Juno News - November 28, 2022


No more masks in Alberta schools

Topics
ending mask mandates in schools
Mentioned
Danielle Smith Adriana LaGrange Travis Taves
The last gasps of the Covid Crazies Pierre Poilievre and Justin Trudeau spar over Chinese election interference allegations

Episode Stats


Length

2 minutes

Words per minute

194.96

Word count

547

Sentence count

29


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says she s heard from parents and students alike and they desire a regular school year. Through new regulations, the Alberta government will not allow schools to move to fully remote online learning. They also won t allow students who choose not to wear a mask.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Okay guys, up first. Alberta Premier Daniel Smith has made good on her promise to end mask mandates
00:00:05.280 in school. She's also ending fully remote online learning. The Alberta government says during the
00:00:10.820 last two years there were periods of online learning and parents were often given little
00:00:14.880 to no warning before being told they would have to provide at-home care for their children.
00:00:19.620 Daniel Smith says she's heard from parents and students alike and they desire a regular school
00:00:23.920 year. Through new regulations, the Alberta government will not allow schools to move
00:00:27.200 to fully remote online learning. They also won't allow schools to ban students who choose not to
00:00:32.040 wear a mask. Education Minister Adriana LaGrange says parents and students want stability while
00:00:37.460 school boards want clarity. Quote, securing a face-to-face classroom environment means students
00:00:42.220 can continue to learn successfully while allowing their parents to go to work. It will also help to
00:00:47.460 maintain and improve student mental health while minimizing student learning loss. During the 2021
00:00:53.340 to 2022 school year, the government funded a $45 million pilot project to undergo assessments for
00:00:59.120 students. Through literacy assessments, the province learned that about 70,000 students from grade 1 to
00:01:04.700 3 were about 11 months behind their grade level. That period followed 17 months of on and off again
00:01:10.400 at-home learning. But after returning to consistent in-person learning from May to June 2022,
00:01:16.780 the average learning loss dropped by 3.7 months. The Alberta government has provided an additional
00:01:21.340 $10 million to continue funding the learning assessments. The province is also forecasting a
00:01:26.200 $12.3 billion surplus according to its fiscal update released on Thursday. The province will save
00:01:31.760 another $13.3 billion due to debt repayment. The surplus is $1 million shy of the province's last
00:01:38.340 estimate due to softening oil prices and demand. Still, high oil and gas prices contributed to a total
00:01:44.140 revenue of $76.9 billion, or $14.3 billion higher than the budget estimate. Alberta Premier Danielle
00:01:51.520 Smith said she promised to balance the budget so Albertans are on the hook for debt repayment
00:01:55.380 with showing compassion to Albertans in need. Finance Minister Travis Taves said the government's
00:02:00.840 disciplined fiscal approach combined with a focus on investment attraction, economic growth,
00:02:05.780 and improved commodity prices has resulted in material surpluses. Quote,
00:02:09.540 this is good news for Albertans as it allows for a timely response to the affordability crisis
00:02:14.380 many of our families are facing. In the face of a potential global recession,
00:02:19.660 Albertans can rest assured our province is in the best position possible as a result of our focus
00:02:24.880 on responsible fiscal management over the last three years. Take a listen to some of his comments
00:02:29.360 for yourself. I'm just very pleased that we can be at a point where we can be discussing,
00:02:34.280 you know, the tension between additional savings and additional debt reduction.
00:02:39.540 for example, theוא offers an annual survey of $17.00 for the population that picture
00:02:41.880 has gone pretty much works to find a partner. The more useful and attractive.
00:02:43.140 You know, it was a point where it already escapes and it's been in the past
00:02:44.680 the relationship of what it was saying. It was a relatively small bill of $125.iran
00:02:47.420 more than half the percentage extent, which means such a substitute in determining