Checking-In: Special Needs Students, Smoking Ban, Risky Jobs & HIV Status Disclosure

To get through some of your emails, posts, and tweets, Anna Maria was joined in studio by our Friday Host Susan Bonner.

Special Needs Students: On Tuesday we brought you a story about a new study published by the advocacy group, People for Education, that suggested as many as half of Ontario's elementary and secondary school principals surveyed - had at times asked parents to keep their special needs children at home.

Many of you weighed in on this story. Joanne Schep from Thunderbay Ontario emailed us this comment:

I have 2 special needs children who are in public school. Both have fared well in the system in large part due to the small country school they attend. However, I often wonder how it feels to be in a place where you are always behind the other children. Maybe we should put ourselves in our children's places. There should be times when our special ed children should be able to be with other children who are similar to them.

Connie Lloyd posted this message on Facebook:

It seems that perhaps some combination of special classes and integration with mainstream would be good. I do understand that special needs kids can be disruptive in an ordinary class and that it may not be the best learning environment. However, the gentleman made a valid point that the special needs kids need to be connected to their own community in a meaningful way.

Kathy Howery from Edmonton Alberta sent us this email:

I was quite concerned about how your show ended this morning. There is a strong body of research that suggests over reliance on educational assistants is actually poor practice. I believe what has happened across Canada is that we have substituted educational assistants for special education teachers. Not that EAs do not have a role, but I believe the research suggests that co-teaching between a general educator and a special educator is best practice.

Gavin Ross from Toronto sent us this email:

As a parent of a child with severe disabilities that attends one of Toronto's special education schools, I found your discussion both frightening and frustrating. I would love for my daughter to be able to go to her community school and get the supports she needs, but she can't. What would school look like for her? She would be in the building, among able bodied kids, running around, playing, talking. There would be nobody there who looks like her, who gets around like her, who speaks like her. Currently she is in a class with 6 kids - some talk, some use adaptive technology. Some walk, some use chairs or walkers. To have her go to a community school with an EA assisting her would be, in effect, segregating her in an environment where she had little in common with the other children, and little cause to relate or interact with them. She would be segregated, in the name of inclusion.

And Andrea Harbour from Burnaby, British Columbia emailed this comment:

I have a special needs daughter. Her life in regular classrooms and schools was hell from a social perspective. Also the quality of learning was low. She was taken out of her regular classroom daily to go to her "special needs" classroom. Kids are extremely cruel and teased her daily because she was ' different'. Her friends were other " special needs" kids. When she was in high school we finally put her in a special needs school in Edmonton. What a difference! She flourished and learned many useable skills. Her confidence soared, she was near the top of her class finally.

Risky Jobs: Alex Forrest, a Winnipeg firefighter and President of the United Firefighters of Winnipeg joined us on Tuesday for a look at whether people in dangerous jobs are adequately compensated for the risks they face.

Melinda Steffler from London ON responded:

My brother Greg, dedicated 26 years of his life to Firefighting in downtown Toronto. He is now fighting for his life with a "typical firefighters" cancer. He may not out live our father, see his two girls grow into the amazing women they will be and finally get to take down time with his wife. Greg's motivation was to do good work in his community, help people and working and living with a great team. I do not believe they are paid enough for what they do.

Jane Byers from Nelson BC emailed:

As a professional who has worked with firefighters, I think they are well paid for the danger in their jobs. I don't know of any other profession where one can earn in range of $60 to $80,00 to start, coming out of high school and get extensively trained on the job. The reality is, their jobs are dangerous at moments but I've never seen a job with so much down time either.

Mandeep Basi tweeted:

Many working-class Canadians have jobs in factories, transport, etc that impinge on health and quality of life over the long term. So, it is difficult to quantify risk in relation to work.

HIV Status Disclosure: In October 2012 the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that an individual can be charged with aggravated assault if they did not disclose their HIV-status unless they have low viral load and use a condom. Some HIV experts critical of the ruling argued that it did not reflect current scientific evidence about how HIV is transmitted.

Over 70 Canadian physicians and scientific experts on HIV have now signed on to a "consensus statement" that reviews current scientific research on HIV transmission and affirms that HIV is difficult to transmit sexually.

Dr. Mona Loutfy is one of six co-authors of the statement. She is an infectious disease specialist and researcher at the Women's College Hospital and the University of Toronto and she was in St John's.

Smoking Ban: Last week we examined a story about stricter smoking bylaws being considered in Victoria, British Columbia. The bylaw would prevent smokers from lighting up in any public square, playground, park, or on a sidewalk within 7 metres of a building ... something critics say is just about anywhere downtown.

Well you had a lot to say about this. Nora Cummings from Charlotttown shared this:

Gah, the discussion about banning smoking just drives me crazy. Seriously, under the guise of public health, the rights of anyone wishing to put smoke in their lungs have been eviscerated. Ask any addicted smoker and you will not stop them by closing in on their rights in the great outdoors ... I just get tired fighting the nanny state.

Paul Spaniel from Aylmer, Quebec emailed us this:

Will they also ban engine exhaust? Why ban smoking only when the former is much more deadly? Why abandon their logic after dealing with smoking? They should follow through and air quality will be better for us all. Anything less is righteous hypocrisy.

Cathy Lloyd from Nanaimo, British Columbia wrote:

Many are concerned with the rights of the smoker. I don't get it! I am a non-smoker and will never pick up that habit. My dad was a smoker for years and I was living in smoke! After surviving 2 tumour surgeries, I am sick of being assaulted, yes assaulted by plumes of smoke as I enter and exit restaurants and grocery stores. I am equally sick of having to walk through a wall of smoke to get to my place of work. What right do smokers have to force me to inhale carcinogens on an almost daily basis?

And Matt McTaggart tweeted this:

I can't drink a glass of wine in a public park and that would have no health impact on anyone - why is smoking so special?

Upcoming Dementia Special: We are working on an upcoming program and we'd like to hear from you in advance. We'll be taking a look at dementia and talking about adjusting to the diagnosis; the challenges facing caregivers and families of people with dementia; new thinking on how best to care for people with advanced dementia; and what the latest science tells us about the disease and potential treatment.

We'll tell you more about the special in the days to come ... but meantime, we're interested to hear from you. If you're living with dementia or caring for someone affected, tell us about your experience, your challenges, what's working, or not... we'll try to incorporate some of your feedback into the special.

And of course, contact us with anything else you'd like to say about or program.

Tweet us @thecurrentcbc. Or e-mail us through our website. Find us on Facebook. Call us toll-free at 1 877 287 7366. And as always if you missed anything on The Current, grab a podcast.

This segment was produced by The Current's Josh Bloch and Kristin Nelson.