As we mentioned in our update from January 6th, earlier last week we spoke via email with representatives of the Ministry Responsible for Sport, specifically Derek Rowland, Deputy Chief of Staff and Director of Communications and Brooke Timpson, Director of Stakeholder
Relations.

At that time Mr. Rowland indicated that: “We are working with our counterparts in the Ministry of Health to consider this matter further”.

We are still awaiting a response from Mr. Rowland on the Ministry's perspective after considering the matter further (I continue to be hopeful that we will receive clarity this week).

To help spur consideration, on January 7th we sent results of the petition to the Premier (Doug Ford), the Minister responsible for Sport (Lisa MacLeod), Mr. Rowland, Ms. Timpson, and Susan Truppe (Deputy Chief of Staff). At that time we had 5,000 signatures.

On Jan. 11th we sent an update on the petition to that same group. In the update we merged the results from our petition with the results from a second petition that was being circulated (titled "Let OUA athletes train and play" that was started by a student-athlete), after removing
duplicate names (of which there were many). The merged list has over 7,500 signatures!

That is a great response, and hopefully when combined with our ongoing
efforts/communication will help spur the Ford Government to ultimately deem OUA/OCAA athletes as "elite", and allow student-athletes to resuming training in a timely fashion which does not impact competition.

As well, today (Jan. 12th), via telephone I spoke with Gord Grace, President of the OUA to discuss the petition results so far and how we can continue to work together to put pressure on the government.

Strength in numbers!