TRREB to drop ‘master’ bedroom term, replace with ‘primary’ in coming months

2021/04/16 1 Comment

More on the elimination of “master:”

Greater Toronto Area home hunters browsing through property listings will soon notice a change.

The organization will use the word “primary” in place of “master,” when referencing the main or principal bedrooms in homes in the coming months, said Toronto Regional Real Estate Board president Lisa Patel. “We know that words matter, and this is a step forward in rethinking outdated terms and modernizing the language used in the real estate industry,” TRREB said in a notice sent to realtors about the change.

The Ontario-based board is the latest in a string of real estate organizations to ditch terminology that is often seen as a reference to racism, sexism and slavery.

The Canadian Real Estate Association, for example, switched to using “primary” on Realtor.ca last October after a recommendation from the Real Estate Standards Organization.

“Concerns about potentially derogatory connotations have caused some groups to push to change the ‘master’ terms,” said RESO chief executive Sam DeBord in the recommendation. “While use of this terminology by real estate professionals has been reviewed and cleared of discriminatory violations … consumer and professional concerns have remained, prompting some marketplaces to use alternatives.”

While TRREB’s change has yet to come into effect, Royal LePage Estate Realty’s Asha Forrester was pleased with the decision. “It’s about time this was brought to light,” she said. “I think for people’s perceptions to change our narrative and our language needs to change too.”

Though many agents like Forrester have already been using “primary,” she has noticed some have yet to make the switch.

When they use “master,” she responds using “primary.” “It’s just a good step to start correcting people, when they do use that,” she said.

RE/MAX Hallmark Realty Ltd. real estate agent Desmond Brown was also in favour of the switch and believes it reflects how modern society is handling discrimination. “This new generation isn’t taking it anymore and I think that’s a good thing,” he said.

Brown sees the change as a sign of how language and attitudes evolve, but knows there will be some challenges as adoption happens.

“We’re still going to get some Realtors who are going to, you know, push back on this because… some people are just reluctant to change.”

TRREB’s change in terminology will apply to any entries in its MLS system, on TRREB.ca and on its Webforms platform, where realtors share forms with clients, Patel said in an email.

TRREB’s board of directors approved the change following a recommendation made by its diversity and inclusion committee.

Source: TRREB to drop ‘master’ bedroom term, replace with ‘primary’ in coming months

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Italian-Canadians to get formal apology for treatment during Second World War

2021/04/16 Leave a comment

Remember well the challenges Canadian Heritage’s historical recognition program uhad in working with the Italian Canadian representatives during my time there, as well as some of the academics who challenged the community narrative (Enemies Within: Italian and Other Internees in Canada and Abroad):

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will issue a formal apology next month for the treatment of Italian-Canadians during the Second World War.

The government said in a news release that 600 Italian-Canadian men were interned in camps in Canada after Italy allied with Germany and joined the war in 1940.

Some 31,000 other Italian-Canadians were declared enemy aliens.

Trudeau told the House of Commons Wednesday that his government “will right these wrongs” by issuing a formal apology in May.

In 1988, Canada formally apologized and offered $300 million in compensation to Japanese-Canadians, 22,000 of whom were interned in camps during the Second World War.

Trudeau did not say whether there will be compensation for Italian-Canadians.

He announced plans for the apology in response to a question Wednesday from Liberal MP Angelo Iacono.

“During the Second World War, hundreds of Italian-Canadians were interned for the simple reason that they were of Italian heritage,” Iacono told the Commons.

“Parents were taken away from their homes, leaving children without their fathers in many cases and families without a paycheque to put food on their tables. Lives and careers, businesses and reputations were interrupted and ruined, and yet no one was held responsible.

“Italian Canadians have lived with these memories for many years and they deserve closure.”

Trudeau replied that Canadians of Italian heritage “deal with ongoing discrimination related to mistakes made by our governments of the past that continue to affect them to this day.”

“I’m proud to stand up and say that our government will right these wrongs with a formal apology in the month of May.”

The government’s news release said that in 1939, the Defence of Canada Regulations gave the justice minister the right to intern, seize property and limit activities of Canadian residents born in countries that were at war with Canada.

The regulations clearly targeted Canadians’ fear of “the foreign element,” and not a single person was ever charged with any crime, the release said.

In 2018, the RCMP issued a statement of regret for their involvement in the internment.

The government’s formal apology will pay tribute to and honour the families of each of the 600 interned as an act of respect and an acknowledgment that an injustice happened, the release said.

Canada is home to over 1.6 million Canadians of Italian origin, one of the largest Italian diasporas in the world, and they have made immeasurable contributions to the social, cultural and economic fabric of the country, the release added.

A joint statement from 10 Italian-Canadian members of Parliament, including Justice Minister David Lametti and Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino, said many residents suffered irrevocable harm.

“They may have been Italian by heritage, but they were Canadians first. We as Italian Members of Parliament thank those members before us who brought attention to this injustice and helped bring this apology to fruition for these families in our Italian-Canadian communities.”

Source: Italian-Canadians to get formal apology for treatment during Second World War

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As a Cultural War Continues to Cause Waves in France, Art Has Become a Lighthouse for Progressive Views

2021/04/16 Leave a comment

More of France’s “culture war,” this time with respect to the arts sector:

Accused of pandering to the far-right ahead of France’s federal election in 2022, President Emmanuel Macron attempted a balancing act. In January 2021, the leader’s party said it would create a “memories and truth” commission on France’s painful colonial history and war with Algeria. In March, it released a report on the positive contributions of individuals of immigrant backgrounds called “Portraits of France.”

These initiatives are part of a broader effort to find alternative solutions to growing demands for the removal of statues and street names honoring historical figures that are connected to France’s colonial past, including its slave trade. Yet, at the same time, Macron and some of his ministers have been igniting emotions as they publicly denounce forces that they see as stoking so-called “separatism,” including what many see as US-style political correctness and cancel culture—the latter of which is a largely unpopular but growing concept in France—as well as a perceived US-version of multiculturalism.

Recent events within and outside of France have further stoked this fire. The #MeToo movement has been met with uneven hostility. The October decapitation of a teacher who showed cartoons of the prophet Muhammad during a course on free speech has led to a new bill “against separatism,” which aims to combat Islamic radicalism. And the protests in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in the US last year have prompted renewed conversation about the nature of racism in France, and put the country’s old ways of cultural assimilation on trial.

Against this backdrop of a culture war that shows little signs of abating, artistic projects remain a powerful place for progressive discourse in France—even as some factions in the country move to denounce what many have called an “importation” of America’s discourse on identity politics.

Art and Politics

As warring factions argue over how to integrate populations of citizens descended from former colonies, a new resurgent left, notably marked by young people from within the very populations at the center of the issue, has been pushing back against the country’s “universalist” social model, which traditionally downplays—some would say ignores—cultural differences between citizens. The traditional style of governance aims to avoid what is often viewed as an Americanized version of warring ethnic and religious groups.

In a Le Monde editorial from March, supporters of the president’s “Portraits of France” project said that playwrights, filmmakers, and painters should “seize upon these life stories and make works of art out of them that speak to our society and our world.” They added that “by ignoring a part of our shared past, we have made it harder to understand our present and to write our future.”

But these cultural in-roads are not always met with open arms. The executive branch of French government has specifically singled out academia, including the social science fields of post-colonial and intersectional studies, saying that these areas are under risk of influence from radical agendas that are pitting communities against each other. It also announced in February a sweeping investigation into the presence of “Islamo-gauchisme”—a term loosely referring to extreme-left activists who are “complacent” toward radical forms of Islamism or who apologize for terrorism—in universities. As a result, many are worried about censorship in schools and that scholarly research into the darker chapters of France’s history is under threat.

This debate spewed over into the art world when a government-commissioned portrait series of women publicly displayed in March in Paris, which was designed to celebrate diversity by featuring images of professionals from an array of different fields, sparked a vicious response. The photographs in “109 Mariannes” became fodder for controversy due to the inclusion of the young astrophysicist Fatoumata Kébé who was singled out for her headscarf. Angered that Kébé was chosen to emblematize “Marianne,” the personification of the French Republic often seen interpreted in art or on stamps, former spokesperson for the right-leaning Republican party, Lydia Guirou, was among the angry tweeters: “Marianne is not and will NEVER wear the headscarf!”

The sentiment dovetails with a draft bill that the Senate amended this month to forbid chaperones on school field trips from wearing Muslim headscarves. The bill has been strongly criticized for stigmatizing Muslims and called an overreach of France’s already strict secular laws, which forbid the wearing of clearly visible religious symbols in schools, and by civil servants.

The Faces of the Republic

Despite instances of incendiary reactions, the cultural sphere is being won over by a new wave of progressive viewpoints and views are indeed changing. A younger generation has become eager to more openly focus on the topic of race and difference. French citizens of immigrant descent are raising their voices to say that, in practice, their identities are under-represented in a society that discriminates against them for their inherent differences. With a sense of irony, they describe a society which claims to be blind to those differences while demanding that any outward signs of that difference—for example, hijabs—are avoided, to best fit a cultural mold.

“We like the idea of ‘universalism,’ because it’s a kind of utopia… But it’s easier to go to Mars than to the land of universalism,” Nadine Houkpatin told Artnet News. She is co-curator with Céline Seror of a show that includes work by artists from Africa and its diaspora called Memoria: accounts of another History that is on view until November at the Frac-Nouvelle Acquitaine MECA in Bordeaux. Houkpatin notes that while a new generation has indeed been “inspired” by some of the “woke” political ideas stemming from the US, the theorists behind many of these left-leaning ideas are often of French origin.

The curators of the Bordeaux show surmise that, when it comes to discussing these issues through art, people have an easier time accepting more progressive, controversial topics. “I think that through art, we can address these questions that are essential,” said Seror. Art “gives a certain liberty that enables us to express ourselves about these subjects,” she added.

Indeed, it seems that the art world has been somewhat shielded: Responses were overwhelmingly positive to the two shows, despite the debates going on in the public realm. The show at Musée d’Orsay even received a nod from a critic who supports the government’s investigation into academics. “I saw the exhibition, and very much appreciated it,” said Nathalie Heinich, a sociologist who has published work on contemporary art.  She is in favor of the French government’s recent stance against “radical” intellectual currents “that come from elsewhere” and a signatory in an editorial in Le Monde that described them as “feeding a hatred for ‘whites.’”

Pap Ndiaye, the historian and new director of France’s immigration museum, the Palais de la Porte-Dorée, recently told reporters that he too is concerned by the pushback on academia. “It comes at a moment when post-colonial and intersectional questions are beginning to find their very small space in French universities,” he said. “If we stop teaching them, where will the students go?” The Paris museum he oversees is currently showing an exhibit on the immigrant experience that includes 18 artists from Africa and its diaspora—it is a poignant exploration of artistic diversity and it falls on the 90th anniversary of the museum, which infamously opened with an exhibition to celebrate the colonies and included human exhibits.

The title of the show at Ndiaye’s museum, “Ce qui s’oublie et ce qui reste,” which translates to “What is forgotten and what remains,” also seems to ask what traces of this dark past remain in the popular subconscious today. It is on view until July.

While the government and certain factions of the population continue to rail against the universities, art institutions are set to become an increasingly singular voice for pressing questions about post-colonialism in France. “When an artist presents [their work] in a museum that is open to the public, then we can start talking about colonialism, decolonization, and its impact on society,” said curator Seror. “That’s the power of art.”

Source: As a Cultural War Continues to Cause Waves in France, Art Has Become a Lighthouse for Progressive Views

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‘Master,’ ‘Slave’ and the Fight Over Offensive Terms in Computing

2021/04/15 Leave a comment

Interesting with some useful alternatives: primary/secondary, source/replica:

Anyone who joined a video call during the pandemic probably has a global volunteer organization called the Internet Engineering Task Force to thank for making the technology work.

The group, which helped create the technical foundations of the internet, designed the language that allows most video to run smoothly online. It made it possible for someone with a Gmail account to communicate with a friend who uses Yahoo, and for shoppers to safely enter their credit card information on e-commerce sites.

Now the organization is tackling an even thornier issue: getting rid of computer engineering terms that evoke racist history, like “master” and “slave” and “whitelist” and “blacklist.”

But what started as an earnest proposal has stalled as members of the task force have debated the history of slavery and the prevalence of racism in tech. Some companies and tech organizations have forged ahead anyway, raising the possibility that important technical terms will have different meanings to different people — a troubling proposition for an engineering world that needs broad agreement so technologies work together.

While the fight over terminology reflects the intractability of racial issues in society, it is also indicative of a peculiar organizational culture that relies on informal consensus to get things done.

The Internet Engineering Task Force eschews voting, and it often measures consensus by asking opposing factions of engineers to hum during meetings. The hums are then assessed by volume and ferocity. Vigorous humming, even from only a few people, could indicate strong disagreement, a sign that consensus has not yet been reached.

The I.E.T.F. has created rigorous standards for the internet and for itself. Until 2016, it required the documents in which its standards are published to be precisely 72 characters wide and 58 lines long, a format adapted from the era when programmers punched their code into paper cards and fed them into early IBM computers.

“We have big fights with each other, but our intent is always to reach consensus,” said Vint Cerf, one of the founders of the task force and a vice president at Google. “I think that the spirit of the I.E.T.F. still is that, if we’re going to do anything, let’s try to do it one way so that we can have a uniform expectation that things will function.”

The group is made up of about 7,000 volunteers from around the world. It has two full-time employees, an executive director and a spokesman, whose work is primarily funded by meeting dues and the registration fees of dot-org internet domains. It cannot force giants like Amazon or Apple to follow its guidance, but tech companies often choose to do so because the I.E.T.F. has created elegant solutions for engineering problems.

Its standards are hashed out during fierce debates on email lists and at in-person meetings. The group encourages participants to fight for what they believe is the best approach to a technical problem.

While shouting matches are not uncommon, the Internet Engineering Task Force is also a place where young technologists break into the industry. Attending meetings is a rite of passage, and engineers sometimes leverage their task force proposals into job offers from tech giants.

In June, against the backdrop of the Black Lives Matter protests, engineers at social media platforms, coding groups and international standards bodies re-examined their code and asked themselves: Was it racist? Some of their databases were called “masters” and were surrounded by “slaves,” which received information from the masters and answered queries on their behalf, preventing them from being overwhelmed. Others used “whitelists” and “blacklists” to filter content.

Mallory Knodel, the chief technology officer at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a policy organization, wrote a proposal suggesting that the task force use more neutral language. Invoking slavery was alienating potential I.E.T.F. volunteers, and the terms should be replaced with ones that more clearly described what the technology was doing, argued Ms. Knodel and the co-author of her proposal, Niels ten Oever, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam. “Blocklist” would explain what a blacklist does, and “primary” could replace “master,” they wrote.

On an email list, responses trickled in. Some were supportive. Others proposed revisions. And some were vehemently opposed. One respondent wrote that Ms. Knodel’s draft tried to construct a new “Ministry of Truth.” Amid insults and accusations, many members announced that the battle had become too toxic and that they would abandon the discussion.

The pushback didn’t surprise Ms. Knodel, who had proposed similar changes in 2018 without gaining traction. The engineering community is “quite rigid and averse to these sorts of changes,” she said. “They are averse to conversations about community comportment, behavior — the human side of things.”

In July, the Internet Engineering Task Force’s steering group issued a rare statement about the draft from Ms. Knodel and Mr. ten Oever. “Exclusionary language is harmful,” it said.

A month later, two alternative proposals emerged. One came from Keith Moore, an I.E.T.F. contributor who initially backed Ms. Knodel’s draft before creating his own. His cautioned that fighting over language could bottleneck the group’s work and argued for minimizing disruption.

The other came from Bron Gondwana, the chief executive of the email company Fastmail, who said he had been motivated by the acid debate on the mailing list.

“I could see that there was no way we would reach a happy consensus,” he said. “So I tried to thread the needle.”

Mr. Gondwana suggested that the group should follow the tech industry’s example and avoid terms that would distract from technical advances.

Last month, the task force said it would create a new group to consider the three drafts and decide how to proceed, and members involved in the discussion appeared to favor Mr. Gondwana’s approach. Lars Eggert, the organization’s chair and the technical director for networking at the company NetApp, said he hoped guidance on terminology would be issued by the end of the year.

The rest of the industry isn’t waiting. The programming community that maintains MySQL, a type of database software, chose “source” and “replica” as replacements for “master” and “slave.” GitHub, the code repository owned by Microsoft, opted for “main” instead of “master.”

In July, Twitter also replaced a number of terms after Regynald Augustin, an engineer at the company, came across the word “slave” in Twitter’s code and advocated change.

But while the industry abandons objectionable terms, there is no consensus about which new words to use. Without guidance from the Internet Engineering Task Force or another standards body, engineers decide on their own. The World Wide Web Consortium, which sets guidelines for the web, updated its style guide last summer to “strongly encourage” members to avoid terms like “master” and “slave,” and the IEEE, an organization that sets standards for chips and other computing hardware, is weighing a similar change.

Other tech workers are trying to solve the problem by forming a clearinghouse for ideas about changing language. That effort, the Inclusive Naming Initiative, aims to provide guidance to standards bodies and companies that want to change their terminology but don’t know where to begin. The group got together while working on an open-source software project, Kubernetes, which like the I.E.T.F. accepts contributions from volunteers. Like many others in tech, it began the debate over terminology last summer.

“We saw this blank space,” said Priyanka Sharma, the general manager of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, a nonprofit that manages Kubernetes. Ms. Sharma worked with several other Kubernetes contributors, including Stephen Augustus and Celeste Horgan, to create a rubric that suggests alternative words and guides people through the process of making changes without causing systems to break. Several major tech companies, including IBM and Cisco, have signed on to follow the guidance.

Although the Internet Engineering Task Force is moving more slowly, Mr. Eggert said it would eventually establish new guidelines. But the debate over the nature of racism — and whether the organization should weigh in on the matter — has continued on its mailing list.

In a subversion of an April Fools’ Day tradition within the group, several members submitted proposals mocking diversity efforts and the push to alter terminology in tech. Two prank proposals were removed hours later because they were “racist and deeply disrespectful,” Mr. Eggert wrote in an email to task force participants, while a third remained up.

“We build consensus the hard way, so to speak, but in the end the consensus is usually stronger because people feel their opinions were reflected,” Mr. Eggert said. “I wish we could be faster, but on topics like this one that are controversial, it’s better to be slower.”

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/technology/racist-computer-engineering-terms-ietf.html

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Doug Ford’s ‘stay home’ message is absurd. Workers in the hardest-hit areas can’t stay home — they’re essential

2021/04/15 Leave a comment

Seeing more of these kinds of articles, making the needed comparisons:

A retiree in Rosedale is vaccinated against a virus she’s highly unlikely to catch. Meanwhile, the 35-year-old warehouse worker from North Toronto who is boxing up the retiree’s water resistant throw pillows just in time for patio season is still awaiting his shot. 

Maybe the warehouse worker (who is far more likely than the retiree to catch COVID-19) isn’t eligible for a vaccine yet, or maybe he is eligible but he isn’t sure where or when to get jabbed because everything is so goddamned confusing.

He checked the provincial website but no luck. 

He heard something about vaccine pop-up clinics emerging in his area, but the details are vague. He lives in a so-called “hot spot” but he isn’t involved in community groups; he doesn’t belong to a church or a mosque that would advertise such a clinic. If one pops up, unless he’s lucky, he may miss it. 

The good news is that the Rosedale retiree’s pillows will arrive at her house ahead of schedule. Saturday’s physically distanced backyard tea party will be lovely. 

The above is not an excerpt from the “Hunger Games,” or some Toronto-themed dystopia novel. It’s the reality of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout in Canada’s most populous city, one that despite city officials’ efforts has produced the following uneven result: those least likely to get the virus are vaccinated in large numbers while those most likely to get it are not. 

According to recent reporting by Olivia Bowden and May Warren, affluent Moore Park is “the most vaccinated neighbourhood in Toronto” (22 per cent of residents have received one shot), while Jane and Finch “where more than half the residents do not speak English as a first language, and where thousands of essential workers live, had the lowest vaccination rate” (5.5 per cent of residents have received one shot).

But this disparity isn’t just glaring in terms of vaccination rates. It’s glaring in terms of mobility too: how much time Torontonians are spending at home vs. out of the house. 

According to data presented at a Toronto Board of Health meeting Monday morning, Torontonians who live in the city’s northwest end — where essential workers tend to live — are leaving their homes more often than those in neighbourhoods where infection rates are lower. 

What’s more, between late March and early April when Premier Doug Ford pulled the “emergency brake,” time spent at home for Torontonians who live in some essential worker enclaves appears to have actually decreased slightly.

Toronto’s top doctor, Dr. Eileen de Villa, presented a map highlighting the disparity at Monday’s meeting. “What we have seen recently is a reduced mobility overall in the city but not equally experienced in all parts of the city,” she said. “We’re seeing more mobility in the northwest of the city which we know has had disproportionate impact of COVID-19.” 

This isn’t a coincidence says Toronto Board of Health chair Joe Cressy. “What’s critical to understand here is that as the people who aren’t staying home, they’re not going out partying — they’re going to their essential jobs. Since the stay-at-home order was issued, people are staying home more often, but not in those hard-hit neighbourhoods.” 

People are staying home more often, but not in those hard-hit neighbourhoods.

If ever there was a statement that defined the urgency of vaccinating essential workers immediately, this is it. If ever there was a statement that defined the urgency of easy to access paid sick leave, this is it. And if ever there was a statement that defined the absurdity of politicians’ repeated directives to “stay home” this is it. 

“Stay-at-home orders only work for people who can stay at home,” says Cressy. And yet, leaders like Ford continue to hammer home the “stay home” message to people who are already complying, or who can’t comply because they have essential jobs. 

On April 7, Ford tweeted the following: “Stay home. Stay safe. Save lives.” On April 10 he tweeted: “Gardening is a great way to enjoy the outdoors while staying at home.” Earlier this year, the premier butchered about a dozen languages asking Ontarians to stay home. 

The problem is that when people have to go to work it doesn’t matter if you ask them nicely in their native tongue not to. 

It doesn’t matter how many empty directives our leaders give. Until vaccines pick up dramatically in Toronto’s inner suburbs and essential workers get paid sick leave that is effective immediately, the cycle will continue. 

The vaccinated will sit safe at home awaiting the contactless delivery of throw pillows. The people who make that life possible will get sick. Contactless delivery is not contactless for everyone. 

Source: https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2021/04/12/doug-fords-stay-home-message-is-absurd-workers-in-the-hardest-hit-areas-cant-stay-home-theyre-essential.html?li_source=LI&li_medium=thestar_recommended_for_you

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Tucker Carlson and White Replacement: This racist theory is rooted in white supremacist panic.

2021/04/14 Leave a comment

Good commentary by Charles Blow:

On Thursday, Fox News host Tucker Carlson caused an uproar by promoting the racist, anti-Semitic, patriarchal and conspiratorial “white replacement theory.” Also known as the “great replacement theory,” it stands on the premise that nonwhite immigrants are being imported (sometimes the Jewish community is accused of orchestrating this) to replace white people and white voters. The theory is also an inherent chastisement of white women for having a lower birthrate than nonwhite women.

As Carlson put it:

“I know that the left and all the gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term ‘replacement,’ if you suggest that the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate, the voters now casting ballots, with new people, more obedient voters, from the third world. But, they become hysterical because that’s what’s happening, actually. Let’s just say it: That’s true.”

Carlson continued, “Every time they import a new voter, I become disenfranchised as a current voter.”

The whole statement is problematic. First, what is the third world? This label originated as a way to categorize countries that didn’t align with Western countries or the former Soviet bloc. It’s now often used to describe poor countries, or developing countries, and by extension, mostly nonwhite majority countries.

When Carlson worries about immigrants from the third world, he is talking about Hispanic, Asian and Black people who he worries will outnumber “current” voters. Current voters, in this formulation, are the white people who make up the majority of the American electorate.

Second, and revealingly, he is admitting that Republicans do not and will not appeal to new citizens who are immigrants.

But although white replacement theory is a conspiracy theory, the fact that the percentage of voters who are white in America is shrinking as a percentage of all voters is not. Neither is the fact that white supremacists are panicked about this.

White supremacists in this country have long worried about being replaced by people, specifically voters, who are not white. In the post-Civil War era, before the current immigrant wave from predominantly nonwhite countries, most of that anxiety in America centered on Black people.

Judge Solomon Calhoon of Mississippi wrote in 1890 of the two decades of Black suffrage following the Civil War, “Negro suffrage is an evil.”

Calhoon worried that white voters had been replaced, or outnumbered, by Black ones, writing: “Shall the ballot remain as now adjusted, the whole country in the meantime taking the chances of the rapid increase of the blacks, and leaving, in the meantime, the whites as they now are in those localities where they are outnumbered?”

Calhoon would go on to become the president of the state’s constitutional convention that year, a convention called with the explicit intention of codifying white supremacy and suppressing the Black vote. States across the South would follow the Mississippi example, calling constitutional conventions of their own, until Jim Crow was the law of the South.

The combination of Jim Crow voter suppression laws and the migration of millions of Black people out of the South during the Great Migration diluted the Black vote, distributing it across more states, and virtually guaranteed that white voters would not be outnumbered by Black ones in any state. The fear of “Black domination” dissipated.

Indeed, as extension of the 1965 Voting Rights Act was being debated in 1969, The New York Times made note of the fact that Attorney General John Mitchell, a proponent of a competing bill, was well aware that even if all the unregistered Black people in the South were registered, their voting power still couldn’t overcome the “present white conservative tide” in the South. As The Times added, “In fact, Mr. Mitchell is known to believe that Negro registration benefits the Republicans because it drives the Southern whites out of the Democratic Party.”

A reporter at the time asked an aide of a Republican representative, “What has happened to the party of Lincoln?” The aide responded, “It has put on a Confederate uniform.”

But now, in addition to Black voters voting overwhelmingly Democratic, there is a wave of nonwhite immigrants who also lean Democratic. And tremendous energy is being exerted not only by white supremacists in the general population, but also Republican office holders, to attack immigrants, curtail immigration, disenfranchise Black and brown voters and assail abortion rights.

One of the surest ways of preventing a Black person from voting is to prevent them from living. As The Times reported in 1970, Leander Perez, a man who had been a judge and prosecutor and “led the last stand against integration” in Louisiana’s Plaquemines Parish, once famously linked Black birth control to racial dominance, stating: “The best way to hate a [expletive] is to hate him before he’s born.”

I would even argue that the bizarre obsession with trans people is also rooted in part in white anxiety over reproduction.

The architects of whiteness in America drew the definition so narrowly that it rendered it fragile, unsustainable, and in constant need of defense. Replacement of the white majority in this country by a more multiracial, multicultural majority is inevitable. So is white supremacist panic over it.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/11/opinion/tucker-carlson-white-replacement.html

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Working from home is here to stay — and for some Canadians, that’s a big problem

2021/04/14 Leave a comment

Good highlighting of the inequalities between those able to work from home and those not, mainly younger, visible minority or immigrant workers with lower income. Working from home appears to be a good overall proxy for privilege and class:

Working from home has a bright side for a lot of us, and we really hope it will outlast the pandemic.

No morning commute, no mad scramble out the door with packed lunches and wet laundry left in the machine to grow mildew all day, no race at the end of the day to tie up all the loose ends before rushing home to make dinner.

But that’s not the case for everyone, and new research shows working from home over the long term is often far less than ideal for young workers, immigrants, racialized workers and people living with disabilities.

In other words, the very same people who have been at the sharp end of the stick during the pandemic now risk being thrust into a precarious situation yet again in a post-pandemic world where working from home becomes a norm.

We can decide right now not to do that.

The Environics Institute teamed up with the Future Skills Centre and Ryerson University’s Diversity Institute to figure out what the workforce of the future looks like and how COVID-19 has disrupted so much. They surveyed almost 5,400 people across the country on what their work-from-home experience has been like, and they also dug down into how age, race, immigrant history and income make a difference. 

And they do make a difference — both during the pandemic and, if the survey is a good indication, afterwards too.

Generally, those of us who are working from home are content with the way things are going, and hope to be able to continue spending at least a couple of days a week in our home offices when the pandemic winds down.

“There’s no going back,” says Andrew Parkin, executive director of the Environics Institute.

The stigma of working from home from time to time has dissipated now that so many people have shown it can be done without compromising quality, he added, and employers will need to figure out how to incorporate work-from-home arrangements over the long term.

Of course, not everyone has shared in that experience during the pandemic. As we know, it’s been mainly white-collar workers who have been able to set up shop at their kitchen tables. About half of us have been going into the workplace regularly throughout the pandemic, while 36 per cent of us have been able to work from home full time, according to a report published last week by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and Abacus Data. 

Low-income workers, people of colour and young people have been more likely to have to keep going into their traditional workplaces. They’ve also been most likely to lose their jobs during the pandemic, according to employment data over the past few months. They’ve had a harder time getting back into the workforce. And they’ve also been more likely to be on the front lines of contagion, holding down essential jobs in taking care of the rest of us.

And now, because their jobs are more precarious, they face more uncertainty about how a work-from-home culture that outlasts the pandemic will benefit them. Doing without frequent face time with colleagues, bosses and networks does not sit well with those who have a fragile connection to their workplaces.

“While it’s reassuring to confirm that many workers in Canada have altered their work arrangement in order to minimize the risk of contracting and spreading COVID-19, these survey results serve as an important reminder that the ability to do so is closely tied to one’s socio-economic situation,” states the Environics report obtained by the Star.

Young people, for example, say they like working from home and can maintain the quality of their work there. But they’re also more worried than others that working from home will hurt their career prospects — which are already hurting because the pandemic has knocked their employment levels severely.

The same fear is expressed by first- or second-generation immigrants as well as racialized workers, and they, too, have seen more of their jobs disappear during the pandemic.

On top of that, immigrants and racialized workers also say, more than others, that they aren’t properly equipped to work from home, and they’re worried the quality of their work has deteriorated.

Workers with disabilities are also far more likely to say they don’t have the right equipment to work from home.

The implications for post-pandemic work are far-reaching. Business groups have emphasized the need to make sure workplaces are safe to return to, with whatever personal protective equipment and health measures are needed to assure employees aren’t going to get sick.

But the new research shows it’s a lot more complex than that. Some people won’t want to come back, but at the same time, a full embrace of a work-from-home culture will penalize those who are already facing intimidating barriers to their careers and futures.

“The key word is flexibility,” says Parkin, pointing to a need to rethink office space and work flow to make sure a range of needs are accommodated.

We have a few months left of lockdown, constraint and forced work-from-home conditions before we have more options open to us in the world of work. Let’s use them to ensure the reopening is done carefully, giving a fair opportunity to those workers who have already paid such a steep price.

Source: https://www.thestar.com/politics/political-opinion/2021/04/12/working-from-home-is-here-to-stay-and-for-some-canadians-thats-a-big-problem.html

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[CDC] Studies Confirm Racial, Ethnic Disparities In COVID-19 Hospitalizations And Visits

2021/04/14 Leave a comment

More evidence:

Days after declaring racism a serious public health threat, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a pair of studies further quantifying the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on communities of color.

The studies, published Monday in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, examine trends in racial and ethnic disparities in hospitalizations and emergency room visits associated with COVID-19 in 2020.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said at a regular White House COVID-19 Response Team briefing that the new literature underscores the need to prioritize health equity, including in the country’s accelerating vaccine rollout.

“These disparities were not caused by the pandemic, but they were certainly exacerbated by [it],” Walensky said. “The COVID-19 pandemic and its disproportional impact on communities of color is just the most recent and glaring example of health inequities that threaten the health of our nation.”

After assessing administrative discharge data from March to December 2020, the CDC found that the proportion of hospitalized patients with COVID-19 was highest for Hispanic and Latino patients in all four census regions of the U.S.

Racial and ethnic disparities were most pronounced between May and July, it said, and declined over the course of the pandemic as hospitalizations increased among non-Hispanic white people. But such disparities persisted across the country as of December, most notably among Hispanic patients in the West.

The findings build on earlier studies about racial and ethnic disparities in COVID-19 hospitalizations by showing how they shifted over time and between regions.

Researchers point to two driving factors for the disproportionate hospitalizations among these minority groups: a higher risk of exposure to the virus and a higher risk for severe disease. They said differences in exposure risk associated with occupational and housing conditions, as well as socioeconomic status, are likely behind the demographic patterns they observed.

“Identification of the specific social determinants of health (e.g., access to health care, occupation and job conditions, housing instability, and transportation challenges) that contribute to geographic and temporal differences in racial and ethnic disparities in COVID-19 infection and poor health outcomes is critical,” they said, adding that a better understanding of these factors at the local level can help tailor strategies to prevent illness and allocate resources.

The second study examined COVID-19-related emergency department visits in 13 states between October and December, and found similar disparities between racial and ethnic groups.

During that period, Hispanic and American Indian or Alaska Native people were 1.7 times more likely to seek care than white people, and Black individuals 1.4 times more likely.

Researchers noted that these racial and ethnic groups are also impacted by long-standing and systemic inequities that affect their health, such as limited access to quality health care and disproportionate representation in “essential” jobs with less flexibility to take leave or work remotely.

“Racism and discrimination shape these factors that influence health risks; racism, rather than a person’s race or ethnicity, is a key driver of these health inequities,” they explained.

Such inequities can increase the risk of exposure and delayed medical attention, further heightening the risks for severe disease outcomes and the need to seek emergency care.

Looking ahead, researchers said their findings could be used to prioritize vaccines and other resources for disproportionately affected communities in an effort to reduce the need for emergency care. Walensky also emphasized the implications of the new studies on and beyond the country’s pandemic response.

“This information and the ongoing surveillance data we see daily from states across the country underscore the critical need and an important opportunity to address health equity as a core element in all of our public health efforts,” she said.

A renewed push to address such inequity is now underway at the CDC, which late last week declared racism a “serious public health threat that directly affects the well-being of millions of Americans.”

Walensky has directed the agency’s departments to develop interventions and measure health outcomes in the next year. It’s also provided $3 billion to support efforts to expand equity and access to vaccines, in addition to $2.25 billion previously allocated for COVID-19 testing in high-risk and underserved communities. The CDC has also launched a Racism and Health web portal to promote education and dialogue on the subject.

One area of particular focus is making sure the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines across the U.S. reaches the communities that have been hit hardest.

Data so far indicate that Black individuals make up roughly 12% of the country’s population but just 8.4% of those who have received at least one dose, Walensky said. And while 18% of the country identifies as Hispanic or Latino, she said, they make up only 10.7% of those who have been vaccinated.

Officials at Monday’s briefing highlighted further progress in the race to get shots into arms, noting that 120 million Americans have been vaccinated — 46% of adults have had at least one dose and 28% are fully vaccinated. And in exactly one week, all adults will be eligible to sign up for an appointment.

“This means that there has never been a better time than now for seniors and those eligible to get their shots,” said Andy Slavitt, senior advisor on the White House COVID-19 Response Team. “Make an appointment today. And if you have someone in your life, particularly a senior, who has not gotten a shot yet, reach out and see what help they need.”

Source: Studies Confirm Racial, Ethnic Disparities In COVID-19 Hospitalizations And Visits

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‘Enough is enough’: new group aims to open path for Filipino-Canadian candidates in next federal election

2021/04/13 Leave a comment

Of note. Nine ridings have 10 percent or more Filipino-Canadians (Filipino population greater than 10 percent):

Ignore Filipino-Canadian candidates at your own peril: that’s the message a new political action group is sending to federal parties, as jockeying for nomination races for the next election gets underway in earnest.

The Filipino community could be a decisive political force for whichever party manages to rally it, say two of the founders of the Filipino Canadian Political Association, a new group devoted to breaking down barriers that have left the community without representation in Parliament since 2004.

“The numbers speak for themselves,” said Grant Gonzales, a second-generation Filipino-Canadian in Toronto who is serving as the chief spokesperson for the group.

More than 837,000 Canadians identified as having a Filipino ethnic origin in the 2016 census, about 2.5 per cent of the population. More than 100,000 people from the Philippines have been given permanent resident status in Canada since then.

The 2016 Filipino population was bigger than the margin of victory in the last election in 37 federal ridings, including nine of the 25 most competitive races, according to an FCPA analysis of data from Statistics Canada and Elections Canada.

The group issued a press release on April 6 calling on political parties to nominate Filipino-Canadian candidates in winnable ridings ahead of the next election, which could come later this year. The data analysis was included in the release.

“Parties have attempted to activate us [in the past], but it’s always to support another candidate from a different community, not necessarily one of our own,” said Paul Saguil, another co-founder of the FCPA who is also running for the Liberal Party nomination in Brampton Centre, in an interview with The Hill Times.

“The information is there for party organizers to now think about very carefully. Knowing these demographics, why wouldn’t you run a Filipino-Canadian to activate these populations in favour of your party?” he said.

The two men founded the group along with Joseph Guiyab last fall, after the Liberal Party appointed former TV broadcaster Marci Ien as its candidate for a byelection in Toronto Centre. That appointment shut the door on an open nomination contest for would-be candidates including Mr. Saguil, who later stepped back from another nomination contest in Don Valley East when Liberal MPP Michael Coteau announced that he would be running there.

Mr. Saguil said Ms. Ien’s appointment, as well as other unsuccessful attempts by Filipino-Canadians to secure party nominations, played a role in the formation of the group. Mr. Gonzales was more explicit.

“That [appointment] drove a lot of sentiment around how difficult it is for racialized communities, especially Filipino-Canadians, to get into office,” he said. “We thought, ‘enough is enough,’ let’s start more intentionally bringing attention to these issues, this gap in representation.”

Both men said they held no ill will toward Ms. Ien, who went on to win the Toronto Centre byelection. Ms. Ien is Black, and Black Canadians are also underrepresented in Parliament: Black Canadians account for 3.5 per cent of Canada’s population, but hold only five—or 1.5 per cent—of the 338 seats in the House of Commons.

Mr. Gonzales said he wants to see the parties make it easier for Filipino-Canadians to run, whether that means making an appointment, as was the case for Ms. Ien, or just doing more to recruit Filipino candidates.

Filipino-Canadians have won seats in provincial legislatures and municipal councils in Canada, including Mable Elmore, B.C.’s first Filipino MLA. Some have secured nominations to run for federal parties, including Julius Tiangson, who ran for the Conservatives in York Centre in a byelection last year, and is running to secure the party’s nomination in that riding for the next election. Mr. Tiangson did not respond to an interview request last week.

Federal ridings contain an average of about 112,000 people. A perfectly representative House of Commons would have eight MPs from the Filipino community. There are currently none, and there has been only one in Canadian history: Rey Pagtakhan, who represented Winnipeg’s north end for the Liberals from 1988 to 2004.

“It’s the same conversation we have when we’re talking about women in politics. The number of times they need to be asked to run for office, because of the barriers, the attitudes that they face when they run for office,” said Mr. Gonzales.

“If you have a political party reaching out to you and saying, ‘we’d be interested in having you run for a nomination contest,’ well that adds a lot of confidence already to a candidate.”

In the meantime, Mr. Saguil said he wants the FCPA to be able to fill some of that void left by the parties, providing information and connections to Filipino-Canadians who are thinking about a run in politics.

The FCPA is still in its infancy as an organization, and does not yet have a network of volunteers and supporters broad enough to move votes in swing ridings on its own. It has not yet begun to raise money, and does not have paid staff.

The three founders have reached out to leaders within the community and had conversations with some people in federal politics, including Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino (Eglinton-Lawrence, Ont.) and Green Party Leader Annamie Paul, said Mr. Gonzales.

FCPA will have to show community can be mobilized: NDP strategist Romeo Tello

All three founders of the FCPA are Toronto residents with Liberal ties. Mr. Gonzales said they want the organization to be cross-partisan, and operate across the country.

The organization isn’t aiming to sway votes toward one party or another, said Mr. Saguil, but rather draw political parties’ attention to the Filipino community’s power in closely-contested ridings.

“There’s a lot of pride in our community. And when they see someone putting their name forward, and when they see a party actively putting someone forward because they want the support of the Filipino-Canadian community, then it’s a natural expectation that they’ll want to rally behind someone, whichever standard that they’re representing,” he said.

“If I’m thinking strategically for these ridings, and I want to make sure that there is no margin of error for the next election, why wouldn’t I be asking the party leadership, ‘Where is our Filipino-Canadian candidate who would help rally this population?’” said Mr. Saguil.

To be effective, the group will have to show parties the political power held by the Filipino community, said Romeo Tello, a Filipino-Canadian who has worked on provincial and federal campaigns for the NDP.

“It’s all around having conversations, and growing a network of people who can move to action on any given issue,” said Mr. Tello, who is not a member of the FCPA.

Many Filipino-Canadians work in manufacturing or front-line service industry jobs, said Mr. Tello. Filipino women fill many of the country’s front-line health and care-giving jobs, as nurses, personal support workers, and live-in caregivers.  Data released by the province of Manitoba show Filipino-Canadians have been infected by COVID-19 at a higher rate than the general population.

Younger generation ready to run: Saguil

Mr. Gonzales wants the FCPA to follow the path charted by other ethnic political interest groups in Canada. Jewish Canadians have long been represented by effective lobby groups such as the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, and the Canadian Jewish Political Affairs Committee. Ukrainian Canadians have the Ukrainian Canadian Congress. Punjabi Sikhs have become a political force in their own right in Canada.

The Filipino communities across Canada do not have some of the advantages that organizers in those other ethnic groups have wielded so effectively. Filipino-Canadians are numerous, but spread out across the country: Winnipeg North and Winnipeg Centre are the only ridings in which Filipinos account for 20 per cent of the population or more.

The Philippines has been among the top source countries for immigrants to Canada for most of the past 20 years. Still, the community is a relatively young one, and many of those who have immigrated to Canada from the Philippines have been focused on carving out a life for themselves in a new country, said Mr. Saguil.

Running for office requires financial resources, and connections with political parties and other communities. “All of those things take literally one person’s lifetime, if not more, to accumulate,” said Mr. Saguil.

“That’s what we mean by systemic barriers in the FCPA. Other communities in Canada have had generations to accumulate what we’ll call collectively this political capital.”

The younger generation who immigrated with their parents—including Mr. Saguil—or were born in Canada are now more ready and able to step into the political fray, he said.

Mr. Saguil will face tough competition for the Liberal nomination in Brampton Centre. The riding was created as part of the 2013 electoral boundary realignment. It is currently held by Independent MP Ramesh Sangha, who was kicked out of the Liberal caucus earlier this year over remarks he made about some of his fellow Liberal MPs. Mr. Sangha won it as a Liberal candidate by double-digit margins in both the 2015 and 2019 elections. All five of Brampton’s MPs are Indo-Canadian.

Two other Liberals have started a campaign for the nomination in Brampton Centre so far: Amin Dhillon, a multimedia personality and former Miss India Worldwide Canada, and businessman Nasir Hussain.

Indo-Canadians are the most numerous ethnic group in Brampton, outnumbering Filipinos almost 10-to-one in the city. The Brampton Indo-Canadian community includes veteran political organizers and fundraisers.

Mr. Saguil said he has built a “broad coalition” of support already for his nomination bid, including volunteers and organizers from the Punjabi, Black, and Pakistani communities, and Filipino-Canadians from across the country.

If his odds of winning the nomination are long, the payoff of a victory could be great for Mr. Saguil. The last two elections suggest that the next Liberal candidate in Brampton Centre will have a good chance at winning.

Mr. Saguil is the deputy head of TD Bank’s global sanctions compliance and anti-corruption program, as well as a lawyer and a gay rights activist. MPs from under-represented communities who have impressive resumes are often good candidates for a cabinet appointment, even as political rookies. Procurement Minister Anita Anand (Oakville. Ont.), who boasts a resume a mile long, and was made Canada’s first Hindu cabinet minister shortly after winning her first election in 2019, is one recent example.

Source: ‘Enough is enough’: new group aims to open path for Filipino-Canadian candidates in next federal election

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COVID-19 and essential workers at risk, some examples

2021/04/12 Leave a comment

Two classic cases, where private companies and weak government regulators have failed to protect workers from COVID-19 (largely immigrants, visible minorities or temporary workers), and the Ontario and Alberta governments only belatedly addressing risk in workplaces through vaccination of workers. Older stories, haven’t seen many updates:

Amazon Brampton Warehouse

An Amazon warehouse that was ordered to shut down last week due to a major COVID-19 outbreak is also being investigated for potential labour violations, the Ontario government said Monday.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Labour said the investigation was already underway when the local public health unit ordered thousands of workers at the Brampton, Ont., facility on Friday to isolate for two weeks,

“We continue to work closely with Peel Public Health and others to provide support, advice and enforcement as needed to ensure the health and safety of Ontario’s workers,” Harry Godfrey said in a statement.

Godfrey noted that penalties for labour violations could be as high as $1.5 million or imprisonment. He said the government would not hesitate to hold employers accountable if they fail to keep their employees safe.

Peel Region’s top doctor said the outbreak at the Amazon facility, which employs approximately 5,000 workers, began in October and has since been linked to more than 600 cases.

Dr. Lawrence Loh said nearly half of the cases were detected in the last few weeks, prompting the public health unit to issue a special order requiring the workers to self-isolate for two weeks starting March 13.

Workers were ordered to isolate until March 27 unless they’ve tested positive for COVID-19 in the last 90 days and have already completed their isolation period for that infection.

Amazon Canada said workers would be paid during the 14-day quarantine, but it disputed the data being used to support the plant closure, pointing to a round of tests that recently came back with a positivity rate of less than one per cent. It has said it plans to appeal the decision.

Peel Public Health said the closure will give the company further time to consider additional operational changes that may help prevent outbreaks in future.

The Ministry of Labour said its inspectors had visited the site 12 times and issued eight orders since March 2020.

Gagandeep Kaur, an organizer with Brampton-based Warehouse Workers Centre that advocates for workers’ rights in the sector, said conditions had been getting worse in the facility for months. She said workers “were kind of surprised” that it took so long for public health to get involved and force the shutdown.

Kaur said people reported that safety precautions like physical distancing have been impossible to maintain inside, especially as workers rushed to meet strict productivity targets.

She said workers are now concerned that they will be asked to push themselves harder once they return from quarantine.

“They are not at home right now enjoying this two week vacation,” Kaur said by phone. “They are more worried that once they are back … management might put higher targets for them to reach.”

Kaur said the pressures of the warehouse workplace, where employees’ time on floor is constantly measured and tracked, created safety issues before the pandemic. Those challenges only increased with the viral threat that also coincided with more hiring, and greater demands as more people relied on the delivery service.

She said the company should use the two-week shutdown to implement changes at the plant such as further separating work stations and reducing performance targets as workers are dealing with the added stress of the pandemic.

“Amazon must use it wisely,” she said of the shutdown. “Maybe implementing those changes inside the facility that will make the work safer so that we don’t end up with this crisis again.”

Last month, labour inspectors carried out a “blitz” operation on the warehouses and distribution centres in Peel Region – a COVID-19 hot spot with a high number of outbreaks in workplaces.

About 200 inspections took place and 26 tickets were issued, according the Ministry of Labour.

Source: https://www.cp24.com/mobile/news/ontario-labour-ministry-investigating-brampton-amazon-site-ordered-to-shut-down-over-outbreak-1.5348106?cache=

Alberta Olymel meat packing

Slaughterhouses. Meat packing. Sick and dead employees. The pandemic has sharpened our vision about a lot of things.

Such as: the workers who are key to making sure Canadians have plenty of steaks, hamburger, and bacon on the menu have become about as disposable as paper plates. This became more than evident over the past month as hundreds of workers in yet another meat packing plant in Alberta became infected with COVID-19.

Three employees have died. The first to die was 35-year-old Darwin Doloque, a recent immigrant from the Philippines who was found dead in his home at the end of January. 

At that point it was clear that infection was spreading among the 1,850 women and men at the Olymel slaughterhouse and pork processing plant in Red Deer. And yet neither government nor public health officials moved to it shut down.

It was only in mid-February after public pressure from the Union of Food and Commercial Workers, which represents the employees, that Olymel management decided to shut down for two weeks. Workers were laid off without pay and advised to apply for Employment Insurance so the government could pick up the bill.

And lest you think Olymel is owned by a U.S. or Brazilian mega-meat packer, it is not. It is a division of Quebec-based Sollio Cooperative Group, Canada’s largest agriculture co-op, which last year reaped $8.1 billion in revenue. Besides being the biggest pork and poultry producer in Canada, Olymel exports to China, Japan, South Korea and Australia.

Most of the workers at the Red Deer plant — midway between Calgary and Edmonton — are recent immigrants, refugees, or temporary foreign workers. They come from Sudan, Guatemala, the Philippines, Mexico, and Dominican Republic and usually don’t speak English. 

It’s the same story at most large slaughterhouses/meat packing plants because it is bloody, back breaking, and dangerous work that only people with limited employment options are willing to take. 

For most of us working at a job site where 45,000 hogs a week are killed is beyond imagination. But that is par for the course at the Olymel plant. Every week, the pigs just keep coming from hog farming operations in Alberta and Saskatchewan, which need to keep those pigs moving if they are to be profitable. They do not want processing plants to close down because it hits them right on the bottom line. 

So workers are pushed to keep working even after a quarter of them have been infected with the coronavirus; even though the majority of those workers have jobs outside the plant and could spread the virus in the larger community.

The COVID-19 outbreak at Olymel and the subsequent inaction on the part of government, public health officials, and plant management could be better understood if we were in the beginning stages of the pandemic and those in charge were still trying to figure out what to do about workplace outbreaks.

But this is hardly the case. In Alberta alone during the past year we have seen serious outbreaks in eight meat packing facilities.

In April, the Cargill plant in High River (owned by a U.S. mega-meat packer) had a total of 950 cases among 2,000 employees, the worst COVID-19 outbreak in Canada. Three people died, dozens were hospitalized. 

In the U.S, 50,000 meat packing workers were infected, and about 250 died. Communities around those facilities had some of the highest infection rates in the country. 

This was all known long before the outbreak at Olymel. The U.S Congress has launched an investigation into how the meat packing industry responded to the pandemic.

In Alberta, both Rachel Notley, leader of the official opposition, and the Alberta Federation of Labour have called for a public inquiry into the Alberta government’s handling of the outbreak at the Olymel plant. 

A public inquiry takes time but given the repeated performance of government agencies and meat packing companies during the pandemic we need to know more about why so many people became infected and died so it won’t happen again. 

In the meantime Olymel is re-opening the Red Deer plant and calling back workers. Bacon anyone?

Source: https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2021/03/08/alberta-is-still-not-protecting-its-meat-packing-workers.html 

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