Lost work has hit half of households in Canada

Survey finds 53% of respondents worry about affording groceries

OTTAWA— Many Canadians are seeing their incomes shrink amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, a new polls suggests, as businesses shut down, people are told to stay home and EI claims skyrocket.

The national survey from the Angus Reid Institute found 44 per cent of respondents said someone in their household has “lost work” because of the pandemic. Another 18 per cent said they expect to lose work.

With hours dwindling, 66 per cent said their employers aren’t covering the cost of their lost work. And 61 per cent said their investments have fallen during the pandemic.

The online survey included 1,664 random members of the Angus Reid Forum, a pool of Canadian adults who answer polls. A comparable survey of this size would have a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

“It’s almost as if Canadians are going into a crash position, as if they were on an airplane,” said Shachi Kurl, executive director of the Angus Reid Institute.

She pointed to results in the survey that showed 53 per cent of respondents worry about affording groceries and 34 per cent who said they are concerned about making their next rent or mortgage payments.

“These are the things that really have Canadians up at night, staring at the ceiling, wondering what is around the corner for them,” Kurl said.

Over the last week alone, from March 16 to 22, the federal government received 929,000 EI claims, a source confirmed to the Star on condition they remain anonymous.

That’s nearly 20 times higher than the 45,000 to 50,000 claims the government receives in a normal week, the source said.

Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) — the department that handles these claims — is refusing to officially report this number, first reported by Radio-Canada, for reasons that are unclear.

The government source said ESDC is shifting hundreds of public service workers to address the surge, including staff not currently needed to process visa applications with Passport Canada and investigators who will not be probing EI claims during the crisis.

A report published last week by RBC Economics found Google searches for terms associated with EI skyrocketed this month, and warned that the service sector — which employs almost 80 per cent of workers in the economy — are particularly at risk as provinces like Ontario and Quebec order nonessential businesses to shut down. Government demands for “social distancing” — to avoid gatherings and stay two metres away from others — could also reduce demand in the service sector “of previously unseen magnitude,” the report says.

The flood of EI claims comes as the government prepares to set up new support paymentsto even more Canadians as part of a $27 billion aid package announced last week to help individuals and businesses get through the COVID-19 crisis.

This includes a new “emergency care benefit” worth up to $900 every two weeks for workers — including the self-employed — who are quarantined or need to miss work to care for children or someone who is sick. The government also pledged to create an “emergency support benefit” to provide money for people who lose their jobs but don’t qualify for EI.

Outside his residence at Rideau Cottage, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Tuesday that more aid is in the works.