How race, income and ‘opportunity hoarding’ will shape Canada’s back-to-school season

2020/09/08 Leave a comment

Good long read on how the impact of COVID-19 will likely increase inequality further:

Two weeks before vice-principal Brandon Zoras was to welcome a group of students back to the classrooms at Toronto’s Westview Centennial Secondary School, a message appeared in his LinkedIn inbox from a stranger.

“Hi Brandon, hope you are doing well! I am looking for an experienced TDSB Grade 11 chemistry tutor to coach my son online only (due to social distancing) – to start right away. Please let me know if that is something you (or someone you know) can help my son with. Best regards.”

Irritated, Mr. Zoras groaned and deleted it without replying.

Westview has one of the largest Black student populations in the country and sits in the northwest corridor of Toronto, which has become the epicentre for COVID-19 infections. Many students live in cramped housing, have parents who are essential workers and rely on public transit to get around, all things that contribute to the high infection rate – which is 10 times that of the least-infected parts of the city. The average annual income for residents in the area is $27,984 – half of what it is for Toronto as a whole.

“It makes my heart hurt for the families who can’t afford a tutor or who can’t afford all these additional things,” said Mr. Zoras, a science educator.

Since he began working as an educator 11 years ago, he has seen the way public education funding has been diminished, how families in the system have found ways to privatize parts of their children’s schooling to get what they want. Education advocates say those efforts are making things less equitable for everyone else.

Every year, parents across the country lobby to get their children into advanced-placement classes, buy houses in neighbourhoods that will give them access to coveted schools and fundraise on the school council to bring in technology and high-level arts programming.

Now, with the return to school amidst a global pandemic, those efforts to secure the best for their children, known in sociology as “opportunity hoarding,” have become more overt. The confidence many had in the public-education system has been ripped apart because of reopening plans and it seems no amount of fundraising, private meetings with principals or school council strategizing can bring about the changes many are seeking for a safe return to school.

The result is some of the most privileged public-school families are opting for distance education, hiring personal tutors and forming private learning pods – decisions that are ostensibly made in the best interests of their children, but which will likely cause major rifts across race and class. Those in lower-income communities are also choosing remote learning because they have elderly relatives living with them who are vulnerable to getting sick, they feel a heightened threat from COVID-19 because they are in areas with the highest infection rates and the buildings in which they live pose challenges to getting to school on time in a pandemic.

That families on both ends of the socio-economic spectrum are opting for remote learning exposes cracks that already existed in the system. There’s a threat the most privileged will pull out to customize their own education since they can afford to, while others who are fearful of sending their children back to school but cannot pay for private help are becoming test subjects for a new realm of online learning. As plans are pulled together haphazardly, there’s a concern the divide will deepen.

This week, school boards in Toronto, Peel Region and Halton Region released the results of parent surveys that show a sizable portion of students will not be in classes this fall: 30 per cent of elementary and 22 per cent of high school students for Toronto; 33 per cent combined for Peel; and 29 per cent elementary and 15 per cent high school for Halton. A portion of households didn’t respond and school staff will be reaching out to them directly, which could change these figures.

At Thorncliffe Park Public School, in a community that has long been a landing pad for newcomers and where the median household income is $46,595, 38 per cent of families surveyed say they’ll do remote learning this fall.

Munira Khilji, a mother of two in Thorncliffe Park, said many parents she knows chose this option because they live in high-rises and don’t want to endure waits of an hour or longer just to take the elevator while pandemic-related capacity limits are in place – and they worry about physical distancing in such a cramped space.

The issue is most apparent in Ontario, where families have been given a clear choice between in-person and remote learning, but it’s forcing a reckoning in many other parts of the country. In Alberta, 28 per cent of students in Edmonton’s public school board have chosen remote learning. In British Columbia, Education Minister Rob Fleming has said that school districts have the flexibility to provide remote learning options, but there is confusion among parents and school officials as to what that will mean and whether students will remain enrolled in their home schools.

“What COVID has done once again is expose the stark inequities in our system and the realities that families in marginalized communities have to navigate,” said Jeewan Chanicka, the former superintendent of equity, anti-racism and anti-oppression at the Toronto District School Board. “These families also know that their communities are going to be hit the hardest. They are behaving in a way where they’re trying to save their children’s lives.”

Some worry the shift out of the classroom could have devastating long-term consequences: If parents come to appreciate the increased attention their child gets from a teacher in a pod with just four other students, they might opt to continue this post-pandemic and permanently withdraw from a system whose funding is determined by head count.

“Where I worry a bit is in particular for those of privilege; if they’re pulling their children out, whether or not they will return to public education, I don’t know,” Mr. Chanicka said. “My hope is that yes, this is a blip because of the pandemic.”

COVID-19 has presented an opportunity to rethink how Canada operates homeless shelters and long-term care – will the same be true for schools, or will navigating the pandemic only further fracture the system?

Before Marty Menard even had a daughter, he and his wife had done their homework on which school they wanted her to attend. Wortley Road Public School in London, Ont., a well-regarded K-8 school known for its small student population and very involved parent community, stood out. When Mr. Menard’s wife was in her third trimester, they bought a house in Wortley Village, which the Canadian Institute of Planners dubbed the best neighbourhood in Canada in 2013, so they’d be in the catchment area for the school they determined was their first and only choice.

In his daughter’s second year there, Mr. Menard enthusiastically joined many of the various parent committees and even became co-chair of the school council, helping organize fundraisers, the breakfast program and cultural celebrations.

When schools shut down in mid-March, Mr. Menard turned to a private tutoring program to offer his daughter an hour of instruction a day and also found a few hours each week to use online resources from the Khan Academy to help boost her development. But after a few months, his daughter said she was lonely and Mr. Menard knew this couldn’t continue into September. A learning pod seemed like the best solution: The risk of his daughter being exposed to the novel coronavirus would be lower than it might be in a packed classroom, but she would still enjoy social interaction. On social media, he found a few other parents and a provincially certified teacher who will lead the pod, but is struggling to find a space that will host them without greatly increasing the costs, which he estimates will be about $500 to $750 a month.

With school already under way in some provinces and just a few weeks away in others, the scramble to clear those logistical hurdles has sent plenty of parents who have chosen the same option as Mr. Menard into a frenzy.

As August wore on, the panic among parents in the Learning Pods – Canada Facebook group was palpable. Thousands from Vancouver Island to Halifax, but mostly in Ontario, had flocked to the group to find others in their neighbourhood to pod up with, to find a teacher to hire, or to share their story about turning to this option to protect an immunocompromised member of their family.

They solicited advice on everything from costs (“Can folks share how much is a reasonable salary to offer a teacher for a pod of four?” asked one mom in Hamilton) to insurance (“My insurance company approved extended insurance for each child in my pod. They will not cover communicable disease transmission. Has anyone else figured out how to get around this? Co-op among parents to share the responsibility? Corporation to reduce risk?” wrote another in Waterloo, Ont.). Some pods will rotate between a group of households where parents share teaching duties; others will be situated in rented spaces with lots of technology and resources provided and come with a cost of up to a few thousand dollars a month.

On and offline, the conversation on learning pods often leads to bigger questions of equity: are they classist? Do they further the divide between the haves and the have nots? Shouldn’t parents with enough privilege to put their children in a learning pod harness it to lobby the government to make classrooms safe for all children?

Those debates have arisen in Mr. Menard’s own marriage. He describes himself as a “lefty” and a proponent of the public school system, which he says has been steadily defunded for years – but still, he and his wife have decided that given the pandemic and the government’s plans, this is the best option for his family.

“Nothing is going to marginalize kids more than people like me who could afford a learning pod,” he says. “The bottom line as a parent is I still have to put my kid’s interests above every other point of view or political point of view that I have.”

It’s a rationale sociologist Margaret Hagerman encountered again and again when she spent time with affluent white families in the American Midwest as part of research for her book White Kids: Growing Up with Privilege in a Racially Divided America. She observed a phenomenon she dubs “the conundrum of privilege”: Parents who identify as progressives, who care about equity, who may have taken their children to the climate strike or hung up a Black Lives Matter poster in their window, don’t think twice about what it means to give their children advantages that others don’t have access to. They want to raise their children in a just society, but they’ve used their privilege to work against that very goal.

“I think we need to reconfigure what we mean when we say we are doing the best for our child or being the best parent,” she said. “I don’t actually think that advocating for your own kid when that harms other people is the best version of anything.”

When parents talk about the gifts they want to give their children for the future, she likes to challenge them: “Don’t you want your kid to live in a society with less racial violence and with less inequality and social conflict and social problems and suffering?” she asks. “If you could do things now that would provide that different future for your child and the other children around him, it’s kind of philosophical, but I just think that that’s a compelling argument.”

While some who have opted for pods defend their choice with the argument that this will make classrooms less populous and therefore safer for students who do attend in person, the net effect isn’t the reduced class sizes parents, epidemiologists and public health experts have recommended. Rather, classes will be combined and likely grow in size because the government has not funded lower class sizes.

In Edmonton, the city’s public school board said nearly 29,000 students, or roughly 28 per cent of its entire enrolment, had opted for online learning as of Wednesday, though the board stressed that those numbers could change. To accommodate them, it has assigned 775 teachers to those online students. The board has hired an additional 100 teachers on temporary contracts, but board chair Trisha Estabrooks said the shift has meant decreased in-class enrolment hasn’t led to a decrease in class sizes.

“Even though we have 30 per cent of our students choosing to learn online, the reality is that doesn’t decrease the overall class size either, because we also need to have teachers in place to teach those online cohorts,” said Ms. Estabrooks, who acknowledged that in many classrooms, physical distancing is difficult, if not impossible.

Atiba Ralph, a single Black father, said he has heard so far that all of his daughter’s friends will return to in-person classes this fall; he hadn’t even heard of learning pods but said they sounded like “a pretty smart idea,” albeit one that was out of reach for him.

“It probably happened with the people that are in a higher tax bracket,” he said. “I have a little bit more financial problems.”

The COVID-19 threat is present every time he steps out of his apartment in Toronto: He lives in the Jane and Finch area, one of the most-infected in the city, and knows of two Black people – one a neighbour of his mother, another a friend of a friend – who died of COVID-19 earlier this year. Public health data collected by the city from mid-May to mid-July showed Black people had the highest share of COVID-19 infections.

Recognizing that some neighbourhoods have been much harder hit than others by COVID-19, the Toronto District School Board is directing extra funds and capping class sizes at abo

ut 80 schools in those areas, most of which are in the northwest corner of the city.

Alice Romo, an education advocate with the Latinx, Afro-Latin-America, Abya Yala Education Network, says she worries about the way children from low-income neighbourhoods will fall behind this year if they are educated at home: They’ll be less engaged, it will be more difficult for them to finish their homework and, crucially, many will miss out on all the non-academic parts of school that keep low-income communities afloat, such as breakfast and lunch programs.

“We’re definitely going to see this a few years down the road. There will be more of an inequality gap,” she said.

Those who withdraw from the system may think the decision only affects their household, “the more you shift the role of education towards families and away from public schools, the more inequality you’re going to have,” says Andrew Franklin-Hall, a philosophy professor at the University of Toronto who studies ethics.

For some students, school might be the only environment where they are exposed to peers from diverse ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds; in a learning pod, just like in a private school, opportunities for that exposure are limited.

“When parents are suddenly forced to make this kind of decision, naturally they turn to the resources they have, which is their own friends, their own community,” he said. “This is not the sort of thing that people feel comfortable articulating, because they don’t want to say, ’Well, I don’t trust the people who are different than me or I don’t trust the people who aren’t as well off or have a different race.’”

Before the pandemic forced a crisis in the education system, many school boards had committed to addressing systemic racism and inequity by re-evaluating programs, such as French immersion (which attracts a higher proportion of affluent, white students) and streaming (which routinely put Black children on a path to applied courses, which limit their options after graduation), that have disadvantaged students from low-income and racialized communities. Now with educators focused on the basics of opening schools, reimagining the system seems impractical, if not impossible.

In June, Stephanie Brembridge, a Black mother in Toronto whose son attends a public Catholic school, reached out to the school principal to ask whether she could add an item to the agenda for the next parent council meeting of the year: She wanted to discuss what the predominantly white school could do to better help Black and Indigenous students succeed.

Her faith in the school had already been tested. Her son, Trusten, had been suspended several times – once for apparently saying “an inappropriate word” – though the school was never able to tell Ms. Brembridge what that word was. With the help of an advocacy group that works with Black parents, she was able to get a few of those suspensions overturned (data collected at school boards across the country show that Black students are suspended and expelled at a disproportionate rate).

When it came time for the parent council meeting, which was held over Zoom, Ms. Brembridge noticed her item was at the very end of the agenda. She grew anxious as an hour and a half flew by, while the other parents (all but one of them were white) discussed which teachers were retiring, how they might safely plan a social function in the summer and other matters Ms. Brembridge believed to be far less pressing than hers.

“Okay, I think that’s it,” someone said, ready to adjourn the meeting. Ms. Brembridge, surprised, unmuted her microphone and reminded them she still hadn’t spoken. She was told she had three minutes and could see parents starting to leave the chat. “I‘m not going speak until I can get everybody’s full attention,” she said. Her item was moved to the agenda for the next meeting – three months later, in September.

As a teacher in Toronto, Kelly Iggers has been exposed to the type of parental advocacy that’s aimed at “achieving supports that will benefit one’s own child.” When she learned Ontario’s back-to-school plan, released in late July, would not include reduced class sizes, she started a petition arguing in favour of them that netted more than 250,000 signatures across the province and evolved into a campaign with parents, educators, doctors and others discussing and planning in closed groups, including a WhatsApp chat.

“This issue of advocating for a safe and equitable return to school, it’s not about advocating for one’s own community or one’s own child,” she said. “This only works if we’re advocating for something that’s going to support everyone.”

This moment of reckoning in Ontario comes at a time when Alberta is moving toward a model that could heighten class and race disparities within the public system. For now, it’s the only province to have charter schools, which are independently run, non-profit public schools that have a greater degree of autonomy than a normal public school, allowing them to create programming that’s only for girls, or for the academically gifted.

Earlier this week, the Choice in Education Act took effect that, among other things, makes it easier to apply for and create a charter school. Now, a group wanting to establish a new charter school can bypass the local school board and apply directly to the government.

Calgary mom Dallas Hall’s son started Grade 4 last month at Connect Charter School after switching from a local public school. Ms. Hall said she likes the type of education he’s receiving, which includes experiential learning and outdoor learning. She also said the school has less bureaucracy than a traditional public school system – the same features that are making private school or learning pods an attractive option for parents elsewhere. Ms. Hall likes the idea of parents having choice in education. “They should have a voice. Their voice should be welcome,” she said.

Ms. Iggers said she didn’t want to vilify parents who are choosing private options, but says this shift out of the classroom has the potential to cause long-term damage.

“It’s prompting families with the means to do so to leave the system,” she said. And when they leave, “they [take] with them what are often the most powerful voices to advocate for a properly funded education system.”

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-how-race-income-and-opportunity-hoarding-will-shape-canadas-back/

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Why the Coronavirus More Often Strikes Children of Color

2020/09/05 Leave a comment

Mainly linked to lower socio-economic status:

One of the notable features of the new coronavirus, evident early in the pandemic, was that it largely spared children. Some become severely ill, but deaths have been few, compared to adults.

But people of color have been disproportionately affected by Covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, and recent studies have renewed concern about the susceptibility of children in these communities.

They are infected at higher rates than white children, and hospitalized at rates five to eight times that of white children. Children of color make up the overwhelming majority of those who develop a life-threatening complication called multisystem inflammatory syndrome, or MIS-C.

Of more than 180,000 Americans who have died of Covid-19, fewer than 100 are children, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But children of color comprise the majority of those who have died of Covid-19.

The deaths include 41 Hispanic children, 24 Black children, 19 white children, three Asian-American children, three American Indian/Alaska Native children, and two multiracial children.

The unique vulnerabilities of these youngsters are coming to light even as the number of infections in children is rising and schools and parents around the country are grappling with nettlesome decisions about reopening safely.

The susceptibility of minority children to the disease is not unique to the United States. Black children hospitalized in the United Kingdom were more likely than whites to be transferred to critical care and to develop MIS-C, according to a study published last week in the journal BMJ.

“Children don’t exist in a vacuum,” said Dr. Monika K. Goyal, a pediatric emergency medicine specialist at Children’s National Hospital in Washington.

Among 1,000 children tested for Covid-19 at a site in Washington in March and April, nearly half of the Hispanic children and nearly one-third of the Black children were positive for the coronavirus, Dr. Goyal found in a recent study.

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Germany: Coronavirus protests increasing anti-Semitism

2020/09/02 Leave a comment

Of note:

The Central Council of Jews in Germany has warned of increased anti-Semitism due to the protests against coronavirus measures.

“For months, conspiracy theories with anti-Semitic tendencies have been deliberately stirred up in the coronavirus debate,” Council President Josef Schuster told German daily newspaper Bild.

“If, for example, the Rothschilds are blamed for the pandemic, then this is a synonym for Jews,” said Shuster.

He added that not everyone who protested in Berlin in August was anti-Semitic or racist, “but they walked among them.”

Two recent protests have drawn tens of thousands from across the country to Berlin. The demonstrations were mainly peaceful, but at one point, hundreds of demonstrators broke through a blockade in an attempt to storm the Reichstag building.

Police also see uptick

The police trade union, the GdP, said it has also seen a rise in radicalization of protesters against coronavirus protective measures.

“Since the first demonstrations, right-wing groups have influenced the corona protest movement,” GdP vice-chairman Jörg Radek told newspapers of the Funke Media Group. “The right-wingers are there and are about to completely take over the movement.”

Some protesters have used signs and flags associated with far-right politics, from the Reichskriegsflagge (Imperial War Flag) to costumes comparing themselves to Holocaust victims.

“Nobody can say they are just a follower now. Anyone who stays with the movement must ask themselves whether they want to join forces with right-wing extremists and combine personal concerns in the coronavirus crisis with the extremists’ anti-democratic goals,” said Radek.

Source: Germany: Coronavirus protests increasing anti-Semitism

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As Coronavirus Reappears in Italy, Migrants Become a Target for Politicians

2020/08/31 Leave a comment

The phrase “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel” comes to mind:

As the summer vacation season draws to a close in Italy, a flare-up of Covid-19 cases is fueling a surge in anti-immigrant sentiment, even though the government says that migrants are just a small part of the problem.

Sicily’s president, Nello Musumeci, ordered the closure of all migrant centers on the island last weekend, saying it was impossible to prevent the spread of the illness at the facilities. And although a court blocked him, saying that he did not have the authority to close them, his order underlined the challenges Italy faces as right-wing politicians seek to rekindle a polarizing debate about immigration in a country hit hard by the pandemic.

In Pozzallo, a town in southern Sicily that has the highest rate of infection among newly arrived migrants, Roberto Ammatuna, the center-left mayor, has found himself trying to balance fears of a coronavirus influx with an obligation to rescue migrants in distress at sea.

“Our citizens need to feel safe and protected, because we are here in the front lines of Europe,” he said in an interview in his office overlooking the turquoise waters of the Mediterranean. “No one wants migrants who are sick with Covid,” but, he said, “we can’t stop rescuing people at sea.”

In one week in August, 73 migrants tested positive out of about 200 quarantined in Pozzallo. About 11,700 migrants have reached Sicily since June, and 3 percent either tested positive upon arrival or during the quarantine period that the Italian authorities imposed inside shelters.

But Franco Locatelli, the president of Italy’s Superior Health Council, a government advisory body, said migrants’ role in bringing Covid-19 back to Italy was “minimal.”

In the first two weeks of August, around 25 percent of new infections registered in the country were imported from abroad, according to Italy’s National Health Institute. Over half of those were Italians who had traveled abroad, and many others were foreigners who already lived in Italy and were returning to the country.

Less than 5 percent of the total were new immigrants, according to Italy’s Health Ministry.

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University of Toronto research to explore racism in health care during pandemic

2020/08/28 Leave a comment

Should be an interesting study which hopefully will identify some pragmatic approaches:

A new research project will look at the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on racialized communities as well as existing biases in the health-care system.

The national project was launched by Roberta Timothy, an assistant professor with the University of Toronto’s Institute for Pandemics.

Timothy says many members of the Black and Indigenous communities already avoid interacting with the health-care system mostly due to experiences with racism and biases.

During a global pandemic, Timothy says that can have grave consequences for the well-being of those communities.

“People will seek help when it’s an emergency and by then it’s too late,” she says. “Because of the bias, because of anti-Black racism, because of violence they experience, their health becomes more at risk.”

Timothy says there’s a need for more data to effectively understand the impact of COVID-19 on racialized communities.

The Ontario government refused to collect race-based data earlier in the pandemic, but it was forced to change course in June. Now it mandates the collection of data around race, income, household size and language when following up with people who’ve been infected with COVID-19.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Health said the government is engaging with people from racialized communities and other health equity experts regarding the data collection.

“We plan to share findings of this data collection, informed by this engagement,” David Jensen said in an email.

Jensen said the ministry is concerned about the spread of the virus in “certain groups of people and in certain neighbourhoods,” and would welcome additional insights and information about how COVID-19 is affecting racialized communities.

Early data compiled by Toronto Public Health showed that 83 per cent of COVID-19 cases occurred in racialized people. Black people represented 21 per cent of cases in Toronto, but only nine per cent of the city’s population.

“There is growing evidence in North America and beyond that racialized people and people living in lower-income households are more likely to be affected by COVID-19,” said Dr. Christine Navarro,  associate medical officer of health for Toronto.

“While the exact reasons for this have yet to be fully understood, we believe it is related to both poverty and racism.”

Timothy’s project will collect more data about how Black people interact with the health-care system, but also about economic impacts, evictions, support networks and essential work being done by marginalized communities.

“An underlying part of the project is not only to bring better data, but to support the community in strategizing and finding interventions to find how we get through this,” said Timothy.

Rudayna Bahubeshi, a Toronto resident and post-graduate student in public policy, says she has first-hand experience with racism in the health-care system. During a stint in a mood disorder ward when she was 18, Bahubeshi said a nurse mistook her for a 30-year-old patient — the only other Black person in the ward at the time — and tried to make her take the other person’s medication.

Bahubeshi says she argued but was ignored, and believes her race was a factor in the way she was treated by staff. She says the nurse only realized the mistake when the other patient happened to walk by.

In another hospital visit during the pandemic, Bahubeshi says she was taken to a “COVID ward” because she had fever. She says staff would not answer simple questions about whether there were risks involved with using a shared washroom, or about the fact that some staff weren’t wearing PPE.

“The way she (the nurse) was engaging with me was very much that I was the problem,” says Bahubeshi. “When I talked to a doctor afterwards they told me I was fully in the right and that was unacceptable.”

Bahubeshi says experiences like those erode her trust in the public health system and its ability to provide quality care for her. She says more data about the experience of Black people in health care will be a first step in the right direction.

“The fact that we don’t have race-based data is a way we’ve decided that Black communities are not a priority,” said Bahubeshi.

Timothy’s national project is set to begin in a few months, and will involve surveys and focus groups among Black Canadians.

Source: University of Toronto research to explore racism in health care during pandemic

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Quebec won’t use COVID-19 notification app for now

2020/08/27 Leave a comment

Again, surprising given Quebec’s overall poor performance in managing and containing the pandemic. And another kudos to Premier Ford for his plain language messaging “Just do it…”:

Quebec won’t use a smartphone application to notify the public about potential exposure to COVID-19 for now, arguing its testing and contact-tracing capability are sufficient at this stage of the pandemic.

While the province is not closing the door on using an app in the future, Premier François Legault says he would rather use one that was developed in Quebec.

“We would prefer a Quebec company, but I don’t think this is our main argument,” Legault said Tuesday afternoon in Saint-Hyacinthe, Que.

He says there is a lack of broad support for such an app in the province, due to privacy concerns.

“Maybe in six months we will come to another decision,” he said.

The decision puzzled the federal Health Ministry. Thierry Bélair, a spokesperson for Health Minister Patty Hajdu, pointed out that the app offered by the federal government, COVID Alert, does not track a user’s location nor collect any other personally identifiable information.

“It’s also an additional tool we can use as we prepare for a possible increase in cases this fall. So why not make it available now in Quebec?” said Bélair.

COVID Alert, which uses open-source technology built by a volunteer team of engineers at Ottawa-based Shopify, is designed to warn users if they’ve spent at least 15 minutes in the past two weeks within two metres of another user who later tested positive for the coronavirus.

It was launched at the end of July and currently only works in Ontario, where it has been downloaded more than two million times.

Adoption of one app across Canada would be “very helpful” to ensure those who travel between provinces are notified of possible exposure to the virus, Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, said at a Tuesday news conference.”From the federal perspective, we want as many Canadians as possible to be participating,” she said.

Experts in both technology and public health stress that the more people who use the app, the better it will be.

Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam says more widespread adoption of the COVID Alert app is one more layer of protection. This comes as Quebec announces it will not sign on to the app for now. 1:03

Éric Caire, Quebec’s minister responsible for digital transformation, said the government is interested in a made-in-Quebec app and is also running tests on the federal app to ensure it is secure.

He said the province has learned from public consultations and legislative hearings that a solid understanding of the technology used in an app makes Quebecers more open to installing it.

“The more that people are told what it does and does not do, the more they will be reassured,” said Caire.COVID Alert relies on Bluetooth technology to detect proximity to other users, instead of GPS data.

The province heard from 16,456 Quebecers in online public consultations about the use of a COVID-19 notification app. Seventy-seven per cent believed such an app would be useful, and 75 per cent said they would install it, the province said in a statement.

But the voices heard at hearings, held by the Institutions Committee in Quebec City, about a possible contract-tracing app were more skeptical.

“Quebec’s legal framework is inadequate in terms of data and personal information protection and access to information, informed consent and the fight against discrimination,” said a report prepared by the committee once those hearings concluded.

Committee members acknowledged that almost all of the 18 experts who testified at the hearings expressed serious reservations about the effectiveness and reliability of the technology.

Dr. David Buckeridge, an epidemiologist at McGill University’s School of Population and Global Health, said the right time to start using such an app would be before the number of daily new cases reaches the crisis levels seen in the spring.”I think the risks, frankly, from this app are relatively quite low, and it was designed in that way,” he said.

“The main issue here is going to be trust and adoption.”

Caire said the province will continue to watch how widely the app is used in Ontario and that Quebec will consider using an app in the event of a second wave.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford said he would ask Legault to reconsider his government’s decision.

“Just do it. It protects everyone,” he said to reporters Tuesday afternoon. “It’s not a big deal.”

Source: Quebec won’t use COVID-19 notification app for now

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#COVID-19: Comparing provinces with other countries 26 August Update and Globe editorial on Quebec’s handling of the pandemic

2020/08/27 Leave a comment

Changes of interest include Alberta now has a higher number of infections per million than Ontario, with India and the Philippines having higher infection rates than Canada less Quebec.
India’s death rate per million now exceeds Canada less Quebec.

Lastly, a good Globe and Mail editorial on the failures of the Quebec government in managing the pandemic (Quebec’s COVID-19 death toll is Canada’s highest, and one of the worst in the world. No, that’s not fake news):

There is no province in Canada that has done a perfect job of limiting the spread of the COVID-19 virus. But there is one province that stands out as having done the least perfect job of all, and that is Quebec.

As of Tuesday, Quebec had recorded 724 confirmed cases of COVID-19 per 100,000 people. The national average is 332 per 100,000. The province with the next highest rate, Alberta, stood at 295 on Tuesday.

The same gaps exist in the number of deaths per capita. Quebec has had 67 deaths per 100,000 people – one of the highest death rates in the world, and well above Italy, Spain or the United States. The next highest province, Ontario, is at 19 deaths per 100,000.

It may not be entirely fair to compare across jurisdictions, but Quebec Premier François Legault has invited such scrutiny by resorting to divisive tactics to distract from the painful reality of the crisis in his province.

Last week, he once again accused the veteran health reporter at The Gazette, Montreal’s English-language daily newspaper, of being biased. It was the third time he has claimed that Aaron Derfel is trying to undermine his government with false reporting.

The Premier also said that, if anglophones in Quebec are more worried about catching COVID-19 than francophones, as at least one poll suggests, it must be because they are spending their time reading Mr. Derfel’s tweets and watching CNN and other American news channels.

Attacking journalists and taking cheap shots at a minority group is no way to address a crisis that has claimed the lives of more than 5,700 Quebeckers. Columnists in the province’s French-language newspapers have rightfully pilloried Mr. Legault for trying to shoot the messenger.

Mr. Legault’s tactic has backfired in another way, too, by shining a spotlight on his government’s handling of the crisis. It’s fair to say the Premier has not had a good pandemic.

Not that it’s entirely his government’s fault. Quebec had the misfortune of scheduling its annual school spring break in late February, a week ahead of the rest of the country. Many Quebeckers holidayed in the United States and Europe just as the pandemic was picking up steam. Some experts believe Quebec’s early spike in cases was mostly bad luck.

But the curve of new cases continued to climb after lockdown was imposed in March. And Quebec’s outbreaks in long-term care homes were bigger, longer and deadlier than anywhere else in Canada.

The government’s most glaring misstep occurred on June 24, a provincial holiday, when Quebec’s public-health agency announced it would no longer release data about new cases and deaths on a daily basis – a practice common around the world – and would instead only make them public once a week.

The surprise decision came after Horacio Arruda, Quebec’s chief public-health officer, attended a provincial cabinet meeting at which the issue was discussed, raising concerns that Dr. Arruda had yielded to demands from the Legault government.

Dr. Arruda denied there was any political interference. But three days later, after much criticism from epidemiologists and francophone commentators, the decision was reversed.

In the midst of all that, Mr. Legault demoted his health minister, Danielle McCann, and replaced her with Treasury Board president Christian Dubé.

Firing your lead minister in the middle of a major crisis is never a good look, but Mr. Legault was reportedly fed up with the endless bad news battering his government.

The government has also come under fire for reopening bars in late June, causing a fresh spike in cases, and for raising the maximum number of people at an indoor public gathering to 250 from 50 as of Aug. 3, a move that has backfired in European countries and many American states.

This week it’s the government’s back-to-school plan that is drawing fire. Unlike most other provinces, Quebec students will not have to wear masks or physically distance in classrooms. And parents will not have the option of keeping their children at home to learn remotely, unless they provide a “valid medical note.”

Mr. Legault is not the only premier facing tough questions about their handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. But he’s the only one trying to make a farce of this tragedy, by blaming a reporter for reporting the news.

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/editorials/article-quebecs-covid-19-death-toll-is-canadas-highest-and-one-of-the-worst/

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Bouchard: La souveraineté du Québec, plus nécessaire que jamais

2020/08/24 Leave a comment

Ironic to cite COVID-19 as a justification for Quebec independence while ignoring that Quebec has the highest number of infections and deaths per million of all Canadian provinces and on par with the most affected European countries.

And of course, both multiculturalism and interculturalism are similar models of civic integration, with more semantic rather than substantive differences:

Du point de vue de notre avenir politique, deux leçons peuvent être tirées de l’actuelle pandémie. Nous avons pu constater que, presque partout, les populations plongées dans l’insécurité se sont tournées vers leur nation pour se protéger. Les instances supranationales, à commencer par l’Union européenne, se sont montrées étonnamment impuissantes à mettre en œuvre des initiatives efficaces pour contrer la pandémie.

Chacun a pu ainsi prendre conscience du recours indispensable que l’État-nation continue de représenter comme rempart dans un contexte de crise. Cette enceinte a montré une grande capacité à susciter une solidarité, montrant ainsi qu’elle est loin d’avoir perdu sa pertinence. Il y a intérêt à la soutenir et à la perpétuer. C’est la première leçon.

La pandémie a aussi révélé la fragilité des réseaux supranationaux. La mondialisation ne s’en trouve pas pour autant condamnée, loin de là, mais elle a accusé d’inquiétantes carences. Il sera prudent de mieux définir nos engagements et nos articulations avec cette sphère qui demeure largement chaotique et imprévisible. On voit l’importance de pouvoir se reposer sur un État doté de tous les pouvoirs essentiels. C’est la deuxième leçon.

Les raisons profondes qui ont toujours motivé le mouvement souverainiste restent d’actualité : le combat pour le français, l’émancipation économique, sociale et culturelle de notre société, le renforcement d’une francophonie nord-américaine et, plus généralement, une plus grande liberté collective pour traiter à notre façon, suivant nos traditions et nos choix, les grands problèmes de l’heure. Ces raisons sont clairement rappelées et mises à jour dans le dernier numéro de la revue Action nationale. La pandémie en fait voir d’autres : renforcer la nation-refuge et procurer à l’État une marge de manœuvre accrue qui lui permet de mieux naviguer à travers les écueils de la sphère planétaire.

Sur l’enjeu identitaire

Tout cela survient au moment où le Parti québécois, occupé à se redéfinir, se donnera bientôt un nouveau chef. J’aimerais, dans ce contexte, soumettre trois réflexions. La première concerne la thématique identitaire, toujours bien vivante au sein de ce parti. Écartons d’abord un malentendu. Il est incontestable qu’une nation a besoin d’une identité comme expression d’une appartenance et source de solidarité. On imagine mal comment, privée de ces ressorts, elle pourrait mobiliser ses citoyens et ses citoyennes autour d’idéaux et de projets communs.

Le danger, c’est lorsque la quête d’une identité glisse vers une auscultation de soi qui l’appauvrit et rétrécit le « nous » de la nation. Un déplacement de ce genre est néfaste pour une société diversifiée. Il tend aussi à diminuer la place d’une dimension essentielle, celle de l’action collective, des grands projets que nous pourrions réaliser tous ensemble comme Québécois. Or, la mémoire de ces réalisations contribue justement à fortifier l’identité.

La population québécoise est de plus en plus diversifiée et le vieux noyau francophone jadis largement majoritaire se contracte progressivement (de 79 % en 1971, sa proportion serait passée à 64 % en 2014). Il est donc nécessaire d’ajuster la définition de la nation et de l’identité à la nouvelle réalité.

Est-ce là succomber au multiculturalisme ? On en est loin. Premièrement, il s’agit simplement de reconnaître les droits de tous les citoyens du Québec, en particulier là où ils sont compromis. Cette règle n’est pas copiée du multiculturalisme, elle fait partie de l’héritage général de toutes les horreurs commises durant la première moitié du XXe siècle en Occident. L’éthique qu’elles ont engendrée invite à respecter la diversité plutôt que de la broyer. Le multiculturalisme canadien en est lui-même une expression parmi bien d’autres, tout comme l’interculturalisme québécois.

Deuxièmement, le modèle canadien en matière de relations interculturelles est très différent de l’approche québécoise. Dans le premier cas, les groupes ethnoculturels se voient accorder une latitude exceptionnelle, si bien que le souci de cimenter ces minorités devient quasiment secondaire.

Au Québec, au contraire, c’est une priorité. Nous sommes une petite nation constamment soucieuse d’intégration, de solidarité, de concertation, de rassemblement — et de survie. Troisièmement, le multiculturalisme canadien reconnaît l’existence de minorités mais nie celle d’une majorité. Comment ce modèle pourrait-il s’appliquer ici ?

Le prochain chef du PQ

Je reviens au Parti québécois. La recherche d’une identité forte, au sens défini plus haut, et la promotion d’une conception vraiment inclusive de la nation ne sont nullement incompatibles. Il suffit de revenir à la tradition instaurée par le parti à ses années glorieuses. La loi 101 en est une parfaite illustration. D’un côté, elle servait les intérêts de la majorité en renforçant le français. De l’autre, elle servait les intérêts des minorités en leur procurant le moyen de mieux s’intégrer à la société et d’y faire leur chemin.

Dans l’intérêt du parti et de celui du Québec, il est éminemment souhaitable qu’il renoue avec cette philosophie qui lui a valu une grande partie de ses succès. Cette tradition est toujours porteuse d’avenir parce qu’elle est étroitement alignée sur le Québec en devenir que les fondateurs avaient remarquablement anticipé.

Concernant la course à la chefferie, ces réflexions invitent à favoriser le candidat qui incarne le mieux à la fois la grande tradition et l’avenir du parti suivant les voies esquissées ici. Parmi les candidatures en lice, celle de Sylvain Gaudreault me semble la plus proche de ce profil.

Source: La souveraineté du Québec, plus nécessaire que jamais

Filed under Interculturalisme, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

RBC report says immigration slowdown due to COVID-19 threatens Canadian economy

2020/08/22 Leave a comment

Not much new, but still a reckoning for Canada. The charts below show the year over year for immigrants (economic, family and refugees) as well as the subset coming under the various Provincial Nominee Programs, along with the top 10 countries:

A slowdown of immigration to Canada due to the COVID-19 pandemic threatens to derail a major source of economic and labour force growth, according to a report from the Royal Bank of Canada.

The shortfall jeopardizes the ability of the country to find employees needed in sectors such as health and elder care as the baby boom generation moves into retirement over the next few years, the report says.

It calls on the federal government to find new ways to encourage more immigrants to move to Canada.

“Canada does rely on having large numbers of people coming to the country to fuel growth and, if we see these large declines, one concern could be that people may decide maybe they don’t want to come to Canada anymore,” said report author Andrew Agopsowicz, a senior economist for RBC who studies labour trends.

“I think it’s really important for Canada to ensure the process is clear and that we still put out this attitude that we are open and we want people from the rest of the world to come to our country.”

Canada added 34,000 permanent residents in the second quarter, down 67 per cent from the same period last year, the RBC study said.

Meanwhile, new permanent residency applications to Canada were down 80 per cent and just over 10,000 new study permits were processed, down from 107,000 a year earlier.

Despite a recent recovery in the pace of immigration, the bank expects to see only 70 per cent of the originally targeted 341,000 new permanent residents at the end of the year, a decline of about 100,000 people.

The shortfall is particularly bad news for elder care as labour shortages have gotten worse in the wake of the pandemic’s deadly sweep through the country’s nursing homes, said Dr. Samir Sinha, director of health policy research at the National Institute on Ageing at Ryerson University and director of geriatrics at Mount Sinai Hospital.

“We’ve been having a huge struggle finding workers and retaining workers in this sector for years … and we were only keeping it afloat by often recruiting immigrants who are willing to take on these jobs that we as Canadians didn’t want to do,” he said.

“The fact it’s low paid and not valued also speaks to one of the reasons it’s been incredibly hard retaining (staff).”

Sinha said higher wages are needed not only to recruit Canadian-born workers but also to keep ambitious immigrants on the job longer.

Canada’s ability to attract immigrants with meaningful work as the economy struggles to rebound from the pandemic may be difficult.

A Statistics Canada report published Thursday finds that recent immigrants were harder hit by pandemic-related job losses, with 17 per cent becoming unemployed from March to April compared with 13.5 per cent of workers who are Canadian-born or immigrants who have been in Canada more than 10 years.

The percentage was higher, almost 20 per cent, for recent female immigrants.

The difference is significant, said Statistics Canada analyst Feng Hou, adding it is attributed mostly to recent immigrants having less work experience and earning lower wages.

“From past experience, when immigrants come during hard times, they tend to have a hard time finding jobs,” he said, adding there’s no data as yet to tell if that will happen in the current environment.

Travel restrictions that began in March and continue today make it difficult for people to physically come to Canada, Agopsowicz said.

At the same time, the lockdowns in the early days of the pandemic slowed processing of applications in Canada and prevented potential immigrants from accessing programs to ease application in their home countries.

An unknown is whether the COVID-19 virus, which hits senior citizens hardest, will have a dampening affect on the desire of foreigners to come to Canada and leave behind their vulnerable elderly relatives, Agopsowicz said.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty, I think, when people arrive already during normal times, so I think people are starting to work through what that means,” he said.

“This may be somewhat of a lost year (but) is this going to be easy to recover from next year in terms of bringing increased numbers back?”

Only about 20 per cent of new permanent residents are former students or temporary workers, he pointed out, suggesting Ottawa could do more to try to convince those people to permanently reside in Canada to bolster numbers.

Source: RBC report says immigration slowdown due to COVID-19 threatens Canadian economy

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#COVID-19: Comparing provinces with other countries 19 August Update

2020/08/20 Leave a comment

Latest update. As UK revised the number of deaths by about 5,000, Quebec now has the highest death rate per million. Overall infection and death numbers continue to increase given the impact of some of the opening up measures.

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

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