This article is the sixth in a series exploring the long-term social impacts of COVID-19, written by members of the Trudeau Foundation COVID-19 Impact Committee
“A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones” — Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom
For many of you reading this article, your days have been pretty similar: a hot shower, breakfast, maybe some morning exercise, and getting ready to work from home. You may have not noticed, but if you currently have access to enough nutritious food, safe and stable housing, hygiene and health care, and secure employment, you are part of the world’s most privileged population.
Your normal routines are advantages millions of Canadians simply cannot afford. Particularly those who are marginalized.
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, one of seven people in Canada was living in poverty, and one of eight Canadian households struggled to put food on the table. This is shocking and shameful. The COVID-19 pandemic has only exposed a range of pre-existing vulnerabilities and inequities in Canada.
For example, Canada has been dealing with epidemics of chronic homelessness and drug overdoses for several years. In any given year, about 235,000 Canadians experience homelessness. People living with mental health conditions, physical disabilities, or substance use disorders make up a large part of the homeless population. So are those fleeing family violence, those with a history of incarceration, and Indigenous people.
Moreover, the opioid crisis continues to destroy communities across Canada. Between January 2016 and December 2019 alone, 15,393 Canadians have died because of opioid-related overdoses. These statistics clearly point both to the existence of public health and public policy emergencies, and to our inadequate responses on various socio-political levels.
I often wonder: what kind of an “emergency” can be allowed to last for years? Would COVID-19 be allowed to go on for several years, devastating our communities’ mental and physical health, without an appropriate government response?
Unfortunately, COVID-19 has been extra nightmarish for marginalized communities in Canada. It undeniably affected all of us, but it is important to recognize that it is not the “great equalizer,” and we are not all in this together.
Looking back at other major pandemics such as the Black Death (1347-1351; death toll: ~200M), Cholera (1817-1923; death toll: ~1M), HIV/AIDS (1981-present (death toll: ~32M so far), or H1N1 influenza (2009; death toll: ~575,000), we see that we have actually never been affected the same by a pandemic or a health emergency. Impoverished, malnourished, and marginalized populations have always suffered disproportionately higher number of infections and deaths.
Several pandemics later, conditions have improved, but not as much as hoped. As a society, we seem to have passively accepted health inequities among marginalized Canadians. This is unacceptable, inhumane, and unethical.
Indeed, we are to blame for creating system-level social, economic, and political structures that enforce sexism, racism, classism, ageism, xenophobia, and other discriminations. Such structures often intersect with each other and contribute to access gaps in education, health, employment, and housing among people living on the edges of the Canadian society.
Fortunately, COVID-19 has also created opportunities for self-reflection, and prompted discussion of how we treat marginalized populations. The pandemic showed us that challenging the status quo is essential in tackling the inequalities we see today across Canada.
Certain policies and interventions implemented at different scales across North America have proven both feasible and practical. For example, housing the homeless in safe, secure, and affordable places; providing 24/7 food bank services to those who are dealing with food insecurity; facilitating access to safer supplies of drugs and substance use treatment services for people living with substance use disorders; providing basic monthly income for low-income households; increasing the minimum wage; and decreasing the flow of people into jails while increasing the flow of “non-violent” and “low-risk” people out of jail.
These interventions and services should not be viewed as Band-Aid solutions or radical measures for desperate times. They should not disappear after the pandemic subsides. There is nothing radical about housing the homeless, preventing drug overdoses, feeding the hungry, increasing minimum wages, or reducing prison populations. These measures are urgently needed and are simply humane. They should be our “new normal” in Canada moving forward.
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