ICYMI – Gee: A party to celebrate a mistake

2025/07/22 Leave a comment

More on ill-advised naming decisions:

…Sankofa Square is the obscure new name for Yonge-Dundas Square, the one-acre public space at the corner of Yonge and Dundas streets, right across from the Eaton Centre. Sankofa Day, its organizers tell us, is another name for the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition.

In 2021, the city government decided to erase the name Dundas from the square bearing his name. It was a time when statues were being toppled and historical figures cancelled in the name of social justice. 

Henry Dundas was a leading British statesman of the Georgian era. His critics say he was responsible for delaying the end of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. His defenders say he was a sincere opponent of slavery who orchestrated a tactical delay in parliament to pave the way for eventual abolition.

City councillors brushed aside these complexities and voted to rename the square, though not the street (which would be too expensive). Various new names were kicked around. One suggestion was Lightfoot Square, after the iconic singer who played many times at Massey Hall around the corner. But, no, that would have been too easy.

Instead, the city struck a committee: the Recognition Review Community Advisory Committee, in fact. After what the group that runs the square calls “two years of careful work,” it announced its choice. Yonge-Dundas Square would become Sankofa Square. 

Torontonians were understandably bewildered. They still are. What or who is Sankofa? The square’s website explains that “Sankofa (SAHN-koh-fah) is a Twi word from the Akan Tribe of Ghana that loosely translates to, ‘go back and get it.’” The phrase “encourages learning from the past to inform the future.”

A-ha. Not surprisingly, the name has failed to catch on. Does anybody ever say, “Meet you at Sankofa Square?”

The name has no connection to Toronto or its history. Worse, after the name came out, critics pointed out that the Akan people themselves once kept and traded slaves. Awkward….

Source: A party to celebrate a mistake

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

How French immersion inadvertently created class and cultural divides at schools across Canada

2023/10/18 Leave a comment

Relevant class analysis. Longer term implications both in terms of class and cultural divisions, as well as interest in French compared to other non-official languages:

Up until a decade ago, Blake Street Junior Public School was an English-only school that sat on a street populated mostly by public housing buildings in Toronto’s east end. The kids who lived there and attended Blake primarily came from low-income and racialized families.

New families to the gentrifying community – many of them white and upper-middle class – avoided the local school, citing Blake students’ performance on standardized tests, a controversial but popular yardstick for measuring how “good” a school is. They found ways to enroll them in schools nearby, in much whiter and more affluent neighbourhoods.

In 2015, enrolment at Blake was so low the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) contemplated shuttering the school. But then things turned around. In less than a decade, the school’s population swelled by 70 per cent, from 229 to 388, almost all of that growth owing to the introduction of a new French immersion stream in 2014.

Although it was recent immigrants from French-speaking African countries that first pushed for the program at Blake, those who raced to register for it were mostly wealthier and predominantly white parents from the wider area.

TDSB data show the change seen at Blake is a city-wide phenomenon: White students are overrepresented in French immersion, as well as students from families with very high socioeconomic status who have Canadian-born, university-educated parents.

According to Statistics Canada, the same thing has historically been seen in most provinces. And in total, French immersion enrolment across the country has grown from 261,450 students in 1997-98 to 482,769 in 2020-21, the latest year for which data is available.

While this trend has been decades in the making, governments, school boards and parents are finally taking action on equity issues surrounding French immersion programs, and grappling with its future.

In New Brunswick, Canada’s only officially bilingual province, the government attempted to address access issues by removing the full-day French immersion program in favour of half-day French instruction for all anglophone students – an initiative they cancelled earlier this year after a massive pushback from parents.

At the same time, in 2022, Canada set a record for the most immigrants welcomed in a single year, and one in four residents now reports a mother tongue other than English or French. This has prompted demand in some jurisdictions for immersive teaching of languages besides the two official ones.

Ultimately, in keeping with how a group of mothers originally brought French immersion to the country, parents – who now wield more power than they ever have in the choices offered in public schools – could be the chief determinants of what bilingual education looks like in the country in the years to come.

The roots of French immersion go back to October, 1963, in the Quebec community of Saint-Lambert. There, three anglophone mothers got together to discuss how their children – all of whom attended English schools – could improve their French.

The women organized extracurricular programming and summer camps based around what was then a controversial approach: having a teacher exclusively speak French to students who were anglophones. The program was soon implemented by the local school board and then began to spread across the country.

The adoption of the program was initially slow. But in the last quarter-century, as the potential benefits of the program became known, enrolment exploded. Studies suggested learning multiple languages at a young age could stimulate cognitive development, and parents believed French immersion could also be a ticket to greater career opportunities.

But after decades in practice, it’s become clear the lofty promises of French immersion didn’t always stand up to scrutiny. In most school boards, demand has outstripped supply when it comes to recruiting qualified teachers who are fluent in French. Special education resources have also been limited for students in French immersion, which has meant many children with learning disabilities often transfer out of the program and into an English one where they can get better support.

The rate of attrition increases as French immersion students move through the grades. Many drop out after elementary school, and by the time they reach high school, where there is often a wider course selection in English, plenty of others abandon the program. And then there’s been a wider growing concern over whether French immersion – which in many communities has come to be seen as an elite program for keener learners – is driving segregation within schools and communities.

At Toronto’s Blake Street Public School, part of the fallout of its demographic changes has been losing its status as a “Model School” – a designation in the TDSB that brings additional funding to 150 schools based on a mix of factors, including median family income, the percentage of families on social assistance and the number of single-parent families. Among other benefits, Blake’s Model School status gave it breakfast and snack programs, subsidies for school trips, a thriving chess program, visits from theatre groups, and in-school eye and dental exams.

Some saw Blake’s descent on the Model Schools list as a triumph rather than a loss. Bringing in French immersion also brought in more affluent families, which in turn “fixed” the school; this was how it was framed by parents to Meaghan Phillips-Shiner, the co-chair of Blake’s school council. But as long as the public housing was on the same street as Blake, she pointed out, the 150 to 200 families that needed extra support through the Model Schools program would be there.

“The data gets saturated because now we have all these other people there. But those kids’ needs haven’t gone away,” she said.

It became known that the families who lived on the street were beginning to feel intimidated by or resentful of the outsiders who now outnumbered them, says Mohammad Yousuf, who serves as a representative for the TDSB’s Parent Involvement Advisory Committee and whose daughter attends the school. Because he’s an Indian immigrant and his wife is visibly Muslim, he says racialized and immigrant parents have been candid with them about feeling like “second-class citizens” at the school.

He predicts the loss of Model School status this fall will only widen the chasm. “The divide between rich and poor, whites and non-whites will be bigger, stronger,” he said.

The changes at Blake have reverberated in the wider community. Laurette Jack, who is Black and has worked at Eastview Neighbourhood Community Centre just down the block from Blake for 23 years, saw it early on.

For the longest time she’d worked primarily with the population living on the block, a mix of Afro-Caribbean, West African, North African and Chinese kids. About 60 to 100 who lived in the social housing complex accessed the centre’s programming. Now, there are maybe only five to 10 kids who are “Blake Street Kids” as she calls them – the vast majority are “gentrified community kids.”

As the French immersion population grew and Blake’s Model School status was under threat, then-principal Jennifer Zurba made it clear at school council meetings that this was something all families should be concerned about.

The call to action prompted serious self-reflection in Valerie Laurie, the council’s former co-chair. When she first heard that some families in the area felt “the French stream parents were taking over,” she bristled. She didn’t put her two kids in French immersion to segregate them from racialized or poor kids, she says, but it was undeniable that it was a byproduct of her choice.

“I think it’s super amazing when I hear my kids speaking French to each other at home … it makes me warm and fuzzy. But that shouldn’t take away a food program from my neighbour’s kid. It’s hard to justify,” she said.

Ms. Laurie and others on the school council – the majority of them French-immersion parents – formed an advocacy group to petition the school board to overhaul the way it determined its Learning Opportunities Index (LOI), the calculation that decides which schools get Model School status. They proposed that LOI be calculated separately for the two streams, as they believed it would be clear that many English students came from families in need.

In a recent report, the TDSB said it was reviewing the way it calculates LOI and is planning public consultations as part of this process. This work is scheduled to begin this fall and a revised policy will be presented to the board of trustees for final approval in winter 2024.

Still, the advocacy work hasn’t smoothed over all tensions.

Ms. Zurba, who has moved to be principal at a different school, said she understands why it’s difficult for families who have been in the neighbourhood for years to trust the parents who are advocating for them now. The long-time families, she says, “have seen firsthand what the change in the community has been” and thinks it can’t be easy to witness the French immersion families who once walked past Blake embrace the school now that it’s home to a desired program.

Many parents who send their kids to French immersion don’t want any changes to the program, which was recently witnessed in New Brunswick, where the provincial government tried to scrap French immersion.

Micah Peterson’s wife initially worried about enrolling the couple’s children in French immersion at their local school in Saint John. She had never attended the program herself and wondered if she’d be able to help her kids with their homework.

Mr. Peterson lent a reassuring voice: He thrived as a French-immersion student despite having anglophone parents. And he shared the research with his wife that showed studying multiple languages can enhance a child’s brain development.

The Petersons enrolled six of their seven children in the program. They plan to send their youngest there, too.

So when Mr. Peterson learned last fall that the New Brunswick provincial government had planned to replace French immersion with a program where all anglophone children entering kindergarten and Grade 1 would spend half their day learning French and the other half in English, he was appalled – and joined the fight against the plan.

The government argued that the proposed changes would allow more students in the country’s only official bilingual province to graduate high school with at least a conversational level of French.

“It’s not a streaming program for a small portion of our students. It’s for all of our students,” Education Minister Bill Hogan said at the time.

In January, Mr. Peterson and more than 300 others attended a government-run public consultation session in Saint John on the future of the program. Every speaker who addressed the room spoke in opposition to the government’s plans to eliminate the French-immersion program.

“If you want high-quality French-speaking people that are going to be joining the government, that are going to be doing things that are exciting, that are going to become French-immersion teachers … you think they’re going to be able to do that when you cut it in half? That’s ridiculous,” Mr. Peterson said at the session.

Mr. Peterson’s voice was among thousands across the province that spoke up against the changes proposed by Premier Blaine Higgs. In consultations held by the province, parents filled conference rooms in Bathurst, Moncton, Saint John and Fredericton to strongly voice their opposition to the government’s plan. They crowded virtual town halls. And they flooded social media with a campaign to save the French-immersion program.

It proved too much for the government. Or, depending on your perspective, just the right amount.

In February, New Brunswick backtracked on its plan. It was a shift that highlighted the power that parents – in this case, New Brunswick’s anglophone community – increasingly hold in the public education system, particularly those with children in French immersion and other optional programs of choice.

“I think it’s a positive example of people coming together and making their voices heard and advocating for what they want,” said Kaitlyn Gillis, a mother of two who attended a public consultation session in Fredericton.

Successive governments, she said, have fiddled with the province’s French-as-a-second-language programs. In 2008, they moved the entry point to French immersion from Grade 1 to Grade 3. It was then moved back to Grade 1 in 2017 under then-premier Brian Gallant.

If it weren’t for the forceful voices of hundreds of parents in New Brunswick, Ms. Gillis believes families would once again be thrown for a loop.

Since the 1990s, there’s been an undeniable shift toward a public school system that caters to the wishes of parents, said Université de Saint-Boniface education professor Corinne Barrett DeWiele.

“The parents are saying, ‘yes, we want French immersion in New Brunswick and yes, we want it to start in Grade 1 and don’t take that away from us,’ ” said Prof. Barrett DeWiele, who is also a former principal of a French-immersion school.

In 2017, a similar scene played out at the Halton Catholic District School Board in southwestern Ontario. The school board had looked at phasing out the French-immersion program as it grappled with a shortage of qualified teachers. Parents pleaded with trustees to save the program. Others considered leaving, which would mean less funding for the board. In the end, trustees saved the program.

In a research paper published two years ago, Prof. Barrett DeWiele described publicly funded French-immersion education as a paradox: Its benefits are meant to be universally accessible but end up unequally distributed as a result of demand outstripping supply. The tendency is for parents of middle and upper socioeconomic status, who tend to have more free time and thus are more involved, to realize the benefits of French immersion for their children and to pursue it more frequently than the rest of the population, she wrote.

To Mr. Peterson, taking away French immersion in an attempt to avoid streaming is like eliminating Advanced Placement courses, or high-level science classes students take in preparation for university. He believes school boards should be expanding their language offerings further rather than limiting them in the name of equity.

“We should be able to splinter kids out into their interests and they should be able to pursue that with ferocity,” he said.

While French immersion may be the program of choice among many families, in some corners of the country, change is afoot.

In Edmonton, for instance, other languages from Mandarin to Arabic and Spanish are carving out a place in the public education system, a reflection of the changing demographics of the city.

Carolyn Wang chooses to drive her children 14 kilometres to southwest Edmonton each day so they can attend Parkallen School’s Chinese (Mandarin) bilingual program, where half of the day’s instruction takes place in the second language.

“I had already chosen the fact that, you know what, I am sacrificing the next seven years to drive my kids to and from school for their education,” Ms. Wang said. “I already had my heart set on sending them.”

In the Edmonton Public Schools division, there are just as many students enrolled in bilingual programs as there are in French immersion. Almost 5,000 students attended bilingual programs in the last academic year, and 4,300 studied French immersion. Other school boards in Canada are expanding language programs as well. The Winnipeg School Division, for example, started a Filipino bilingual program in one of its schools this fall with 11 kindergarten and Grade 1 kids enrolled. It also offers bilingual programs in Cree, Ojibwe, Ukrainian, Hebrew and Spanish.

Ms. Wang is herself a graduate of the Chinese (Mandarin) bilingual program, which Edmonton piloted in the early 1980s. She credits the program with allowing her to receive a federally funded postgraduate scholarship to study at China’s Xiamen University.

In her first job, she beat out other applicants because the company appreciated her language skills. “The opportunities are endless,” said Ms. Wang, who is also president of the parent-driven Edmonton Chinese Bilingual Education Association.

In the Edmonton school division, the French-immersion program and the half-day ones have been around a similar amount of time. French was introduced in 1974. The Hebrew language followed a year later, then German in the late 1970s, and Arabic and Chinese in the early 1980s. The Spanish bilingual program rolled out in 2001.

Valerie Leclair, the division’s supervisor of programs and student accommodation, says new programs are introduced if there is sufficient demand from families and enough space in schools to accommodate students. She says that parents often want their children to learn more about their culture and language in a school setting – an extension of what happens in the home. Ms. Leclair heard from some parents that learning Chinese or Spanish was important because it was the “language of business,” meaning there were future career paths for children.

Ms. Leclair is unclear what the proliferation of other languages means for French. The number of students studying a second language, whether it’s French or Mandarin, has been steadily climbing. However, the French-immersion program still garners more interest from families than other languages, she says.

Ms. Wang appreciates that Canada’s official languages are French and English, but she wonders whether other languages will soon be seen as equally important on a job application, especially in government. Her eldest child’s class is not only made up of Chinese-Canadian students, but children who are white, South Asian and biracial.

“I understand their standpoint,” she said of employers who prioritize knowledge of French. “But I feel that they are minimizing the opportunities that could come from the people they could employ.”

For now, she’s content with her children being able to converse with elders, and preserving their language for another generation. “I feel that French immersion is a fabulous program, don’t get me wrong,” she said. “There’s definite benefits to that.”

However, when she looks at her children and which second language she thinks will open a few more doors in their future, she’s doesn’t mince words about how she feels about the Mandarin bilingual program: “It was an easy choice.”

Source: How French immersion inadvertently created class and cultural divides at schools across Canada

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Opposition mounting to Dundas Street name change. Three former Toronto Mayors call for reconsideration 

2023/08/19 Leave a comment

For the record, letter from former mayors Crombie, Sewall and Eggleton, highlighting the false arguments used by advocates for the name change. Opportunity for new mayor Chow to signal that she has a broader perspective than the Dundas change advocates and is careful with taxpayer money:

Dear Mayor and City Councillors,

We, former Mayors of Toronto, request you to re-consider the decision to re-name Dundas Street.

We question the interpretation of the research leading to that decision and the practicality of carrying it out. Henry Dundas (1742-1811) was, according to a considerable amount of historic evidence, a committed abolitionist of slavery. His first achievement as an abolitionist was in 1778, when, as a lawyer, he took a appeal case in Scotland, of an enslaved person Joseph Knight, brought to Scotland from Jamaica by his owner. In court Dundas stated that he “hoped for the honour of Scotland, that the supreme Court of this country would not be the only court that would give its sanction to so barbarous a claim. Human nature, my Lords, spurns at the thought of slavery among any part of our species.” The judges not only agreed but ended slavery completely in Scotland.

Dundas has been faulted for his next act on the subject, in 1792. Then a British MP, he moved an amendment to a motion of William Wilberforce on the abolition of the slave trade to make it gradual. Wilberforce’s motion of the previous year, 1791, had failed miserably, 163 to 88. With Dundas’s amendment, it at least passed in the House of Commons, the first anti-slavery motion to do so in Great Britain.

Unfortunately, the plan was subsequently defeated in the House of Lords. It would take a lot more than a British law to get rid of the slave trade and slavery, which Dundas understood. Yet even Wilberforce eventually came to see the necessity of intermediate steps: in 1823 he became vice-president of the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery.

Dundas’s appointment, of John Graves Simcoe, also an abolitionist, as the first lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada (Ontario) also promoted the anti-slavery cause. On arrival, Simcoe sought to get an abolition bill adopted, but there were slave owners in the House of Assembly and much opposition. The abolitionist attorney-general, John White, who presented it, then revised it drastically and it passed in 1793, making Ontario the first jurisdiction in the British Empire to adopt an anti-slavery law. John White, not so incidentally, was defeated in the next election.

Dundas was also enlightened about French-English relations in Canada, notably requiring laws to be enacted in both languages, instead of English only. He also was responsible for Britain taking steps to reverse two decades of oppression of Black Loyalists in the Atlantic provinces.

In summary, it appears that Henry Dundas for whom the street is named, was a committed abolitionist who, when facing strong opposition and certain defeat, rather than give up his quest, advocated for interim measures that would ultimately lead to that result. It seems he was doing the best he could under challenging circumstances at that time in history.

Therefore, we don’t see a valid reason to remove his name from the street. From a practical perspective, and given the City’s financial circumstance, there are more appropriate ways to spend $8.6 Million.

On behalf of David Crombie, John Sewell, Art Eggleton

(The letter was signed by Mr. Eggleton

Source: Breaking: Opposition mounting to Dundas Street name change. Three former Toronto Mayors call for reconsideration

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , ,

Gee: Let’s not rename Dundas Street after all

2023/08/09 Leave a comment

Yep. Waste of $$ with no material effect on removing barriers or improving inclusion:

“The City of Toronto is broke,” its new mayor, Olivia Chow, said last month, turning her pocket inside out theatrically to show there was nothing in it.

She is not far off. City hall is a staggering $1.5-billion short of what it needs to keep the town running for the next two years. Naturally, it is looking around for ways to save money. One obvious way presents itself. It could reverse a costly and misguided decision to rename a major street.

Dundas Street spans the city core, linking the east and west ends. It crosses the Don Valley, passes the Eaton Centre and travels through Chinatown, extending all the way into the suburban city of Mississauga.

It is one of the city’s oldest and best-known thoroughfares. The first governor of Upper Canada, John Graves Simcoe, started building it in the late 18th century for military purposes. He named the road after the man who appointed him, Henry Dundas, a powerful Scottish politician who held leading posts in the British government.

Until recently, most Torontonians had no idea who Dundas even was. But during the global reckoning with racism that followed the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, a petition circulated calling for Dundas Street to be renamed. Advocates said Dundas was instrumental in delaying Great Britain’s decision to abolish the transatlantic slave trade. Two years ago, city council voted 17-7 to strip his name not only from the street but from other city assets such as Yonge-Dundas Square.

Now is a good time to revisit the decision. If Toronto wants to acknowledge the sins of the past, there are better ways than toppling statues and erasing names. One is to teach young people about shameful episodes such as the establishment of residential schools. Another is to honour pioneers in the fields of racial and social justice by naming streets, schools or parks after them. Yet another is to put up educational plaques acknowledging the misdeeds of the city’s early leaders.

Dundas, who never so much as visited Toronto, is not one of those. The case against him was murky to begin with. His critics say that in 1792 he delayed the abolition of the slave trade by proposing a parliamentary amendment that added the word “gradually” to a motion saying it should be ended.

His defenders say that was merely a tactical move to get an abolition bill of some kind through the House of Commons and smooth the path for a final decision to end the trade. The fact that the House of Lords was opposed to abolition and that Britain was fixated on its war with revolutionary France were much bigger factors in the delay.

They also point out that, earlier in his career, when he was Lord Advocate of Scotland, Dundas helped argue the case of Joseph Knight, who fought in court for his freedom from the plantation owner who had brought him to Scotland from Jamaica.

If Toronto erases a historic street name on the basis of such mixed evidence, then it is open season. Its downtown is positively littered with names from its past as a distant outpost of the British Empire. City staff identified about 60 streets named after figures “that are no longer considered to be reflective of the city’s contemporary values,” among them “at least 12 streets named after slave owners.”

A city report in 2021 said erasing Dundas’s name alone would mean, among many other things, replacing 730 street signs, changing 129 signs and 35 info pillars in the city’s wayfinding system and renaming three parks and two subway stations.

That is not to mention the hassle for the 97,000 residents and 4,500 businesses on the street. Sixty of those businesses have Dundas in their names.

The latest estimate of the cost is $8.6-million, no trifle at a time when the city is striving to find the money for things such as housing the homeless. Veteran city councillor Shelley Carroll told a local radio station that, simply put, “we don’t have the money to do it right now,” and she is one of those who voted for the change two years back.

Yet Ms. Chow – she of the empty pocket – is saying she wants to push ahead. She should think again.

Source: Let’s not rename Dundas Street after all

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Globe editorial: Ottawa can’t wash its hands of Toronto’s refugee crisis

2023/07/28 Leave a comment

Yet another critical Globe editorial:

Here’s a short list of things that Ottawa spends money on but has no constitutional responsibility for: health care, child care, new fridges for big grocery companies, and Gen Y tech consultants for small businesses.

…

Source: Ottawa can’t wash its hands of Toronto’s refugee crisis

Filed under Immigration, Refugees Tagged with ,

On Peter Street, a community steps up for asylum seekers abandoned to sleep on the sidewalk

2023/07/19 Leave a comment

Ongoing crisis and scandal:

As asylum seekers continued to sleep on a downtown Toronto sidewalk waiting on government to sort out a funding dispute, community leaders and business owners stepped in to help.

Some asylum seekers were relocated Monday night, an advocate said.

Lorraine Lam, an outreach worker who has spoken out about the situation at 129 Peter St., said a “coalition of groups” worked to arrange a bus and space for individuals at temporary church shelters. 

Some people went to the church while others chose to stay behind, Lam said.

The growing camp of refugee claimants and asylum seekers downtown is the result of a tug-of-war between all levels of government over who should foot the bill when it comes to housing refugees in Canada. A new city policy, which Deputy Mayor Jennifer McKelvie framed as a hard decision, means asylum seekers looking for emergency beds in the city’s non-refugee-specific shelters would be redirected to the federal government.

Mayor Olivia Chow said all hands on deck are required to solve the crisis.

“When senior staff meet on Tuesday, my expectation is tangible solutions from all three levels of government that we can implement right away,” Chow said on Monday.

On Monday morning, Paramount Fine Foods CEO Mohamad Fakih pledged to donate $20,000 and raise more money to pay for temporary housing. 

There are “good people in the government. They want to do the right thing, but it’s taking long and they have to move,” Fakih said. “This is wrong on all of us and we have to change it.” 

He’s asking other business leaders to open their hearts and their pockets if they are able to help. 

One man who the Star agreed not to name has been at 129 Peter St. for 10 days. He said that while they are grateful to get food, what they really need is shelter. 

“We have food in our own countries. But we came here because of security. And now security means that we have to have a place that is enclosed, where we put our heads (to rest),” the man said.

Meanwhile, 32 housing advocates and outreach workers sent an open letter to the head of Toronto’s shelter and housing system, Gord Tanner, calling for his resignation or for Chow to fire him over what they call “repeated mismanagement of the shelter system.”

While the collapse of the shelter system “is not solely the General Manager (of Toronto’s Shelter Support and Housing Administration) responsibility — it lies with City Council — your key decisions have resulted in immeasurable harm and have further exacerbated the crisis,” the letter states. 

The letter cites several “key decisions” advocates say have resulted in “immeasurable harm,” including the city denying shelter to refugees and changing shelter death reporting from monthly to biannually. 

In a statement shared with the Star, city manager Paul Johnson acknowledged the letter, adding the voices of homeless, shelter and refugee advocates matter and they play a critical role in providing supports and advocacy work, as well as City staff.

“I have every confidence in the individual mentioned in the letter and in my team who has been working diligently and on an ongoing basis, in partnership with many other experts and community leaders, some of whom are signatories of the letter,” Johnson wrote.

Johnson said urgent funding is needed from other levels of government to support the surge of people arriving in Canada as the city grapples with a shelter system that does not have extra space or means to expand the shelter system to keep up with demand.

“A lot of political figures respond to public pressure and it’s not looking very good on them right now. So I would say that maybe that little bit of pressure might jog some more quick rapid-response movement,” Lam said.

Lam took to Twitter this weekend to encourage community members who want to help to be mindful of what they are donating.

“What we started to see over the weekend, for instance, was there was so much food because everybody wanted to bring food on the weekend and on Friday night, because that’s when people are free,” Lam said. The result was extra food being thrown away or sitting next to people as they tried to sleep.

Lam and fellow outreach worker Diana McNally have started a GoFundMe to go toward water, meals, and store gift cards as well as requested items like camping chairs and sleeping bags. The campaign has raised $59,985 as of Monday afternoon. 

Brampton non-profit groups Help A Girl Out and Rescue the Youth were also in front of 129 Peter St. on Monday with pink drawstring bags full of soap, sanitizer, toothbrushes, wash clothes and sanitary pads. 

“I can’t imagine having your period on the streets,” said Andria Barrett, chair of Help a Girl Out. 

“Every non-profit, church, charity, mosque, religious institution needs to come together and donate — donate money, donate time, donate food, donate products. This is not how we need to be treating each other,” Barrett said, gesturing to the dozens of people sitting outside 129 Peter St. under tents with suitcases and garbage bags filled with belongings around them. 

Don Mills resident Vickie Williams was rolling a suitcase around the site on Monday and told the Star she dropped off used jackets, a sleeping bag, new socks and other clothing she stayed up gathering until 3 a.m.

“What is going on is not right. Our government’s got to be the example. And as far as I can see, they are not the example. They need to smarten up. They need to treat everybody equally and fairly,” Williams said.

Source: On Peter Street, a community steps up for asylum seekers abandoned to sleep on the sidewalk

Filed under Immigration, Refugees Tagged with , , , ,

City apologizes, seeks to rectify job loss after ‘clean-shave’ policy under fire by Sikh advocacy group

2022/07/07 Leave a comment

Reasonable accommodation in action with “under-mask beard covers”:

First came the Tuesday afternoon phone call and apology from Toronto Mayor John Tory. Now, Birkawal Singh Anand wants his job back.

Anand was one of more than 100 Sikh guards laid off from the security companies contracted to staff City-operated shelters and respite sites after the guards refused to follow a City mandate requiring they be clean-shaven in order for a tight-fitting N95 mask be worn in the event of a COVID-19 outbreak.

On Tuesday, Toronto issued a press release apologizing and saying that security guards should be rehired and paid for lost wages. “City of Toronto apologizes to the World Sikh Organization of Canada (WSO) for any delay in addressing this issue and ensuring security contractors were offering religious accommodations.”

The city said it was providing the update to “ensure security contractors accommodate all employees following a complaint from the World Sikh Organization of Canada.”

“It shouldn’t have taken a public outcry to make this change but I still appreciate that it is happening,” Anand said Tuesday night.

“The city did their part, now it’s up to the company to do theirs.”

Demanding that a Sikh shave his beard is like asking a non-Sikh to “peel off their skin,” Anand told the Star Monday.

“I told them, I belong to the Sikh community, shaving is not an option for me.”

The job losses began in April, the new release said. City staff had been inspecting work sites and deducting billable hours from contracted security companies for having employees who were not clean shaven.

The WSO complained about the layoffs in June, saying security service providers did not offer appropriate accommodation to their employees who have facial hair for religious reasons. The complaint was sent to city staff to resolve, sources said. Now, Toronto says it will allow the guards to wear “under-mask beard covers” as a “reasonable accommodation.”

That covering uses a “tight-fitting mask over a beard that covers the chin and cheeks, and ties in a knot at the top of the head,” the city’s release said.

“An N95 mask is then worn over the cover. The technique, also known as the Singh Thattha Method, is used by many Sikh people in the medical community and has been found to be highly effective in respirator fit testing.”

Before his 4 p.m. phone call to Anand, the release said Tory called the WSO to say the under-masking practice will go into effect “immediately.”

“This option was proposed by the World Sikh Organization of Canada and the City is grateful for this information. The City is also committed to followup meetings with the organization,” the release said.

Balpreet Singh Boparai, the lawyer for the WSO, said the organization received a call on Tuesday from Tory.

“He confirmed that the security guards could return to their jobs and the City would work with the security contractors to make it possible,” Boparai said.

The job losses may not be so easily resolved, he added.

“We are still waiting for the security contractors to get this message. A number of Sikh security guards had their shifts cancelled and they have not been invited to return to their positions.”

Source: City apologizes, seeks to rectify job loss after ‘clean-shave’ policy under fire by Sikh advocacy group

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , ,

‘There is systemic discrimination in our policing’: New Toronto police data confirms officers use more force against Black people

2022/06/17 Leave a comment

Significant. However, most activists remain sceptical, at least the ones I heard on CBC:

The hard data proves what has long been known and felt by members of the city’s Black communities.

Toronto police officers use more force against Black people, more often, with no clear explanation why. Except for race.

That is a key takeaway from a landmark new report containing never-before-seen data on officer use of force and strip searches — statistics that, for the first time, were collected and released by the Toronto Police Service itself.

The race-based statistics are so stark that Chief James Ramer offered an apology to the city’s Black community, coinciding with the release of a 119-slide presentation on the force’s findings.

“I am sorry and I apologize unreservedly,” Ramer said Wednesday morning.

“Our own analysis of our data from 2020 discloses that there is systemic discrimination in our policing,” Ramer said. “That is, there is a disproportionate impact experienced by racialized people, particularly those of Black communities.”

Meanwhile, police this weekend warned officers to brace for a “challenging” public reaction that will “lead some people to question the hard work you do every day.” 

Among the major findings: In 2020, Toronto officers used force on Black people about four times more often than their share of the population — and Black Torontonians were five times more likely to have force used against them than white ones. 

And in those cases when force was used, an officer was more than twice as likely to draw a firearm on a Black person they thought was unarmed than a white person they thought was unarmed. 

The statistics show overrepresentation in other racialized communities, too. If you are Indigenous, you were more likely to be subjected to a strip search, a highly invasive police practice; and members of the Latino, Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian communities were also more likely to have force used against them.

The sobering data released Wednesday aligns with past external reports that have found Black people are overrepresented in police use of forcein this city. 

But the new data uses internal police records to go a step further, evaluating racial disparities in police use of force not only against the city’s population but within the pool of people interacting with police — those who were arrested, considered suspects, ticketed for provincial offences and more.

“This allows us to compare outcomes against the population that actually had contact with police,” a Toronto police statement said, adding it allows police to “focus our efforts on the actions that we can control.”

In other words: If officers were simply responding to higher rates of crime in any one group, this method should make the racial disparity disappear.

Even here, Black people were overrepresented, found to be 1.6 times more likely to be subjected to force compared to their percentage of total police interactions in 2020. Latino people were overrepresented by 1.5 times and Middle Eastern people were overrepresented by 1.2 times.

And Black people were already more than twice as likely to be the subject of this baseline police enforcement. Although they represented approximately 10 per cent of the city’s population in 2020, they accounted for 22 per cent of what police called “enforcement actions,” including arrests, tickets and other stops.

The police report has been independently peer-reviewed, Ramer said. 

He added: “This is some of the most important work we have ever done.”

Where the data is coming from

The race-based data released Wednesday details the use of force and strip searches conducted by Toronto police in 2020.

The use of force data is taken from Ontario’s “use of force reports” — documents required to be filled out whenever an officer uses physical force requiring medical attention, deploys a TASER, or draws or points their firearm. In 2019, Ontario’s provincial government required all police services to begin recording the officer’s perception of the race of the person they used force against.

Toronto police then cross-referenced these reports with internal “occurrence” reports — allowing them to conduct a deeper analysis, including of the type of call and the location of the incident.

In total in 2020, Toronto police said there were 949 use of force incidents involving 1,224 members of the public. Of those, 39 per cent were perceived as Black, while 36 per cent were perceived as white. (In 2020, 46 per cent of Toronto’s population was white.)

In 2020, Toronto police also began recording officer perception of race for strip searches — an invasive procedure conducted on people who are arrested. For years, Toronto police and other services were not capturing race-based data on strip searches, something critics said was long overdue.

The data analysis independently reviewed “leading experts” in race data collection with a human rights lens, Toronto police said. Since it began collecting race-based data, Toronto police has been consulting with a community advisory committee that includes members of Black, Indigenous and racialized communities.

Use of force — from low to high

Police use of force reports capture a range of interactions. Lower level force includes the use of aerosol spray, a baton, a police dog or a strike with a hand. Less lethal force is the use of a Taser or bean bag gun, and higher levels of force include when a firearm is pointed or discharged.

Of the 949 use of force incidents in 2020, a firearm was pointed at someone 371 times. The gun was fired four times, twice killing someone.

When officers use force, Toronto police were more likely to point a firearm toward a Black person compared to a white person.

Even in situations where police believed the subject was armed, a Black person was 1.5 times more likely to have a gun pulled on them than a white person in the same scenario.

The difference increased even when police didn’t think the subject had a weapon. In that scenario, a Black person was more than twice as likely as a white person to have a police officer pull out their gun and point it at them.

Black, South Asian and East/Southeast Asian people were more likely to experience higher uses of force compared to white people when it came to “less than lethal force,” such as a bean bag gun.

Locations

https://misc.thestar.com/interactivegraphic/2022/06-june/15-use-of-force-rate-map/index-doubled.html

Toronto police also examined police officer use of force rates in police divisions across the city. The results showed that, overall, incidents involving white people had lower use of force rates while those involving Black people had higher use of force rates. 

The differences appear to be stark in some mid-Toronto police divisions, including downtown’s 51 and 52 Divisions. 

In those areas, officers used force on a white person in .5 to .75 per cent of all enforcement interactions (such as arrests). But when the person was Black, force was used in more than 1.75 per cent of these same interactions — numbers that show these divisions used force against Black people around two to four times more frequently.

The differences, Toronto police said, are “not explained” by the demographic makeup of the local population. 

In other divisions there is a much lower racial disparity, or none at all, according to the data. In Scarborough’s 42 Division and midtown’s 53 Division, for example, the data shows no difference in use of force between white and Black people.

Calls for service and types of offences 

In calls for service that were classified as violent, Black people were 1.2 times more likely and Indigenous people were 1.4 times more likely to be on the receiving end of officer use of force, according to the data.

With calls regarding a person in crisis, Black people were nearly two times more likely to be subjected to force, while Indigenous people were 1.4 times.

Black people were found to be more likely to be subjected to police officer use of force in incidents involving assaults, mental health calls, fraud, mischief and robbery. 

Strip searches

In 2020, more than 22 per cent of all arrests — more than one in five — resulted in a strip search by Toronto police (7,114 strip searches in total, from 31,979 arrests). 

Of those, 31 per cent of those strip searched were perceived as Black, roughly three times their share of the population and higher than their 27-per-cent share of total arrests.

Indigenous people showed the highest overrepresentation in strip searches. They were overrepresented by 1.3 times compared to their presence in all Toronto police arrests. They accounted for just three per cent of the total arrests but represented to 4 per cent of all strip searches. 

The data was collected the same year Toronto police made a significant policy change to strip searches in response to a scathing report by Ontario’s police complaints watchdog that found the force conducted “far too many” strip searches. Before, more than 27 per cent of arrests resulted in a strip search; following the changes, which included having a supervisor sign off on all strip searches, that number dropped to 4.9 per cent of arrests.

Data from 2021 shows a marked decline in the number of strip searches, though arrests involving white and Black people were still more likely to result in a strip search, compared to the average. 

Source: ‘There is systemic discrimination in our policing’: New Toronto police data confirms officers use more force against Black people

And a somewhat contrary view regarding the need to include the context of crime rates in communities:

The problem with the Toronto Police report released Wednesday concluding that Blacks, Indigenous people and other racial minorities are disproportionately targeted by police when it comes to use-of-force incidents and body searches, is that it looks at only half the issue. It concludes the reason for this is systemic racism within the police force, for which Police Chief James Ramer publicly apologized and pledged to do better going forward, noting the study recommends 38 “action items” police will implement along with dozens of recommendations in other studies.

But what the report excludes are the crime rates in the various communities with which the police interact.

Logically that’s part of the equation because if they are higher in some communities than others, that will impact the frequency and type of their interactions with police.

However, it has been illegal for police forces in Ontario to gather or reveal this data for decades.

That was the result of a controversy that erupted in 1989 when then Toronto police superintendent Julian Fantino released statistics suggesting Blacks in one Toronto community were disproportionately involved in crime.

Fantino said he did it to counter allegations police were racist.But politicians, criminologists and civil rights groups responded that releasing the data without the context that the Black community was over-policed, was unscientific and would feed into racism.

As a result, race-based police statistics today are used solely to search for systemic bias within policing.

Scot Wortley of the University of Toronto and Maria Jung of Toronto Metropolitan University in a 2020 report for the Ontario Human Rights Commission which concluded Blacks were disproportionately arrested and charged by Toronto police compared to whites, cited both theories to explain why this happens.

One is the “Bias Thesis” which argues, “Black people are over-represented in police statistics because they are subject to biased or discriminatory treatment by the police and the broader criminal justice system. “Rates of Black offending stem from the negative consequences of centuries of colonialism, slavery and racial oppression … The impact of intergenerational trauma and contemporary social disadvantage, in turn, results in higher rates of Black offending.”

An alternative explanation, the “Higher Rate of Offending Thesis” argues “Black people engage in criminal activity at a higher level than other racial groups and this fact is accurately reflected in official crime statistics … when such factors as the criminal history of individuals and the seriousness of their offences are considered, there’s no evidence disparities in arrest rates are the result of police racism.”

The authors of the OHRC study cited “growing evidence (that) suggests that both explanations have merit … (that) the over-representation of Black people in arrest statistics may be caused both by higher rates of offending and racial bias within the criminal justice system.”

That is, police disproportionately arrest and charge Blacks (for example) because while the vast majority of Blacks are law-abiding, a minority are disproportionately involved in criminal activity and the reason is often due to the adverse social and economic conditions faced by Blacks because of systemic racism, not just in the police force, but in society in general.The problem is that by continuously ignoring the issue of crime rates within the communities with which the police interact, we are no longer looking honestly or completely at all aspects of the issue.

This will inevitably contribute to public skepticism among many about the findings of this latest report by Toronto Police identifying systemic racism in the force.

Source: GOLDSTEIN: Here’s why we no longer talk honestly about police race-based data

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , , , ,

Immigrants. The working poor. Essential workers. Third doses lag in Toronto’s most vulnerable areas; Let’s celebrate Toronto’s vaccine success story

2022/02/09 Leave a comment

Not that surprising as they lagged with earlier doses as well.

Throughout the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, Torontonians have watched as neighbourhoods home to those experiencing some of the harshest outcomes of the pandemic have had among the lowest vaccination rates. 

Now, as public health and community organizations work on the ground to improve third-dose uptake, new data from the Gattuso Centre for Social Medicine at University Health Network lays bare the stark demographic differences between the Toronto neighbourhoods with the highest rates of third-dose vaccination and those with the lowest. 

What it shows in granular detail is that many of our most vulnerable citizens — immigrants, the working poor and essential workers in trades and manufacturing — live in areas where third-dose vaccinations just aren’t happening anywhere near the rates seen in some of Toronto’s richest and least-racialized neighbourhoods. 

For example, 71 per cent of the population is racialized in the bottom 20 per cent of Toronto neighbourhoods ranked by third-dose uptake. That compares to just 24 per cent in the top 20 per cent of neighbourhoods with the highest rates of third-dose vaccination. 

Similarly, the percentage of the population that meets low-income thresholds in the areas with the lowest third-dose vaccination rates is nearly double that in neighbourhoods with the most administered. 

“It doesn’t need to be this way. There was great success in narrowing the access gap for the rollout of Dose 1. It can be done again. We can’t afford not to,” said Dr. Andrew Boozary, executive director of the Gattuso Centre.

“If we don’t address the pathologies of poverty, if we don’t shift more public investment into these neglected neighbourhoods, we will continue to see worse health outcomes and wider health disparities than we’ve ever seen.”

The Gattuso Centre’s analysis also shows that neighbourhoods with the lowest third-dose uptake have higher proportions of essential workers in manufacturing, utilities, trades, transport and equipment operation — sectors that don’t conform to regular nine-to-five workdays and that are not conducive to allowing workers to take time off to get vaccinated during clinic hours.

Indeed, the percentage of the population working in manufacturing and utilities is 10 times higher in areas with the lowest rates of third-dose vaccination than in those with the highest rates. Likewise, the percentage of people employed in the trades, transport and equipment operation is more than four times higher in the bottom 20 per cent of Toronto neighbourhoods by third-dose vaccination than in the highest 20 per cent. 

“If racialized community members are getting their third doses at a third of the rate compared to non-racialized communities, we need to make specific, targeted interventions that are going to provide information in a culturally appropriate and safe way for these communities,” said Michelle Westin, senior analyst for planning, quality and risk at Black Creek Community Health Centre who has been leading mobile vaccination clinics in northwest Toronto.

“We need to be having ambassadors that are representative of these communities to help build that trust. We have to have vaccinators that are representative of these racialized communities. We need to make sure that vaccinations are accessible to people who are low income, so ensuring that they are in spaces that they can get to easily, assist with providing transportation if needed, ensuring that hours of the clinic work with folks that are having to work different hours of the day and multiple jobs,” she added.

The city of Toronto has been waging a three-pillared operation to get shots into arms in the neighbourhoods with the lowest uptakes. This includes hyperlocal clinics in malls, transit stations, workplaces and schools; outreach around these clinics through 155 community agencies and more than 400 neighbourhood vaccine ambassadors; and a get-out-the-vote style campaign, dubbed “VaxTO,” using text messages, phone calls, emails and town halls to get information out.

“We know that when we announced our target to reach 90 per cent of residents for their first dose, people told us it was impossible in a city as large and diverse as ours. We proved that it was possible when you commit to equity and you don’t stop,” said Coun. Joe Cressy, chair of the Toronto Board of Health. “You literally have to go door-to-door, building-by-building in every language with trusted local leaders. It’s not quick because tackling inequity is never quick. But it works.”

To date, 60 per cent of eligible residents in Toronto have received a third dose. 

But there is still a long way to go. The Gattuso Centre found that the gap between the neighbourhoods with the most and least third dose-uptake has widened substantially over the past seven weeks. In Kingsway South, for example, 68 per cent of eligible residents have received a third dose, compared to just 27 per cent in Mount Olive-Silverstone-Jamestown — a gap of 41 percentage points.

“The gap is striking, especially given what we’ve learned throughout the pandemic. We’ve seen real success in earlier stages of the vaccine rollout when community leadership has been supported with the resources and focus to ensure there is true access. It obliterated many notions of vaccine hesitancy early on,” Boozary said.

“But if we stray from that, we will continue to see this widening of a gap and it will not be recoverable if we do not ensure that those same investments and resources and supports are there for everyone.”

Luwam Ogbaselassie, implementation lead with the Gattuso Centre who has been supporting the vaccination effort in the Humber River-Black Creek region, said the involvement of community leadership is key to narrowing the third-dose uptake gap. 

“Wherever there are resources being allocated towards vaccines, it should be guided by community leaders around how best to structure those clinics and how best to reach the people who have been the hardest to reach and continue to be the hardest to reach,” she said, noting that she has seen first-hand the meaningful impact of community ambassadors who live in the same buildings and in the same neighbourhoods as those who may harbour mistrust of the health care system. 

“I’ve always said as a hospital partner, we bring the vaccines, we bring the clinical teams, but we look to our community partners to guide us on how to set up the clinics, how to engage with people who live in the community.

“Community leadership makes all the difference.

Source: Immigrants. The working poor. Essential workers. Third doses lag in Toronto’s most vulnerable areas

On a more positive note:

It’s a snowy Thursday afternoon in Toronto and the vaccination clinic at the Woodbine Mall is getting ready to welcome its first visitors of the day. The news is full of the demonstrations in Ottawa against pandemic restrictions. Similar protests are about to come to Toronto. But at the clinic, the mood is purposeful, unruffled, even buoyant.

Nurses sit at tables filling syringes with vaccine and loading them into trays. Helpers lay out colouring sheets to amuse kids coming in for their jab. One greeter brandishes a little Canadian flag that she waves to show visitors when a booth is free.

As opening time approaches, operations manager Simone Richards gathers everyone for the daily huddle, a combination of pep talk, check-in session and revival meeting. Smiling behind her mask, she warns the group: “We are running low on teddy bears.” The local police station donated a pile of the toys to soothe nervous kids and there are only a few left.

After singing a rousing Happy Birthday for their clinical manager Arturo Villasan, staffers put their hands in, like athletes before a game, for a go-team cheer – except that, pandemic style, their hands don’t actually touch. Then they open the doors to let people through. They get hundreds a day, most of them happy to get the protection offered by the vaccines against COVID-19.

The scene at the Woodbine clinic tells a different story than you see in the headlines. In a week in which all the oxygen was consumed by noisy and sometimes obnoxious protesters, it is worthwhile to remember that most Canadians don’t feel their rights are being trampled by a despotic government. Most believe in vaccines and are eager to get jabbed. Most wear their masks and obey the rules on gathering and distancing. Though it will disappoint the Russell Brands of the world, Canada is not in revolt. Quietly, capably mustering all the available tools of technology, science and human collaboration, the country is getting on with the task of combating a deadly and insidious virus.

Toronto’s vaccination campaign, the biggest in its history, is an impressive success story. More than 6.5 million doses have been administered. Ninety per cent of residents 12 and older have one dose and 87 per cent two. Sixty percent of eligible residents have a booster, the result of a stepped-up Team Toronto drive to meet the threat from the Omicron variant. More than half of kids have one dose and a quarter have two.

To inoculate all those people in a city of 180 languages, dozens of cultural groups and scores of neighbourhoods has been a staggering task. To reach the hesitant, the disadvantaged and the disengaged, the city has hired hundreds of community ambassadors and translators to get the word out. It has dispatched mobile clinics from one end of the city to the other. It has bombarded residents with text messages, robocalls and flyers.

On the same afternoon that Ms. Richards and her team were greeting visitors to their big clinic in a Hudson’s Bay store at Woodbine, workers were going door to door in a Parkdale seniors’ building and soothing nervous kids at a Mount Olive school. At a small clinic in a mall at Jane and Finch streets, they don’t just wait for people to walk in. They recently persuaded the busy lady at the local roti joint to sit for a vaccination right in her shop. Every vaccination counts.

Leading me on a clinic tour, Joe Cressy, a city councillor who is chair of the city’s board of health, called it a brilliant example of breaking down silos and bringing everyone together in a common cause: pharmacies, hospitals, public-health workers; community and neighbourhood associations; cops and firefighters; care homes and schools.

Though we hear a lot these days about conflict and anger, what really stands out is the way all these groups are working arm in arm. As Mayor John Tory puts it, “the city has been united.”

Of course, it’s taking a while. It’s only natural that people are frustrated with the persistence of this virus and the annoying, limiting measures put in place to control it. If some believe that governments are to blame for much of the misery, they have a perfect right to say so, as long as they do it peacefully and lawfully. But while thousands are taking to the streets, hundreds of thousands of others are still lining up to get their shots and do their bit to quell the virus.

Ms. Richards and her Woodbine crew are standing ready to help them, with kindness, efficiency and good cheer. More teddy bears are coming.

Source: Let’s celebrate Toronto’s vaccine success story

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

They’ve been called hot spots. It’s actually ‘code’ for social inequity

2021/05/12 Leave a comment

More analysis confirming COVID-related racial and other disparities:

People who live in Toronto and Peel COVID-19 hot spots are on average nearly twice as likely to be racialized and about four times more likely to be employed in manufacturing and utilities compared to those in the regions’ other neighbourhoods, a new analysis shows. 

New research from the Gattuso Centre for Social Medicine at University Health Network also highlights how residents of these hot-spot areas are, on average, more than twice as likely to work in trades, transportation and equipment operation and also more likely to meet low-income thresholds.

While the public has heard over the past year that racialized people, those with lower-income status and essential workers are bearing a disproportionate burden of the COVID-19 pandemic in Ontario, the analysis from the Gattuso Centre highlights at a granular level who actually lives in the neighbourhoods hardest hit by the virus, how much money they make, and what they do for a living. 

“When we talk about ‘hot spot’ postal codes, what we’re really talking about is the structural determinants of health. Social inequities and the pathologies of poverty have been driving this pandemic,” said Dr. Andrew Boozary, executive director of the Gattuso Centre. “This is further evidence that life-saving measures need to get to neighbourhoods with the highest structural risks –– this at the very least means community leadership driving vaccine rollouts and better safety measures at workplaces.”

Using Census data, the social medicine team looked at demographics in Toronto’s 13 “sprint” strategy communities deemed most at-risk and compared it with the rest of Toronto’s forward sortation areas (the first three characters in postal codes). They also compared hot spots in Toronto and Peel with the remainder of neighbourhoods in those regions, and did a similar comparison of all of Ontario’s 114 hot spots with postal codes in the rest of the province.

In virtually every case, the most at-risk neighbourhoods had, on average, higher proportions of racialized individuals, those who meet low-income measures, people who work in manufacturing and utilities, and those employed in trades, transportation and equipment operation. 

For example, M3N, which includes Jane and Finch and Black Creek, has the most manufacturing and utilities employment, the sixth-highest proportion of people who meet low-income thresholds, the eighth highest employment in trades, transportation and equipment operation, and is the 10th most racialized community out of all postal codes in Toronto and Peel.

Similarly, L6R, in northern Brampton, has the most trades, transportation and equipment-operation employment, the fourth-most manufacturing and utilities employment and is the third-most racialized postal code out of all Toronto and Peel neighbourhoods. 

The only exception the researchers found was in the Ontario-wide hot-spot comparison, in which the percentage of people who work in trades, transportation and equipment operation in hot spots was slightly lower than non-hot-spot neighbourhoods.

“That’s the thing with this data, it also really shows the disparity. It really shows that no, we haven’t all been through the same experience with COVID,” said Sané Dube, Manager, Community and Policy with Social Medicine at UHN, using the example of someone who makes over $100,000 annually, lives in downtown Toronto and can pay for their groceries to be delivered.

“That is very different from the experience from the person who is making $30,000 in a grocery store, has continued to work the whole pandemic and lives in a certain part of the neighbourhood. There’s this idea that we’ve all had the same experience in this pandemic. We haven’t. This really brings that home.”

Laura Rosella, scientific director of the Population Health Analytics Lab at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and a collaborator on the analysis, notes that hot spots are vulnerable for different reasons, which is why connections between policy-makers and the communities are so important.

“The data kind of gives you that first layer, saying we need to pay attention here. Then it’s the conversations with the community that will tell you what the solutions are,” Rosella said. “The data alone won’t tell you what the solutions are. The community will.”

Michelle Dagnino, executive director of the Jane/Finch Community and Family Centre, says that while she is not surprised by the data, many people, including many who work in social services, did not realize just how many people in vulnerable areas have continued to go to work throughout the pandemic. 

“I think there was a sense that there were going to be more workplace shutdowns than there ever actually ended up being. The definition of ‘essential’ just ended up being so broad in terms of these workplaces,” she said. 

“Effectively, all of our factory workers, whether they’re manufacturing glass panes or producing clothing or whether they’re delivering factory-made goods through Amazon distribution centres, they have been open the whole time. And the consequences of that in this third wave have led us to a situation where we have seen racialized, low-income workers dying because they’ve had to continue to go to work.”

Source: https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2021/05/11/theyve-been-called-hot-spots-its-actually-code-for-social-inequity.html

 

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

← Older posts