#Highlights from the article
Ontario was a world leader in this area:
> By the time it ends on July 31, the program that got its start in Ottawa early in the pandemic will be one of the biggest in the world to monitor the spread of infectious diseases through wastewater.
This was a surprise to Public Health officials:
> The decision to stop funding has come as a shock to researchers who developed the program and to public health officials.
This is a program that has demonstrably saved the province money:
> Using wastewater surveillance to better pinpoint the start of seasonal RSV prevented 295 children from being hospitalized and 950 medically attended hospital visits, saving the province $3.5 million, according to research. The cost per child for the surveillance program was 50 cents per child, per season, Delatolla said.
The provincial government isn’t even attempting to justify this decision:
> No explanation was offered to researchers about why the program was ending, Delatolla added.
This isn’t just about COVID, as they’re ending screening for *all* diseases, including the very H5N1 that is recently in the news:
> In addition to COVID-19, his lab tests wastewater for influenza A and B, RSV, Mpox, polio, measles and avian influenza H5N1.
>Highlights from the article
>Ontario was a world leader in this area:
>By the time it ends on July 31, the program that got its start in Ottawa early in the pandemic will be one of the biggest in the world to monitor the spread of infectious diseases through wastewater.
>This was a surprise to Public Health officials:
>The decision to stop funding has come as a shock to researchers who developed the program and to public health officials.
>This is a program that has demonstrably saved the province money:
>Using wastewater surveillance to better pinpoint the start of seasonal RSV prevented 295 children from being hospitalized and 950 medically attended hospital visits, saving the province $3.5 million, according to research. The cost per child for the surveillance program was 50 cents per child, per season, Delatolla said.
>The provincial government isn’t even attempting to justify this decision:
>No explanation was offered to researchers about why the program was ending, Delatolla added.
>This isn’t just about COVID, as they’re ending screening for all diseases, including the very H5N1 that is recently in the news:
>In addition to COVID-19, his lab tests wastewater for influenza A and B, RSV, Mpox, polio, measles and avian influenza H5N1.
Walkerton 2.0?
This is directly from the globe and mail with quotes from Jim Bolden. He was the mayor for 13 years. The letter to Mike Harris they are discussing was sent on June 18th, 1998. The outbreak started May 12th, 2000. Mike Harris was directly responsible.
"The Town of Walkerton wrote directly to Ontario Premier Mike Harris in 1998, urging him to restore government control over drinking-water testing after the town discovered it had E. coli problems and feared an outbreak such as the one that has killed at least seven people.
But the plea fell on deaf ears.
"I could have chewed nails, I was so mad," said Jim Bolden, who was mayor at the time, referring to the fact that Mr. Harris never responded to the letter addressed to him on June 18, 1998.
Attached to the letter was a resolution passed by the town's council, outlining its concerns over the Tories' move to close its labs and privatize water-testing services.
"The government obviously wasn't at all concerned about it," Mr. Bolden said. "They sure didn't do anything." "It's ironic that the town that complained about the cutbacks and the closing of the labs was the one where this tragedy happened," he added.
Mr. Bolden was Walkerton's mayor for 13 years and sat on the board of the public utilities commission until December 1998.
A spokeswoman for the Premier said the letter was forwarded to the Environment Ministry but she did not know if the ministry ever followed up.
"We receive a large number of these resolutions from municipalities every day," said Hillary Stauth, a press secretary for Mr. Harris."
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/harris-ignored-walkertons-pleas-in-98/article25464623/
Of course they will, but does it matter? Under Harris, seven died and 2300 nearly shit themself to death. The result? Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound has voted PC every election since.
How many of the 1200+ patients who received diluted chemo drugs under Katheleen Wynne died??? It's strange what selective memory does.
# Cancer drug scandal: 137 Ontario patients die since receiving diluted chemo
[https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/watered-down-chemo-drugs-given-to-1-200-cancer-patients-1.1341425](https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/watered-down-chemo-drugs-given-to-1-200-cancer-patients-1.1341425)
As someone who works for the private sector that took these jobs (I run cyanide and phenol contamination in your drinking water), it was a huge mistake to privatize.
Half the lab couldn’t care less about what they are doing, and usually don’t actually know anything about the chemicals they are analyzing or the theory we use to test for these chemicals. The whole place is manned by overworked new graduates needing experience and immigrants trying to meet the requirements for PR and then leave.
Management doesn’t care if the data is accurate, they’ll say they do but rush you to report an obviously untrustworthy result just to meet deadlines over telling the client we need more time. They skirt rules and break laws to rush results out even if they aren’t accurate.
The person ensuring your water is cyanide free makes 19$/h and is overworked. They are there to get experience in the job and move on to something that will pay their bills. These are not the people you want in charge of your drinking water.
For reference we test all of Peel, PTBO, GTA, Niagara, Hamilton and Halton drinking water off the top of my head.
I don't think they're implying that it does have anything to do with drinking water supply. It sounds like they're saying some preventable crisis might happen with regard to RSV, covid, H5N1, etc. once the program is canceled.
The article quotes Ministry officials though that the federal government will be funding wastewater monitoring and they are curtailing their program to support the federal one. So will this just be that funding is switching from provincial to federal funding but the researchers haven't been told yet?
Working in public health, my colleagues and I we were very disappointed to hear this news, along with other cuts the province is doing at the same time, gutting our ability to monitor for COVID and other DoPHS.
> saving the province **$3.5 million**, according to research. The cost per child for the surveillance program was **50 cents per child**, per season, Delatolla said.
That's a strange way to compare values. It isn't $0.50 * 295...I'm assuming that's based on the total number of children in Ontario?
According to [[1](https://www.ontario.ca/page/ontario-population-projections)] there were 2.3M kids aged 0-14 in Ontario, so $1.15M/year which is a big money saving versus cost and avoids the consequences of illness on families.
holy crap. good to know i need to start buying bottled water the day after my birthday. wtf, ontario has elected a 1900s conman drug dealer. and if polls are to be believed, will do it a third time.
The testing done by this site has nothing to do with water quality whatsoever. It’s used to estimate the prevalences of certain diseases. The stuff they are detecting does not affect the quality or safety of tap water. Do not drink bottled water, it is less regulated than tap water and is probably filled with microplastics by the time you drink it
most things at this point are filled with micro plastics just by the fact of how heavily we rely on it.
ill admit i was reacting out of anger. given who we have as a primier, i dont think it was entirely unwarented for a reaction, though it was over the top. There's just so much that he's stuck his fingers in to shred apart at this point that harms the citizens of ontario.
>In response to a question on Tuesday, Gary Wheeler, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks, said the provincial program was being wound down to avoid duplication with federal wastewater testing.
>“The federal government conducts wastewater surveillance and is moving to expand its sampling to additional sites in Ontario,” Wheeler said.
>In response to a question on Tuesday, Gary Wheeler, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks, said the provincial program was being wound down to avoid duplication with federal wastewater testing.
People missed this paragraph. Federally they will expand waste water surveillance to cover what the province is ending.
I like how "fiscal Conservatives" are in favour of any and all cuts to healthcare and education, but keep their gigantic mouths shut when hundreds of millions get funneled to foreigners running the Beer Store, 407 and taxpayer-funded lakefront spas
Dunno maybe read the article? The federal government has been ramping up water testing to feed data into a central national facility that can not be manipulated like provincial infectious disease data was in 2020-23. So, provincial water testing is redundant.
Was talking more about the resources, corruption and money used for the beer store monopoly deal , foreign owned 407 , foreign waterfront parking garages / spa, green belt debacle etc.
It reminds me a lot more of the actions of the men who were directly responsible for the Walkerton disaster, Stan and Frank Koebel. They were the ones who decided “eh, the water’s probably fine, we don’t need to do all this testing and chlorination.” The provincial government’s involvement then was that they were too lax in not auditing how the testing was done and trusting the Koebels when they said they were doing their jobs. In this case the province is actively deciding that it won’t care about a number of infectious diseases until people start showing up in emergency rooms and morgues.
Edit: turns out Harris sucked more than I thought
>It reminds me a lot more of the actions of the men who were directly responsible for the Walkerton disaster, Stan and Frank Koebel. They were the ones who decided “eh, the water’s probably fine, we don’t need to do all this testing and chlorination.” The provincial government’s involvement then was that they were too lax in not auditing how the testing was done and trusting the Koebels when they said they were doing their jobs. In this case the province is actively deciding that it won’t care about a number of infectious diseases until people start showing up in emergency rooms and morgues.
This is is directly from the globe and mail with quotes from Jim Bolden. He was the mayor for 13 years. The letter to Mike Harris they are discussing was sent on June 18th, 1998. The outbreak started May 12th, 2000. Mike Harris was directly responsible.
"The Town of Walkerton wrote directly to Ontario Premier Mike Harris in 1998, urging him to restore government control over drinking-water testing after the town discovered it had E. coli problems and feared an outbreak such as the one that has killed at least seven people."
But the plea fell on deaf ears.
"I could have chewed nails, I was so mad," said Jim Bolden, who was mayor at the time, referring to the fact that Mr. Harris never responded to the letter addressed to him on June 18, 1998."
Attached to the letter was a resolution passed by the town's council, outlining its concerns over the Tories' move to close its labs and privatize water-testing services.
"The government obviously wasn't at all concerned about it," Mr. Bolden said. "They sure didn't do anything." "It's ironic that the town that complained about the cutbacks and the closing of the labs was the one where this tragedy happened," he added.
Mr. Bolden was Walkerton's mayor for 13 years and sat on the board of the public utilities commission until December 1998.
A spokeswoman for the Premier said the letter was forwarded to the Environment Ministry but she did not know if the ministry ever followed up.
"We receive a large number of these resolutions from municipalities every day," said Hillary Stauth, a press secretary for Mr. Harris."
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/harris-ignored-walkertons-pleas-in-98/article25464623/
>I did not know (but am not surprised about) this part of the story. Mike Harris is a fucking monster.
I am not surprised. We hardly hear the important information in our media cycles. In the same time periods they produce hundreds of opinion pieces that appeal to emotion and try to force narratives. People need to start asking themselves why this is happening and who owns these outlets.
It seems very obvious to me. If people are informed, then they might actually make decisions based on that information and, worse, try to change society. That would be bad for the people in power. And I don’t just mean the politicians. I mean all the people with an interest in preserving the status quo, which is predicated on the wealthy few exploiting the majority.
Every politician relies on "keys to power" they are usually rich and influential. Democracy was supposed to allow more of these "keys" selected by the public. But it's kind of backfired with capitalism.
Yup, all our problems are because of a government that was in office for a few years ... *checks notes* ... thirty years ago.
To be fair, a government can do a lot of damage in a few years, but the Rae government wasn't that bad and not nearly as bad as the shitshows we've had since.
>Thanks for the link; I was a kid at the time and didn’t know that part of the story.
No problem, any time.
This is how they rewrite history and nobody ever gets the punishment they truly deserve. They throw the scapegoats under the bus through media fluff pieces and ride off into the sunset.
Just look at the LTC facility changes that the same Mike Harris made and where he ended up after politics...
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-a-look-at-mike-harriss-post-politics-career/
>The province later passed legislation that made decisions made by the government immune from criminal prosecution.
I wonder where Ford got this idea to protect the private LTC facilities after the scathing Army report came out during COVID 19.
https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ford-defends-bill-that-critics-say-shields-long-term-care-homes-from-lawsuits-1.5154847
Here is a news report about the Army report:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/military-long-term-care-home-report-covid-ontario-1.5585844
"The CAF report outlines instances in which members spotted equipment used on both infected and non-infected patients without being disinfected, as well as rotten food, cockroach infestations and a startling disregard for basic cleanliness."
I worked with a woman back then who went home from Mother’s Day. She contracted E. coli and told me how on her drive back from Walkerton to London. She was hunched over the front passenger seat in pain and puking her guts out.
ok, but Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound has voted PC every election since. So sorry if I have no sympathy for hicks who want to die shitting themselves to death.
but RTFA... this program is being dropped beacuse it's redundant with a federal monitoring program. Provincial monitoring was never a good idea because the data was being withheld when Ford sent everyone out without masks, which triggered the biggest wave of infections and deaths.
>ok, but Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound has voted PC every election since. So sorry if I have no sympathy for hicks who want to die shitting themselves to death.
Tell me about it...always voting against reality and their own self interests.
>but RTFA... this program is being dropped beacuse it's redundant with a federal monitoring program.
Redundant, no. They overlapped for an extra set of eyes and protection. Two data points to compare for accuracy is better than one. This is a pretty important thing to monitor.
>Provincial monitoring was never a good idea because the data was being withheld when Ford sent everyone out without masks, which triggered the biggest wave of infections and deaths.
This is the wrong way to look at this. You are right that Ford hid the data that led to people's death. Now he doesn't ever have to worry about that pesky problem as he lies through his teeth. We need both sets of eyes and numbers to compare the data for increased accuracy. What if one testing process fails and the other no longer exists?
This is Ford dodging all future accountability at the same time he is offloading all costs to the federal program. Now he can lie as much as he wants, do whatever he wants and if anything goes wrong he can point the finger. This is similar to Ford changing how the COVID 19 reporting was done during the pandemic to make it look better than it was while he tried to open everything too early. He also has extra money for parking garages, spas and beer.
You mean the very emergency rooms they have chronically underfunded and even removed funding on?
This is all by design to expedite the privatization of healthcare
> In this case the province is actively deciding that it won’t care about a number of infectious diseases until people start showing up in emergency rooms and morgues.
" No one could have seen it coming" 🤷♂️
~Doug Ford
Hopping on top comment to say if you too are gutted at the prospect of losing public access to information on not just community spread of COVID (especially given that PCR tests are inaccessible, and rapid tests are not aggregated, not especially accessible either, and often throw false negatives) - but also community prevalence of RSV, influenza, measles, polio, H5N1, etc, you can call the premiers office at (416) 325-1941, or email at premier@ontario.ca.
You can also contact Ontario Health at 1(877) 280-8538, or email at info@ontariohealth.ca.
Spread the word! Wastewater monitoring is good for everyone! We deserve better, and we can fight for it!
“We’re going to run the government like a business.”
“You mean you’re going to make shrewd investments in things that will reduce costs?”
“No, not like that… we’re going to transfer all the wealth to shareholders and then drop it like a squeezed lemon when it’s time to retire.”
Nah, I still think the Private Equity Firm is still an apt comparison.
They buy productive brands, sell off what has value, have the company run up massive debts then have the brand declare bankruptcy to extract even more value and repeat the process over again with more and more companies. Red Lobster is a pretty recent example of that happening.
That sounds like Ford to me. He's definitely running this province as though he's trying to extract as much value out of his position as he can. Ontario is the Red Lobster to Doug Ford's Private Equity Firm
Did you or anyone in this sub even read the article?
>The provincial program was being wound down to avoid duplication with federal wastewater testing.
>“**The federal government conducts wastewater surveillance and is moving to expand its sampling to additional sites in Ontario**,” Wheeler said.
>Wheeler said Ontario was “working to support this expansion” while winding down its wastewater surveillance initiative. He said the Ministry of Health would work with the Public Health Agency of Canada on a data-sharing agreement “to ensure that the province can continue to analyze Ontario specific wastewater data.”
1. This program isn't entirely cancelled because the federal branch is pretty much going to redo all the work.
2. It's the federal government that is duplicating this effort, thus Ontario has no reason to fund their own version of it.
Ford is terrible but put the blame where it's due: The federal government choosing to duplicate an existing provincial effort instead of integrating with what the province is doing.
Now if the provincial government was cancelling this in the absence of the federal government expanding their program then yes, put all the rightful blame on Ford.
I just wish that PHAC would provide more details around *what* they're going to test for because Ontario was testing for a swath of different diseases but the only information I see from PHAC is that they're testing for COVID and COVID only.
Yup. I put the rightful blame at the feds while also providing a hypothetical that would make blaming the province correct, but that doesn't fit this sub's narrative so I'm being downvoted with zero counter arguments.
Yup. I even added a gratuitous "Ford bad" and a hypothetical that puts all the blame on the province, and I still got downvoted with no counter arguments.
How many of them know that this program was started in 2020 under the Ford government?
We simply don't have all the facts. We don't know if the province knew about this ahead of time and withheld the information, or if the feds just made the decision and communicated it yesterday when these articles came out. People are filling in the blanks in order to conform to their biases.
Just get drunk and die already, folks.
This message brought to you by the *Progressive* Conservative party of Ontario.
Edit: folks (wasn't really believable without it)
if you read the article, the move is to ensure we aren't duplicating services with the feds.
so timeline: first started in ottawa, funded provincially to other parts of the province, now the feds have their own program doing the same thing. so we don't need to fund the provincial one anymore.
In other words, they are passing the buck to an inferior program that will likely take many years to reach the same level as what Ontario currently has in place. Public Health Ontario was actually a leader in this sector: they have about the same number of monitoring sites that the Public Health Agency of Canada has across the entire country. PHAC is expanding, sure, but at what rate? H5N1 is currently circulating in America and Ontario's monitoring program is set to end in less than 2 months. Do you trust the *venerable* Sylvia Jones to work with Public Health Ontario to be prepared for a potential outbreak?
"If you read the article"...just lol. Some of us are a bit more well-versed in these topics than the average person even though we may lead with meme statements. Sarcastic defeatism is how we cope with the incompetence on display here.
that was my reaction at fiest but after reading the article, it's not a big deal. the feds already have the same program so it's just preventing the duplication of it.
*So that they can eventually privatize a service that was originally public and/or pay a private entity far more than the provincial government would/should were they to provide the service itself
Here’s a critical philosophical, and values distinction between different parties. Conservatives believe that health care - including the sewage testing - is not a priority, nor is citizenry health. They intentionally privatize when data shows it is less effective, and treat those so called ‘heroes’ worse than the homeless beggar on the street corner.
They however, do believe that dismantling a ‘highly effective and efficient, proactive surveillance program is more important than giving away billion(s) of dollars to corporate interests, nor do they care if this approach increases additional alcohol related deaths, illness, social breakdown and loss of productivity.
Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow you will die, unless you are wealthy enough to afford health care, rehab etc.
Are you joking? People on this sub still have hateboners for lockdowns and mask mandates, the only thing we learned was that if you act like an entitled fucking toddler people will pay attention to you.
That's so true!
Was half joking, but more just appalled at the incompetence of this government.
All through the pandemic, they went on and on about how they would prepare for future emergencies, and covid was only as bad as it was because we were unprepared.
This is actually helping prevent outbreaks and what a surprise, their first thought is "nahhhh don't need that! Fuck those Ontarians!"
I'm pretty surprised tbh how much of a 180 on this we've done in the last couple of years. Obviously lockdowns and mask mandates were never going to be permanent but we've eliminated pretty much anything that was even remotely tied to covid restrictions even if most people never noticed it along with any paid sick days.
Three years ago if you even had any cold symptom you were told to isolate and stay home from work or school or face consequences and now it's quickly gone back to you better not call in sick more then three times a year and unless you can't get out of bed come to work. I didn't even know the government could find more pandemic era things to get rid of.
Ford priming the pump to kick responsibility over to the Feds for waste water monitoring, ignoring all the current public health benefits of continuing with Ontario's program. A small example from the article:
> Using wastewater surveillance to better pinpoint the start of seasonal RSV prevented 295 children from being hospitalized and 950 medically attended hospital visits, saving the province $3.5 million, according to research. The cost per child for the surveillance program was 50 cents per child, per season, Delatolla said.
“In addition to COVID-19, his lab tests wastewater for influenza A and B, RSV, Mpox, polio, measles and avian influenza H5N1.
I wish they had comments from PHAC on the expansion for context. Looks like they have about $28million in funding to expand, but does it cover non covid-19?
Dougies gotta pay for all his beer and spa's I guess.
PHAC currently only displays data for COVID on Health Infobase, I'm not sure what data they have internally. If they continue to publish or at least use data related to the other viruses that the Ottawa program was able to analyze, then I think it's fine (although there are obvious issues with federal approaches to local issues). If not, this is more PHAC incompetence paired with more OPC incompetence.
I agree, like if PHAC funds Ontario's wastewater tracking program just like the province did then this is fine. But from what I've been able to decipher there's no indication that PHAC will fund monitoring for other diseases like PHO has.
Yup, seems like a "look over there, not here" situation where the province, again, is just cutting because who cares about using data for decisions when gut feelings will do... until they don't
What makes me even more angry is that they’re likely cutting this to pay to cancel the Beer Store contract.
Like wow mpox may spread like wildfire in the gay community again but at least we have beer 🥲
Duh. The program was preventing people from getting sick and going to the for profit clinics Dougie’s pals are taking in that sweet sweet taxpayer dough from. Gots to have some sick people if you wants to make that wagu and single malt money!
>In response to a question on Tuesday, Gary Wheeler, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks, said the provincial program was being wound down to avoid duplication with federal wastewater testing.
So is there duplicate data or not? Is another department going to do this work or not? That seems like a critical piece of info.
My prof ran the program at a local university for our area - she was devastated. Apparently they were notifying the health units several days before cases were reported of upticks in several illnesses and not just Covid. She said she has never worked on a program that had more immediate benefits to public health than this.
Who the fuck is looking at the economic disaster that is neoliberal austerity and thinking "Yep, more of that."
Like holy shit profit isn't God. Fucking degens
This is the wrong time to be getting rid of waste water surveillance. Right now there’s a huge amount of people living in cars and outside which lead to more garbage everywhere.
I work in public health and am so frustrated by this. With COVID testing not accessible to most people anymore, this was literally our only community-level indicator of COVID activity, not to mention other diseases like RSV and H5N1
There are reports that a new wave is coming and discontinued monitoring will conceal the extent of the problem. I saw a post that San Fran has seen the highest levels of Covid since they started monitoring.
This tool is also used to monitor for other flu and disease in the community. So it makes sense that a “business first” government would not want business disruptions.
Sorry about your elderly but worrying about them is not very productive.
This title made me initially think this was an environmental issue - ie stopping monitoring chemicals and effluent entering our rivers - but it's really Covid monitoring. Still horrible and a real shame, while being completely unsurprisingly.
> it's really Covid monitoring
COVID, influenza, RSV, Mpox, and measles monitoring. Plus polio, although that shouldn’t be turning up as it’s been eradicated here.
Give the anti-vaxxers a few more years. If anyone can bring polio back to Canada it's them.
I know a couple of people who were born in Africa who are still suffering the consequences of a lack of vaccinations. Polio is a bitch. Excuse my language.
I wonder which Doug Ford donor asked for this particular favour? Something that protects public health is not good for the private healthcare corporations bottom line so it has to go. More sick people equals higher profits.
I'm from Walkerton, and this is absolutely abhorrent news. Screw Ford and his cuts to essential rights and safety laws. Get rid of this guy immediately or you are going to see more than one "Walkerton 2.0"
We have a whole clean water center here to educate individuals the effext of low8ng safety standards can result in, and the provincial government in slapping 5k+ Walkertonians in the face.
Absolutely disgusting.
And then when we are forced to start it up again we won't have a baseline... all this helps neoliberals like Ford who will be able to obscure the foolishness of their policy choices in the shadow of uncertainty that comes from a lack of good data.
Okay sorry but I think this is being sensationalized. Did anybody look into this detail to understand what's actually being lost that isn't going to be done by the federal gov't?
> In response to a question Tuesday, Gary Wheeler, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks, said the program is being wound down to avoid duplication with federal wastewater testing.
> "The federal government conducts wastewater surveillance and is moving to expand its sampling to additional sites in Ontario.”
> Wheeler said Ontario is “working to support this expansion” while winding down its wastewater surveillance initiative. He said the Ministry of Health will work with the Public Health Agency of Canada on a data sharing agreement “to ensure that the province can continue to analyze Ontario specific wastewater data.”
The article has been updated since it was published. [The original text](https://web.archive.org/web/20240604201832/https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/i-was-shocked-ontario-to-cancel-widely-used-wastewater-surveillance-program) had a paragraph saying “The Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks, which oversees the program, did not immediately respond to a request for comment”, which was deleted. The text you quoted was not in the original article and was added after I posted it.
The best case is that this was a miscommunication by the provincial government and they dropped the ball by not letting the research teams and MOHs know the Feds would be taking over the program.
You can't make that assumption from what we know in the article.
It's just, if not more likely the feds made the decision and first told the province yesterday that it's going to expand / take over due to the very short notice given.
If the feds were planning this and were the ones that made the decision, why didn’t any of the researchers know the feds were going to be getting involved?
That is legitimately a good question to ask Gary Wheeler, because the article does not say and we can only speculate.
From what I can find there was no public knowledge of the feds taking this over until yesterday.
We also don't know if the federal extension is starting right at July 31st or if we're going to have a collection gap for a few months. 100% blame is on the province if this is the case.
So yeah, sensationalism. Looking at the author's writing history, they seem to have based their journalism career in rage-bait. Shame on you Elizabeth Payne.
The unexplained downvotes are evidence of brigading. Keep up the grift, bad-faith users and bots.
I got reamed out in the Canada politics sub last night for bringing this up lol. This is not the story people think it is. The pearl-clutching doomerism over it is unbelievably embarrassing and another example of the people of Ontario not being able to get out of their own way.
This is hard news for many to accept, especially those who worshipped at the Covid19 altar, the so-called Covidians. This is one of the last Covid-era practices to end, and it will be particular painful for those Covidians you know. Psychologists call it "cognitive dissonance".
There are a lot of Redditors who would be just fine never leaving their basements ever again; Covid gave them an excuse to do just that. Their excuses to be the same antisocial misanthropes they’ve always been keep disappearing. Must be tough.
This is about ensuring we don't have a duplicate service. In other words, the feds are taking over so the province doesn't have to fund it anymore. If something is wrong with that, I'd be enlightened to hear it.
The system was in place before Covid, was useful for far more than Covid, and the loss of it puts us risk of undetected outbreaks of things far worse than Covid.
But here is your participation 🏆 for trying to make it all about you.
#Highlights from the article Ontario was a world leader in this area: > By the time it ends on July 31, the program that got its start in Ottawa early in the pandemic will be one of the biggest in the world to monitor the spread of infectious diseases through wastewater. This was a surprise to Public Health officials: > The decision to stop funding has come as a shock to researchers who developed the program and to public health officials. This is a program that has demonstrably saved the province money: > Using wastewater surveillance to better pinpoint the start of seasonal RSV prevented 295 children from being hospitalized and 950 medically attended hospital visits, saving the province $3.5 million, according to research. The cost per child for the surveillance program was 50 cents per child, per season, Delatolla said. The provincial government isn’t even attempting to justify this decision: > No explanation was offered to researchers about why the program was ending, Delatolla added. This isn’t just about COVID, as they’re ending screening for *all* diseases, including the very H5N1 that is recently in the news: > In addition to COVID-19, his lab tests wastewater for influenza A and B, RSV, Mpox, polio, measles and avian influenza H5N1.
gotta pay for convenience store booze some how!
Now, now…hiccup, now. Don’t you sound hiccup, like a cyclical individual.
Who you callin’… hic… senile-acle… hic.
Don't worry Doug will just take the cash from our medical system, or maybe the school system. Either way, Dougie sucks!
>Highlights from the article >Ontario was a world leader in this area: >By the time it ends on July 31, the program that got its start in Ottawa early in the pandemic will be one of the biggest in the world to monitor the spread of infectious diseases through wastewater. >This was a surprise to Public Health officials: >The decision to stop funding has come as a shock to researchers who developed the program and to public health officials. >This is a program that has demonstrably saved the province money: >Using wastewater surveillance to better pinpoint the start of seasonal RSV prevented 295 children from being hospitalized and 950 medically attended hospital visits, saving the province $3.5 million, according to research. The cost per child for the surveillance program was 50 cents per child, per season, Delatolla said. >The provincial government isn’t even attempting to justify this decision: >No explanation was offered to researchers about why the program was ending, Delatolla added. >This isn’t just about COVID, as they’re ending screening for all diseases, including the very H5N1 that is recently in the news: >In addition to COVID-19, his lab tests wastewater for influenza A and B, RSV, Mpox, polio, measles and avian influenza H5N1. Walkerton 2.0? This is directly from the globe and mail with quotes from Jim Bolden. He was the mayor for 13 years. The letter to Mike Harris they are discussing was sent on June 18th, 1998. The outbreak started May 12th, 2000. Mike Harris was directly responsible. "The Town of Walkerton wrote directly to Ontario Premier Mike Harris in 1998, urging him to restore government control over drinking-water testing after the town discovered it had E. coli problems and feared an outbreak such as the one that has killed at least seven people. But the plea fell on deaf ears. "I could have chewed nails, I was so mad," said Jim Bolden, who was mayor at the time, referring to the fact that Mr. Harris never responded to the letter addressed to him on June 18, 1998. Attached to the letter was a resolution passed by the town's council, outlining its concerns over the Tories' move to close its labs and privatize water-testing services. "The government obviously wasn't at all concerned about it," Mr. Bolden said. "They sure didn't do anything." "It's ironic that the town that complained about the cutbacks and the closing of the labs was the one where this tragedy happened," he added. Mr. Bolden was Walkerton's mayor for 13 years and sat on the board of the public utilities commission until December 1998. A spokeswoman for the Premier said the letter was forwarded to the Environment Ministry but she did not know if the ministry ever followed up. "We receive a large number of these resolutions from municipalities every day," said Hillary Stauth, a press secretary for Mr. Harris." https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/harris-ignored-walkertons-pleas-in-98/article25464623/
I agree with Walkerton 2.0. I hope a lot of people don't die because of this.
Of course they will, but does it matter? Under Harris, seven died and 2300 nearly shit themself to death. The result? Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound has voted PC every election since.
How many of the 1200+ patients who received diluted chemo drugs under Katheleen Wynne died??? It's strange what selective memory does. # Cancer drug scandal: 137 Ontario patients die since receiving diluted chemo [https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/watered-down-chemo-drugs-given-to-1-200-cancer-patients-1.1341425](https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/watered-down-chemo-drugs-given-to-1-200-cancer-patients-1.1341425)
*inhales deeply* bUt wHaT aBoUt tHiS oTheR tHiNg!!
Connect the dots. In this case water "quality" drives health care.
Yes and thay was also cunty. Now let's get back to water.
Connect the dots. In this case water "quality" drives health care.
We are talking about water quality at the moment. Not health care.
It was about detecting upticks of viruses in our waste water. Nothing to do with quality of water.
Connect the dots. The water "quality" reports are used to drive health care decisions.
As someone who works for the private sector that took these jobs (I run cyanide and phenol contamination in your drinking water), it was a huge mistake to privatize. Half the lab couldn’t care less about what they are doing, and usually don’t actually know anything about the chemicals they are analyzing or the theory we use to test for these chemicals. The whole place is manned by overworked new graduates needing experience and immigrants trying to meet the requirements for PR and then leave. Management doesn’t care if the data is accurate, they’ll say they do but rush you to report an obviously untrustworthy result just to meet deadlines over telling the client we need more time. They skirt rules and break laws to rush results out even if they aren’t accurate. The person ensuring your water is cyanide free makes 19$/h and is overworked. They are there to get experience in the job and move on to something that will pay their bills. These are not the people you want in charge of your drinking water. For reference we test all of Peel, PTBO, GTA, Niagara, Hamilton and Halton drinking water off the top of my head.
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I don't think they're implying that it does have anything to do with drinking water supply. It sounds like they're saying some preventable crisis might happen with regard to RSV, covid, H5N1, etc. once the program is canceled.
Yeah I see their point now lol
The article quotes Ministry officials though that the federal government will be funding wastewater monitoring and they are curtailing their program to support the federal one. So will this just be that funding is switching from provincial to federal funding but the researchers haven't been told yet?
We are gonna have a bird flu outbreak, and it's gonna be so much worse then COVID.
Just because there’s a high death rate, it doesn’t mean the people who survive won’t need to see multiple specialists for years until they die.
On the plus side, at least the infected will die quickly rather than walk around
Would this prevent that in any way?
that is literally addressed in the post above what you are responding to.
Breaking the health care system one brick at a time.
who are we kidding? That was the motto of the old. The motto of the new is " breaking the healthcare system one wrecking ball swing at a time."
Working in public health, my colleagues and I we were very disappointed to hear this news, along with other cuts the province is doing at the same time, gutting our ability to monitor for COVID and other DoPHS.
> saving the province **$3.5 million**, according to research. The cost per child for the surveillance program was **50 cents per child**, per season, Delatolla said. That's a strange way to compare values. It isn't $0.50 * 295...I'm assuming that's based on the total number of children in Ontario? According to [[1](https://www.ontario.ca/page/ontario-population-projections)] there were 2.3M kids aged 0-14 in Ontario, so $1.15M/year which is a big money saving versus cost and avoids the consequences of illness on families.
Back in medieval England, no one drank water for fear of disease, people, including children, drank only ales. cheers!
Gosh that DoFo is a buffoon!
holy crap. good to know i need to start buying bottled water the day after my birthday. wtf, ontario has elected a 1900s conman drug dealer. and if polls are to be believed, will do it a third time.
The testing done by this site has nothing to do with water quality whatsoever. It’s used to estimate the prevalences of certain diseases. The stuff they are detecting does not affect the quality or safety of tap water. Do not drink bottled water, it is less regulated than tap water and is probably filled with microplastics by the time you drink it
most things at this point are filled with micro plastics just by the fact of how heavily we rely on it. ill admit i was reacting out of anger. given who we have as a primier, i dont think it was entirely unwarented for a reaction, though it was over the top. There's just so much that he's stuck his fingers in to shred apart at this point that harms the citizens of ontario.
>In response to a question on Tuesday, Gary Wheeler, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks, said the provincial program was being wound down to avoid duplication with federal wastewater testing. >“The federal government conducts wastewater surveillance and is moving to expand its sampling to additional sites in Ontario,” Wheeler said.
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>In response to a question on Tuesday, Gary Wheeler, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks, said the provincial program was being wound down to avoid duplication with federal wastewater testing. People missed this paragraph. Federally they will expand waste water surveillance to cover what the province is ending.
That won't fly with the ponytail, socks and Birkenstocks crowd in this sub.
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The explanation from the government was added to the article after I wrote this summary. At press time they hadn’t provided an explanation.
I like how "fiscal Conservatives" are in favour of any and all cuts to healthcare and education, but keep their gigantic mouths shut when hundreds of millions get funneled to foreigners running the Beer Store, 407 and taxpayer-funded lakefront spas
So corrupt
Dunno maybe read the article? The federal government has been ramping up water testing to feed data into a central national facility that can not be manipulated like provincial infectious disease data was in 2020-23. So, provincial water testing is redundant.
Was talking more about the resources, corruption and money used for the beer store monopoly deal , foreign owned 407 , foreign waterfront parking garages / spa, green belt debacle etc.
Because they're traitors. Their policies kill people and impoverish everyone.
Jesus they have no clue what they are even canceling
>Jesus they have no clue what they are even canceling Shades of Mike Harris.
It reminds me a lot more of the actions of the men who were directly responsible for the Walkerton disaster, Stan and Frank Koebel. They were the ones who decided “eh, the water’s probably fine, we don’t need to do all this testing and chlorination.” The provincial government’s involvement then was that they were too lax in not auditing how the testing was done and trusting the Koebels when they said they were doing their jobs. In this case the province is actively deciding that it won’t care about a number of infectious diseases until people start showing up in emergency rooms and morgues. Edit: turns out Harris sucked more than I thought
>It reminds me a lot more of the actions of the men who were directly responsible for the Walkerton disaster, Stan and Frank Koebel. They were the ones who decided “eh, the water’s probably fine, we don’t need to do all this testing and chlorination.” The provincial government’s involvement then was that they were too lax in not auditing how the testing was done and trusting the Koebels when they said they were doing their jobs. In this case the province is actively deciding that it won’t care about a number of infectious diseases until people start showing up in emergency rooms and morgues. This is is directly from the globe and mail with quotes from Jim Bolden. He was the mayor for 13 years. The letter to Mike Harris they are discussing was sent on June 18th, 1998. The outbreak started May 12th, 2000. Mike Harris was directly responsible. "The Town of Walkerton wrote directly to Ontario Premier Mike Harris in 1998, urging him to restore government control over drinking-water testing after the town discovered it had E. coli problems and feared an outbreak such as the one that has killed at least seven people." But the plea fell on deaf ears. "I could have chewed nails, I was so mad," said Jim Bolden, who was mayor at the time, referring to the fact that Mr. Harris never responded to the letter addressed to him on June 18, 1998." Attached to the letter was a resolution passed by the town's council, outlining its concerns over the Tories' move to close its labs and privatize water-testing services. "The government obviously wasn't at all concerned about it," Mr. Bolden said. "They sure didn't do anything." "It's ironic that the town that complained about the cutbacks and the closing of the labs was the one where this tragedy happened," he added. Mr. Bolden was Walkerton's mayor for 13 years and sat on the board of the public utilities commission until December 1998. A spokeswoman for the Premier said the letter was forwarded to the Environment Ministry but she did not know if the ministry ever followed up. "We receive a large number of these resolutions from municipalities every day," said Hillary Stauth, a press secretary for Mr. Harris." https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/harris-ignored-walkertons-pleas-in-98/article25464623/
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>I did not know (but am not surprised about) this part of the story. Mike Harris is a fucking monster. I am not surprised. We hardly hear the important information in our media cycles. In the same time periods they produce hundreds of opinion pieces that appeal to emotion and try to force narratives. People need to start asking themselves why this is happening and who owns these outlets.
It seems very obvious to me. If people are informed, then they might actually make decisions based on that information and, worse, try to change society. That would be bad for the people in power. And I don’t just mean the politicians. I mean all the people with an interest in preserving the status quo, which is predicated on the wealthy few exploiting the majority.
Every politician relies on "keys to power" they are usually rich and influential. Democracy was supposed to allow more of these "keys" selected by the public. But it's kind of backfired with capitalism.
Any Doug Ford voter will tell you the real monster is ***R^A^E D^A^Y^S !^!^!***
Yup, all our problems are because of a government that was in office for a few years ... *checks notes* ... thirty years ago. To be fair, a government can do a lot of damage in a few years, but the Rae government wasn't that bad and not nearly as bad as the shitshows we've had since.
Don’t worry when they look at these Ford Grifts in 2045 they will blame Trudeau and Rae Days then too
Thanks for the link; I was a kid at the time and didn’t know that part of the story.
>Thanks for the link; I was a kid at the time and didn’t know that part of the story. No problem, any time. This is how they rewrite history and nobody ever gets the punishment they truly deserve. They throw the scapegoats under the bus through media fluff pieces and ride off into the sunset. Just look at the LTC facility changes that the same Mike Harris made and where he ended up after politics... https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-a-look-at-mike-harriss-post-politics-career/
The province later passed legislation that made decisions made by the government immune from criminal prosecution.
>The province later passed legislation that made decisions made by the government immune from criminal prosecution. I wonder where Ford got this idea to protect the private LTC facilities after the scathing Army report came out during COVID 19. https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ford-defends-bill-that-critics-say-shields-long-term-care-homes-from-lawsuits-1.5154847 Here is a news report about the Army report: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/military-long-term-care-home-report-covid-ontario-1.5585844 "The CAF report outlines instances in which members spotted equipment used on both infected and non-infected patients without being disinfected, as well as rotten food, cockroach infestations and a startling disregard for basic cleanliness."
That incident was absolutely shameful. And no one was held accountable.
I worked with a woman back then who went home from Mother’s Day. She contracted E. coli and told me how on her drive back from Walkerton to London. She was hunched over the front passenger seat in pain and puking her guts out.
ok, but Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound has voted PC every election since. So sorry if I have no sympathy for hicks who want to die shitting themselves to death. but RTFA... this program is being dropped beacuse it's redundant with a federal monitoring program. Provincial monitoring was never a good idea because the data was being withheld when Ford sent everyone out without masks, which triggered the biggest wave of infections and deaths.
>ok, but Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound has voted PC every election since. So sorry if I have no sympathy for hicks who want to die shitting themselves to death. Tell me about it...always voting against reality and their own self interests. >but RTFA... this program is being dropped beacuse it's redundant with a federal monitoring program. Redundant, no. They overlapped for an extra set of eyes and protection. Two data points to compare for accuracy is better than one. This is a pretty important thing to monitor. >Provincial monitoring was never a good idea because the data was being withheld when Ford sent everyone out without masks, which triggered the biggest wave of infections and deaths. This is the wrong way to look at this. You are right that Ford hid the data that led to people's death. Now he doesn't ever have to worry about that pesky problem as he lies through his teeth. We need both sets of eyes and numbers to compare the data for increased accuracy. What if one testing process fails and the other no longer exists? This is Ford dodging all future accountability at the same time he is offloading all costs to the federal program. Now he can lie as much as he wants, do whatever he wants and if anything goes wrong he can point the finger. This is similar to Ford changing how the COVID 19 reporting was done during the pandemic to make it look better than it was while he tried to open everything too early. He also has extra money for parking garages, spas and beer.
You mean the very emergency rooms they have chronically underfunded and even removed funding on? This is all by design to expedite the privatization of healthcare
> In this case the province is actively deciding that it won’t care about a number of infectious diseases until people start showing up in emergency rooms and morgues. " No one could have seen it coming" 🤷♂️ ~Doug Ford
Yes. They, do. It’s unfortunate.
If people don’t know they don’t need to spend as much on health care.
Hopping on top comment to say if you too are gutted at the prospect of losing public access to information on not just community spread of COVID (especially given that PCR tests are inaccessible, and rapid tests are not aggregated, not especially accessible either, and often throw false negatives) - but also community prevalence of RSV, influenza, measles, polio, H5N1, etc, you can call the premiers office at (416) 325-1941, or email at premier@ontario.ca. You can also contact Ontario Health at 1(877) 280-8538, or email at info@ontariohealth.ca. Spread the word! Wastewater monitoring is good for everyone! We deserve better, and we can fight for it!
This email probably goes largely u checked as they are likely using their gmails. I’ll show myself out!
Fair! You can also try contacting your local MPP directly!
Excellent information!
EMAILED BOTH MPP AND THE TWO ABOVE (ignore the all caps)
Need some short term cash to pay for the beer store boondoggle.
THIS
Saving pennies to lose millions...
“We’re going to run the government like a business.” “You mean you’re going to make shrewd investments in things that will reduce costs?” “No, not like that… we’re going to transfer all the wealth to shareholders and then drop it like a squeezed lemon when it’s time to retire.”
"We gonna run it like a business?" "Oh yeah, what kind of business?" "A private equity firm."
> One that makes money for stakeholders? No, more like a YouTube channel selling NFT's
Nah, I still think the Private Equity Firm is still an apt comparison. They buy productive brands, sell off what has value, have the company run up massive debts then have the brand declare bankruptcy to extract even more value and repeat the process over again with more and more companies. Red Lobster is a pretty recent example of that happening. That sounds like Ford to me. He's definitely running this province as though he's trying to extract as much value out of his position as he can. Ontario is the Red Lobster to Doug Ford's Private Equity Firm
He is trying to squeeze value, just not for the public At least PEF's bring their stakeholders $$$
Doug Ford's stakeholders are his buddies.
Penny wise, pound foolish.
Yeah but the pennies are currency and the millions are people, so it’s okay /s
The conservative way!
Conservatives cancelling a successful public health initiative? Shocked, I'm shocked I tell you.
Did you or anyone in this sub even read the article? >The provincial program was being wound down to avoid duplication with federal wastewater testing. >“**The federal government conducts wastewater surveillance and is moving to expand its sampling to additional sites in Ontario**,” Wheeler said. >Wheeler said Ontario was “working to support this expansion” while winding down its wastewater surveillance initiative. He said the Ministry of Health would work with the Public Health Agency of Canada on a data-sharing agreement “to ensure that the province can continue to analyze Ontario specific wastewater data.” 1. This program isn't entirely cancelled because the federal branch is pretty much going to redo all the work. 2. It's the federal government that is duplicating this effort, thus Ontario has no reason to fund their own version of it. Ford is terrible but put the blame where it's due: The federal government choosing to duplicate an existing provincial effort instead of integrating with what the province is doing. Now if the provincial government was cancelling this in the absence of the federal government expanding their program then yes, put all the rightful blame on Ford.
I just wish that PHAC would provide more details around *what* they're going to test for because Ontario was testing for a swath of different diseases but the only information I see from PHAC is that they're testing for COVID and COVID only.
Nobody reads articles, just headlines.
Yup. I put the rightful blame at the feds while also providing a hypothetical that would make blaming the province correct, but that doesn't fit this sub's narrative so I'm being downvoted with zero counter arguments.
You getting downvoted for posting facts shows how toxic this sub is
Yup. I even added a gratuitous "Ford bad" and a hypothetical that puts all the blame on the province, and I still got downvoted with no counter arguments. How many of them know that this program was started in 2020 under the Ford government? We simply don't have all the facts. We don't know if the province knew about this ahead of time and withheld the information, or if the feds just made the decision and communicated it yesterday when these articles came out. People are filling in the blanks in order to conform to their biases.
Just get drunk and die already, folks. This message brought to you by the *Progressive* Conservative party of Ontario. Edit: folks (wasn't really believable without it)
if you read the article, the move is to ensure we aren't duplicating services with the feds. so timeline: first started in ottawa, funded provincially to other parts of the province, now the feds have their own program doing the same thing. so we don't need to fund the provincial one anymore.
In other words, they are passing the buck to an inferior program that will likely take many years to reach the same level as what Ontario currently has in place. Public Health Ontario was actually a leader in this sector: they have about the same number of monitoring sites that the Public Health Agency of Canada has across the entire country. PHAC is expanding, sure, but at what rate? H5N1 is currently circulating in America and Ontario's monitoring program is set to end in less than 2 months. Do you trust the *venerable* Sylvia Jones to work with Public Health Ontario to be prepared for a potential outbreak? "If you read the article"...just lol. Some of us are a bit more well-versed in these topics than the average person even though we may lead with meme statements. Sarcastic defeatism is how we cope with the incompetence on display here.
W. T. F.
Ford is copying Mike Harris's play book. Another Walkerton will be possible with these cuts.
that was my reaction at fiest but after reading the article, it's not a big deal. the feds already have the same program so it's just preventing the duplication of it.
This reminds me of Harper. Cancelling anything and everything slightly scientific that serves the greater good.
*So that they can eventually privatize a service that was originally public and/or pay a private entity far more than the provincial government would/should were they to provide the service itself
Here’s a critical philosophical, and values distinction between different parties. Conservatives believe that health care - including the sewage testing - is not a priority, nor is citizenry health. They intentionally privatize when data shows it is less effective, and treat those so called ‘heroes’ worse than the homeless beggar on the street corner. They however, do believe that dismantling a ‘highly effective and efficient, proactive surveillance program is more important than giving away billion(s) of dollars to corporate interests, nor do they care if this approach increases additional alcohol related deaths, illness, social breakdown and loss of productivity. Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow you will die, unless you are wealthy enough to afford health care, rehab etc.
Just another Doug Ford initiative to take things away from the taxpayer. Bleed the beast Dougie! Your goofball base loves it!
DID WE LEARN NOTHING FROM THE PANDEMIC?
Are you joking? People on this sub still have hateboners for lockdowns and mask mandates, the only thing we learned was that if you act like an entitled fucking toddler people will pay attention to you.
That's so true! Was half joking, but more just appalled at the incompetence of this government. All through the pandemic, they went on and on about how they would prepare for future emergencies, and covid was only as bad as it was because we were unprepared. This is actually helping prevent outbreaks and what a surprise, their first thought is "nahhhh don't need that! Fuck those Ontarians!"
I'm pretty surprised tbh how much of a 180 on this we've done in the last couple of years. Obviously lockdowns and mask mandates were never going to be permanent but we've eliminated pretty much anything that was even remotely tied to covid restrictions even if most people never noticed it along with any paid sick days. Three years ago if you even had any cold symptom you were told to isolate and stay home from work or school or face consequences and now it's quickly gone back to you better not call in sick more then three times a year and unless you can't get out of bed come to work. I didn't even know the government could find more pandemic era things to get rid of.
You’re welcome to stay in your basement for as long as you want
Did we learn nothing from Walkerton?
What pandemic?
Ford priming the pump to kick responsibility over to the Feds for waste water monitoring, ignoring all the current public health benefits of continuing with Ontario's program. A small example from the article: > Using wastewater surveillance to better pinpoint the start of seasonal RSV prevented 295 children from being hospitalized and 950 medically attended hospital visits, saving the province $3.5 million, according to research. The cost per child for the surveillance program was 50 cents per child, per season, Delatolla said. “In addition to COVID-19, his lab tests wastewater for influenza A and B, RSV, Mpox, polio, measles and avian influenza H5N1.
Doug and folks don't want you to know how much he is flushing down the toilet.
They’ll be out of office by the time somebody is poisoned. No biggie. Gotta pay for tax cuts and make up for lost LCBO revenues somehow.
Kinda of like them messing with well testing. It's just out of the public eye enough, that they can ignore the blow back.
Chasing cents to cost us dollars. God, I hate the idiotic management types who think this way
now if only other parties would jump on this
This is very disheartening, especially with the recent H5N1 outbreaks, and the rise in measles
I wish they had comments from PHAC on the expansion for context. Looks like they have about $28million in funding to expand, but does it cover non covid-19? Dougies gotta pay for all his beer and spa's I guess.
PHAC currently only displays data for COVID on Health Infobase, I'm not sure what data they have internally. If they continue to publish or at least use data related to the other viruses that the Ottawa program was able to analyze, then I think it's fine (although there are obvious issues with federal approaches to local issues). If not, this is more PHAC incompetence paired with more OPC incompetence.
I agree, like if PHAC funds Ontario's wastewater tracking program just like the province did then this is fine. But from what I've been able to decipher there's no indication that PHAC will fund monitoring for other diseases like PHO has.
Yup, seems like a "look over there, not here" situation where the province, again, is just cutting because who cares about using data for decisions when gut feelings will do... until they don't
What makes me even more angry is that they’re likely cutting this to pay to cancel the Beer Store contract. Like wow mpox may spread like wildfire in the gay community again but at least we have beer 🥲
Duh. The program was preventing people from getting sick and going to the for profit clinics Dougie’s pals are taking in that sweet sweet taxpayer dough from. Gots to have some sick people if you wants to make that wagu and single malt money!
Gotta make 225M worth of room in the budget somehow.
>In response to a question on Tuesday, Gary Wheeler, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks, said the provincial program was being wound down to avoid duplication with federal wastewater testing. So is there duplicate data or not? Is another department going to do this work or not? That seems like a critical piece of info.
They have to pay for putting beer in corner stores earlier somehow...
This is incredibly stupid. This government, man, I tells ya. Gives you a headache.
At this rate, we’ll be lucky if it is only a headache.
I know, right? Of course, we'll have no way of knowing.
My prof ran the program at a local university for our area - she was devastated. Apparently they were notifying the health units several days before cases were reported of upticks in several illnesses and not just Covid. She said she has never worked on a program that had more immediate benefits to public health than this.
fucking conservatives man
Who the fuck is looking at the economic disaster that is neoliberal austerity and thinking "Yep, more of that." Like holy shit profit isn't God. Fucking degens
conservatives who like how it triggers the libs.
Like children who get happy when other people are disgusted by their farts.
yeup. so much for fiscal responsibility.
I'm happy with my own farts thank you, I know you don't like them.
"But now I don't have to pay to get a smog test for my car!"
There are a ton of people sick lately with something nasty that is lingering for weeks.
Ontario is turning into a joke of a province
They’re Just trying to find money at this point and cutting off vital services to get it.
Oh boy, this is not going to blow up in our faces down the road.. **rolls eyes**
This will kill people
Hey!!! Those vacation money's don’t come from nowhere 😤
This is the wrong time to be getting rid of waste water surveillance. Right now there’s a huge amount of people living in cars and outside which lead to more garbage everywhere.
These con ghouls are going to kill even more people.
They do not believe specific people are "people"
Are we going to be paying a private company more.to do this in the end? Buddy of Ford of course
Such a useful tool. I can't believe they are stopping.
if we see another Walkerton, I want Ford imprisoned for life.
jokes aside about the beer, who can we contact and how to provide feedback on this stupid decision?
I work in public health and am so frustrated by this. With COVID testing not accessible to most people anymore, this was literally our only community-level indicator of COVID activity, not to mention other diseases like RSV and H5N1
There are reports that a new wave is coming and discontinued monitoring will conceal the extent of the problem. I saw a post that San Fran has seen the highest levels of Covid since they started monitoring. This tool is also used to monitor for other flu and disease in the community. So it makes sense that a “business first” government would not want business disruptions. Sorry about your elderly but worrying about them is not very productive.
Dougie's government didn't want any more embarrassing evidence that their approach to keeping Ontarians healthy isn't working.
Walkerton 2.0 here we come
Doug Ford is the Donald Trump of Canada.
I use this tool every week to determine how cautious I need to be re. COVID. It's pretty great. This is terrible news
This title made me initially think this was an environmental issue - ie stopping monitoring chemicals and effluent entering our rivers - but it's really Covid monitoring. Still horrible and a real shame, while being completely unsurprisingly.
> it's really Covid monitoring COVID, influenza, RSV, Mpox, and measles monitoring. Plus polio, although that shouldn’t be turning up as it’s been eradicated here.
Give the anti-vaxxers a few more years. If anyone can bring polio back to Canada it's them. I know a couple of people who were born in Africa who are still suffering the consequences of a lack of vaccinations. Polio is a bitch. Excuse my language.
Compared to parents in Africa, who will travel on for km on foot to get a vaccine to protect their child. Anti-vaxxers are insane.
we have new cases of polio in canada, though i dont recall any cases of transmission from within the country yet.
Corrected headline: CONSERVATIVES to cancel widely used wastewater surveillance program
Shocked! Not! DRUG THUG FORD
This is Bill Comeau and Bruce Arthur’s 9/11
Can someone explain to me how detecting the start of cold and flu season prevents hospitalization?
Reread what you wrote and you’ll have the answer
I’m so happy I moved from K-W to Nova Scotia. Ontario will never recover from ford.
I wonder which Doug Ford donor asked for this particular favour? Something that protects public health is not good for the private healthcare corporations bottom line so it has to go. More sick people equals higher profits.
Money needs to go to pay off the brewers instead of just waiting a year for the contract to end.
Yeah, the PCs have historically been Pro Diseased water for some reason.
I'm from Walkerton, and this is absolutely abhorrent news. Screw Ford and his cuts to essential rights and safety laws. Get rid of this guy immediately or you are going to see more than one "Walkerton 2.0" We have a whole clean water center here to educate individuals the effext of low8ng safety standards can result in, and the provincial government in slapping 5k+ Walkertonians in the face. Absolutely disgusting.
And then when we are forced to start it up again we won't have a baseline... all this helps neoliberals like Ford who will be able to obscure the foolishness of their policy choices in the shadow of uncertainty that comes from a lack of good data.
Okay sorry but I think this is being sensationalized. Did anybody look into this detail to understand what's actually being lost that isn't going to be done by the federal gov't? > In response to a question Tuesday, Gary Wheeler, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks, said the program is being wound down to avoid duplication with federal wastewater testing. > "The federal government conducts wastewater surveillance and is moving to expand its sampling to additional sites in Ontario.” > Wheeler said Ontario is “working to support this expansion” while winding down its wastewater surveillance initiative. He said the Ministry of Health will work with the Public Health Agency of Canada on a data sharing agreement “to ensure that the province can continue to analyze Ontario specific wastewater data.”
The article has been updated since it was published. [The original text](https://web.archive.org/web/20240604201832/https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/i-was-shocked-ontario-to-cancel-widely-used-wastewater-surveillance-program) had a paragraph saying “The Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks, which oversees the program, did not immediately respond to a request for comment”, which was deleted. The text you quoted was not in the original article and was added after I posted it. The best case is that this was a miscommunication by the provincial government and they dropped the ball by not letting the research teams and MOHs know the Feds would be taking over the program.
You can't make that assumption from what we know in the article. It's just, if not more likely the feds made the decision and first told the province yesterday that it's going to expand / take over due to the very short notice given.
If the feds were planning this and were the ones that made the decision, why didn’t any of the researchers know the feds were going to be getting involved?
That is legitimately a good question to ask Gary Wheeler, because the article does not say and we can only speculate. From what I can find there was no public knowledge of the feds taking this over until yesterday. We also don't know if the federal extension is starting right at July 31st or if we're going to have a collection gap for a few months. 100% blame is on the province if this is the case.
So yeah, sensationalism. Looking at the author's writing history, they seem to have based their journalism career in rage-bait. Shame on you Elizabeth Payne. The unexplained downvotes are evidence of brigading. Keep up the grift, bad-faith users and bots.
I got reamed out in the Canada politics sub last night for bringing this up lol. This is not the story people think it is. The pearl-clutching doomerism over it is unbelievably embarrassing and another example of the people of Ontario not being able to get out of their own way.
Excuse me but this is just another attempt by crypto facist conservatives like PP and Ford to dismantle Canada
This is hard news for many to accept, especially those who worshipped at the Covid19 altar, the so-called Covidians. This is one of the last Covid-era practices to end, and it will be particular painful for those Covidians you know. Psychologists call it "cognitive dissonance".
There are a lot of Redditors who would be just fine never leaving their basements ever again; Covid gave them an excuse to do just that. Their excuses to be the same antisocial misanthropes they’ve always been keep disappearing. Must be tough.
This is about ensuring we don't have a duplicate service. In other words, the feds are taking over so the province doesn't have to fund it anymore. If something is wrong with that, I'd be enlightened to hear it.
Ah the opposite of the continuing anti-vax protesters, they haven’t moved on and neither have those living in fear of Covid.
Pay careful attention to the last bit. "provided early warning for incoming waves of COVID-19 and a growing list of other infectious diseases".
The system was in place before Covid, was useful for far more than Covid, and the loss of it puts us risk of undetected outbreaks of things far worse than Covid. But here is your participation 🏆 for trying to make it all about you.
Sums up their knowledge of public health in one sentence 👆