Office of the Official Opposition
For Immediate Release

St. John's, NL (September 15, 2020) – Paul Dinn, PC Official Opposition Shadow Minister for Immigration, Skills and Labour and MHA for Topsail-Paradise, is not impressed with the response of government to the transportation needs of many parents and their school aged children and the sense of indifference.

Dinn says, “I have quite a few students in the Topsail-Paradise district who were notified the Friday just prior to the school year beginning that they had no seat on the school bus and no way to get to and from school. Children were essentially left on the streets and parents scrambled to find alternate transportation plans. A lot of the parents were single parents, worked shift work, or had multiple children in multiple schools”

Dinn was adamant that with proper foresight and an actual plan a lot of the anguish could have been avoided. He was disappointed that Minister Osborne in answering questions in the House of Assembly appeared to pass the blame elsewhere.

Dinn noted, “The current Minister of Education was the past Minister of Finance and should very well have known that the Department of Education, one of the largest budget departments with a large allocation for busing would be impacted by the COVID pandemic. To suggest it wasn’t until August 14th that the busing problem became evident is totally unacceptable. It seems like their Cabinet operates in silos and no one knows what the other is doing. So much for the way forward.”

Dinn concluded that this is not unlike the student who forgets his/her homework. “This is a major oversight and looks like the dog must have ate their back to school plan.”

Contacts:

Bradley Russell

Director of Communications and Digital Strategy

(p) 1.709.729.3668

BradleyRussell@gov.nl.ca

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