Waterloo company donates 750,000 face shields to teachers across Canada

The following is an excerpt from The Record article written by Laura Booth on Jul 29, 2020. 

The Canadian Shield President Jeremy Hedges looking on at a press conference announcing the donation of 750,000 face shields to teachers across Canada.

WATERLOO — The Canadian Shield is giving 750,000 reusable face shields to teachers in Canada to protect them from COVID-19.

Ontario Education Minister Stephen Lecce was at the Waterloo company on Wednesday to accept Ontario’s portion of the donation and said it will help with school preparations for September.

“The province recognizes that we have to take leadership as well to ensure that our front-line staff have the protective equipment they need,” he said. “They will, and those details will be unveiled very shortly.”

The province is expected to announce school plans for September this week. The announcement will clarify funding as well as standards for things like masking and busing protocols, the Ministry of Education said. 

With school just weeks away, the The Canadian Shield is donating about $7.5 million worth of shields to provincial and territorial governments to distribute.

“We’re donating a shield for every single teacher in Ontario and we’ll be working with other provinces and ministries across the country to do the same in the coming weeks,” said company president Jeremy Hedges.

The shield allows others to see people’s facial expressions, he said. 

“Those school boards really helped us in those early days,” said Hedges. As a result, The Canadian Shield was able to donate 20,000 shields to health-care workers in the first weeks of the pandemic.

“They’ve had our back. Now we’re going to have theirs,” Hedges said.

The company has since produced millions of face shields and now also produces cloth and surgical masks. In the next few months it will begin manufacturing isolation gowns as well.

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