Anti-racism laws needed to ensure equitable public health responses

They say there is no crime if there is no victim. But, when it comes to COVID-19 and racialized populations, there are many victims but apparently no crime. We need to change that urgently. The figures are startling. In the U.S. and U.K., you are two to three times more likely to get COVID-19 and three times more likely to die from it if you are from the Black population.

The emerging Ontario figures are similar.

The Middlesex-London Public Health Unit has been collecting race-based data since April. It reports that 27 per cent of those who test positive are visible minorities compared to 17 per cent of the population.

Toronto Public Health reported that COVID-19 is more common in areas with bigger Black populations.

And Public Health Ontario reports that the rate of COVID-19 is three times higher in areas where there are more racialized people; the hospitalization rate and ICU rate are four times higher; and death rates are doubled.

Closer to home, three out of four of our experts at Wellesley Institute who are from the Black population had a family member die from COVID-19 — one in Canada, one in the U.S.A. and my mother, who died in the U.K.

There is no doubt that racialized people are more likely to get COVID-19, more likely to get sick and more likely to die than others.

These are the victims. Here’s what should be a crime.

We knew this was likely and we did not do anything about it. During previous pandemics, racialized populations were more likely to be infected. A study of H1N1 influenza pandemic in Ontario reported that the South East Asian population was three times more likely to be infected, the South Asian population six times and the Black population a whopping 10 times more likely to test positive.

Despite this, we did not change our processes to mandate socio-demographic data collection. We did not do research or sit with communities to investigate the reasons. And, so we went into COVID-19 without surveillance systems that would help us identify racialized health disparities and without understanding of the needs of different populations. Because of this, we set up a one-size-fits-all, colour- and cultureblind COVID-19 response that was predictably going to exacerbate health inequities.

The briefings at both federal and provincial levels are mostly silent on the issue of race and COVID-19. There has been a lack of visible government leadership on this issue.

But there has been progress. The Federal Anti-Racism Secretariat is starting COVID-19 community roundtables to better understand what is needed. The Public Health Agency of Canada is collecting socio-demographic data in some surveys. Manitoba is collecting racebased data. Ontario has agreed to mandate data collection in addition to three local public health units that have already started. And, Joe Cressy has asked Toronto Public Health to develop strategies to decrease the impact of COVID-19 on racialized groups.

All good? Maybe not. We are almost through the first wave of a pandemic where a disproportionate number of Black lives have been lost. Some could have been saved but there was no plan for an equitable public health response. There are no firm plans in place yet to ensure that we are not in the same position for the second wave. And, we do not have a clear blueprint for an equitable recovery. If racialized populations are disproportionately more likely to get COVID-19 and more likely to lose their jobs, surely we should be the focus of the recovery money — otherwise we will fall further behind.

Some people would say that the situation is negligent. Others would say it should not be legal.

We have legislation for things we care about. We do not leave them to the largesse of professionals, public servants or politicians. If we want our public responses to crises to be equitable, if we want them to be anti-racist, and, if we want them to meet the challenge of antiBlack racism, then we should enshrine this in law.

Public services should have to promote race relations, produce equitable services, and should be required to have the data to prove they are doing that.

We should legislate to ensure this never happens again.