry.
The analysis, released today by the advocacy group Environmental Defence, estimated that Ottawa offered up at least $18.6 billion in support of the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries in 2023.
That tally includes:
Climate activists have for years been calling on Canada to scale back its support of the fossil fuel industry and instead prioritize cleaner, renewable forms of energy.
"This is kind of the litmus test of whether the government is actually taking serious action," said Julia Levin, an associate director at Environmental Defence who prepared the report.
"It's failing that litmus test by continuing to give federal subsidies."
Environmental Defence's numbers are down only slightly from last year, when it calculated $20.2 billion in financial support — even though Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault eliminated "inefficient" fossil fuel subsidies in July.
Environment and Climate Change Canada did not immediately return a request for comment Wednesday.
The framework regarding inefficient subsidies was meant to phase out funding for oil and gas, with some exceptions, such as for projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, support clean energy or capture carbon and store it underground.
"We're eliminating subsidies to produce fossil fuels in Canada, unless those subsidies are aimed at decarbonizing the emissions of the sector," Guilbeault said at the time.
But the new rules do not apply to public financing, such as commercially viable loans, which the federal government does not consider a form of subsidy.
Regardless of what term is used, the government's financial backing gives the fossil fuel industry an advantage over energy alternatives, said Paasha Mahdavi, an assistant professor of political science at University of California, Santa Barbara, and an expert in oil subsidies.
Mahdavi, who was not involved in the report, said the findings illustrate "all these other tentacles through which financing and financial support can exist."
"You still have money from the government that's creating an uneven playing field," he said, citing the billions in loan guaranteed for Trans Mountain.
"That's still a pretty big deal, because that allows an oil company or a pipeline access to cheap capital, and that's right now one of the very important levers to pull to try to make decarbonization and energy transitions more successful."
Levin said the federal government makes it difficult to track and calculate the financing across departments.
"The government has not improved its transparency practices at all," she said.
"That means we are still required to do kind of a piecemeal analysis to the best of our ability because the government doesn't produce any kind of reporting on its own."
Laura Cameron, a policy advisor for the International Institute for Sustainable Development, said the report shows "there is still far too much public money being invested in fossil fuels."
"Continued support for this industry works directly against climate action and the energy transition," she said in a statement.
The analysis found that Export Development Canada provided public financing to many companies, often at subsidized rates. The financing included $300 million for Nova Chemicals Corporation, a petrochemical company, and $200 million for Enbridge.
The $1.3 billion for carbon capture projects in 2023 is set to increase in the years to come, under a new tax credit aimed at helping projects get off the ground. Proponents say it will help the oil and gas industry cut their emissions while maintaining production, while critics say the technology remains unproven at a large scale and the money could be better spent elsewhere.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer estimates the carbon capture, utilization and storage investment tax credit will cost $5.7 billion over five years.
The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) says on its website that Canada's oil and gas producers "do not receive government production subsidies, nor is the industry requesting or expecting any such support."
Asked for more details on their position, CAPP spokesperson Jay Averill said in a statement that oil and natural gas production in Canada is "subject to royalties and taxes from every level of government, working to the benefit of Canadians right across the country."
"This differs from most other producing nations and is the exact opposite of a subsidy," Averill said.
Averill stressed the importance of the oil and gas sector to the economy. He said revenues from oil and gas reached $45 billion last year, and that capital investment from the industry is expected to reach about $40 billion.
Many international organizations, including the United Nations Development Programme, the International Energy Agency and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have called for an end to fossil fuel subsidies.
Critics argue they undermine climate policies by distorting the market and delaying the transition to alternative technologies.
WATCH | Alberta oilsands facilities are emitting potentially harmful air pollutants:
According to the IMF, global subsidies surpassed $7 trillion US for the first time last year.
The assessment included what are called "implicit subsidies," which are the environmental costs of air pollution and climate damage from fossil fuels that producers and consumers aren't required to pay.
The IMF found that Canada doled out $2 billion in explicit fossil fuel subsidies; it calculated that the implicit cost was another $36 billion.
Environmental Defence is pressing Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland to include a tax on the windfall profits of the oil and gas industry in the 2024 budget, set to be tabled April 16.
"We should be taxing those windfall profits and returning that money to Canadians to meet their climate and affordability needs," Levin said.
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
America, 2049:
Summer temperatures are intolerably high, the fossil fuel industry has shut down, and humans are implanted with a ‘Flick’ at birth, which allows them to remain perpetually online. The wealthy live in the newly created Floating City off the coast, while people on the mainland struggle to get by. For Rose, a job as a hostess in the city’s elite club, feels like her best hope for a better future.
At a Cold War-era research station, a group of highly-trained women with the code name White Alice are engaged in climate surveillance. But the terms of their employment become increasingly uncertain.
And in a former oil town in northern Canada called Dominion Lake, a camp is being built: Camp Zero. A rare source of fresh, clean air and cooler temperatures, it will be the beginning of a new community and a new way of life. Grant believes it will be the perfect place to atone for his family’s dark legacy.
Everyone has an agenda. So who can you trust? Could falling in love be most the radical act of all?
‘Camp Zero‘ provided a depressingly plausible vision of life in 2050 that I’m glad I’m unlikely to live long enough to see.
What made it both plausible and depressing is that this isn’t an apocalyptic tale of dramatic destruction but rather a continuation of both the slow erosion by climate change of the way of life that people at the start of the twenty-first century took for granted and the widening of the gap between the choices available to the very wealthy and the choices the rest of us have to cope with.
What made the novel engaging was its focus on three sets of people trying to build lives for themselves in the midst of this slow-motion disintegration and whose paths are all converging on Camp Zero, where Americans have hired men to build a new campus in the far north of Canada, next to a long-abandoned small town. One story follows Rose, a sex worker at the camp, who has a secret agenda. One story follows Grant, the son of a leading member of the wealthy elite, who, following a trauma, has fled his family and its wealth to take up a job teaching job at the still-under-construction campus. The third story follows an all-female group of scientists in the American military who have been sent on a long-term mission to White Alice a polar DEW station in Northern Canada left over from the Cold War.
The converging storylines were strongly differentiated from each other in terms of style, perspective and possibly timeline. This made for a richer reading experience both because each storyline captured my imagination and because I kept speculating on how the stories would converge. I found the White Alice storyline to be the most intriguing, partly because the storytelling had the resonance of an oft-repeated oral tradition and partly because I couldn’t see where it was going.. The Rose storyline was the most engaging, partly because of Rose’s determination to make the most of the opportunities available to her and partly because of the contrast between her experience in the Floating City, a high-tech enclave for the wealthy built off the coast from Boston. I liked Grant’s storyline the least, but that’s probably a sign of how well-written in was. I found myself being increasingly annoyed by his self-indulgent guilt, his naivety and his refusal to see what was right in front of him.
What kept me turning the pages at first was my desire to know what the women in White Alice did to survive and why Rose was really at Camp Zero and what Camp Zero was really for. As the story continued, I became more interested in Rose as a person and I began to distance myself from the insider’s narrative of White Alice and reassess what the women were doing and the group identity that they had built.
I liked the way technology was treated in ‘Camp Zero’. The near-future 2050 technologies are described as clearly as in any Science Fiction novel and are all reasonable extrapolations of existing tech. Yet, it’s clear that they are a distraction from the problems of the emerging world rather than a solution to them. They enable the rich to extend the lifespan of an unsustainable way of life and they pacify the rest by enabling them to escape into a virtual world that dulls their awareness of the external realities.
One of the main themes in ‘Camp Zero’ is the difference between male and female agendas. The two dominant males in the story: a tech billionaire and a former climate campaigner turned ‘Let’s rebuild from the ruins’ visionary are driven by ego to reshape the world in their image. They devote their energies to overwriting the current reality with their vision of how the world should work. Rose and the women in White Alice, in their different ways, have understood that the world has changed, that things are bad and that they’re not going to get better. They devote their energies to finding a way to survive and to have the best lives they can create for themselves and the people they care about. The men and the women are both ruthless in the pursuit of their agendas. They both practice deception, use violence and seek advantage in any situation.
I liked that ‘Camp Zero’ never lost its focus on the people in the storylines it followed. It also never devolved into either melodrama or Happy Ever After escapism. The storylines converged and produced a resolution of sorts but, as in real life, each resolution poses new challenges rather than a conclusion.
My favourite lines from ‘Camp Zero‘ come from the last chapter when two women are talking. One says, “But it’s a shit world isn’t it?” The other replies, “Of course it’s shit. But it’s the only world we have”. That, I think, is an accurate summary of our collective future.
I recommend the audiobook version of ‘Camp Zero’. It’s told with multiple narrators and it’s very well done. Click on the SoundCloud link below to hear a sample.
That virus likely came from a single employee who happened to be shedding an enormous quantity of a very weird variant. The researchers would desperately like to find that person. But what if that person doesn’t want to be found?
A few years ago, Marc Johnson, a virologist at the University of Missouri, became obsessed with weird covid variants he was seeing in wastewater samples. The ones that caught his eye were odd in a couple of different ways: they didn’t match any of the common variants, and they didn’t circulate. They would pop up in a single location, persist for some length of time, and then often disappear—a blip. Johnson found his first blip in Missouri. “It drove me nuts,” he says. “I was like, ‘What the hell was going on here?’”
Then he teamed up with colleagues in New York, and they found a few more.
Hoping to pin down even more lineages, Johnson put a call out on Twitter (now X) for wastewater. In January 2022, he got another hit in a wastewater sample shipped from a Wisconsin treatment plant. He and David O’Connor, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin, started working with state health officials to track the signal—from the treatment plant to a pumping station and then to the outskirts of the city, “one manhole at a time,” Johnson says. “Every time there was a branch in the road, we would check which branch [the signal] was coming from.”
They chased some questionable leads. The researchers were suspicious the virus might be coming from an animal. At one point O’Connor took people from his lab to a dog park to ask dog owners for poop samples. “There were so many red herrings,” Johnson says.
Finally, after sampling about 50 manholes, the researchers found the manhole, the last one on the branch that had the variant. They got lucky. “The only source was this company,” Johnson says. Their results came out in March in Lancet Microbe.
Wastewater surveillance might seem like a relatively new phenomenon, born of the pandemic, but it goes back decades. A team of Canadian researchers outlines several historical examples in this story. In one example, a public health official traced a 1946 typhoid outbreak to the wife of a man who sold ice cream at the beach. Even then, the researcher expressed some hesitation. The study didn’t name the wife or the town, and he cautioned that infections probably shouldn’t be traced back to an individual “except in the presence of an outbreak.”
In a similar study published in 1959, scientists traced another typhoid epidemic to one woman, who was then banned from food service and eventually talked into having her gallbladder removed to eliminate the infection. Such publicity can have a “devastating effect on the carrier,” they remarked in their write-up of the case. “From being a quiet and respected citizen, she becomes a social pariah.”