Feds promise recovery will focus on people hurt most by COVID-19 economic crisis

OTTAWA

Fixing the social and economic gaps that left women, young people and racialized Canadians to suffer the biggest economic blows from the COVID-19 pandemic is a top priority in the recovery effort, Finance Minister Bill Morneau says.

Morneau delivered a “snapshot” of the federal finances Wednesday, for the first time since the pandemic brought much of Canada’s economy to its knees.

In the update, he said the government is well aware some segments of the population are hurting more than others.

“This crisis has exposed and amplified many inequalities in Canada,” Morneau said.

The same people have in many cases also been affected more by the virus itself, in part because women, new immigrants, racialized Canadians and Indigenous people are more likely to work in the jobs where contagion is a risk, such as health care, retail and warehouse work.

The documents are careful to note that while racialized Canadians are more likely to work in economic sectors hit hard by the virus – including health care, accommodation and food services – little data has been collected to truly understand the impact on visible minorities and other marginalized communities.

So for example, there is no racial breakdown of who applied for the Canada Emergency Response Benefit.

Nor has much data been collected on the ethnicities of people diagnosed with COVID-19. One recent report from Ottawa Public Health said two-thirds of cases over the previous six weeks in its territory were racialized Canadians or new immigrants, but that report was limited in scope and for just one city.