By: Laura Steiner
Health Canada has announced an Vaccine Community Innovation Challenge. Health Minister Patty Hajdu unveiled the challenge yesterday.
“Getting a vaccine when it’s our turn is an important action we can all take,” Hajdu said. The challenge invites individuals or groups or groups to propose creative ideas for a communications campaign targeting groups within their communities that have been disproportionately affected by COVID19.
Twenty finalists will be evaluated by a panel of experts, and given $25,000. The grand prize is $100,000 to reinvest in promoting public health in their community. The deadline for submissions is April 9, 2021 “Increasing vaccine confidence is a critical part of getting through the COVID-19 pandemic,” Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam said. For more information on the Vaccine Community Innovation Challenge, visit the website
Year: 2021
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Health Canada Announces Community Innovation Challenge
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Canadians urged to travel at home to boost sagging tourism sector
By: Lynn Desjardins
Canada’s visitor economy saw unprecedented losses in 2020 due to the pandemic and is by far the most threatened sector in the country’s economy, says Destination Canada. This body promotes tourism and, as a crown corporation, it is wholly owned by the government but operates at arm’s length from it.
One in every 10 jobs in Canada is said to be tied to tourism, and unemployment in the sector is 6.6 per cent above the national rate, higher than any other sector. Many of its employees are women, immigrants and youth who have been hardest hit by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The visitor economy helps sustain 150,000 jobs. But Destination Canada says it faces an estimated $19 billion shortfall that could be made up if Canadians shifted two-thirds of their planned spending on international leisure travel to travel at home.‘Canadians have the power’
“Canada’s visitor economy isn’t just a key pillar of our country’s economy, it’s critical to our collective quality of life,” said Marsha Walden, President and Chief Executive Officer, Destination Canada. “We all miss our favourite restaurants, our art galleries and our music and cultural festivals. We all rely on the airlines that connect us to friends, family and business colleagues, and bring the world’s products to our doorstep. It’s devastating to lose so many businesses and services in our communities. Canadians have the power to change this by spending their travel budget in Canada.”
Destination Canada notes that from April to November 2020, revenues from air transportation for passengers collapsed, falling 91 per cent and accommodation revenues plummeted by 71 per cent. Small and medium-sized businesses make up 99 per cent of enterprises in the tourism sector. The corporation calls the current situation the worst the tourism industry has ever seen, more severe than that following 9/11, SARS and the 2008 economic crisis combined.‘Enhance our quality of life in Canada’
Walden urged Canadians to help restore it. “We are all fortunate to live in this incredibly beautiful and diverse country with breathtaking experiences from coast to coast to coast—now is the time to plan on exploring our backyards when safe to do so. This is how each and every Canadian can enjoy our country while meaningfully helping the hundreds of thousands of people whose livelihoods enhance our quality of life in Canada.”
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Peel Region gets half the long-term care funding compared to some areas of Ontario
By: Nida Zafar, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Pointer
When representatives from municipalities across the province mingled with provincial ministers at the 2019 Association of Municipalities of Ontario conference in Ottawa, no one in the room knew the next conference would be virtual.
During the gathering, Christine Elliott, Ontario’s health minister, announced public health units would transition to a new funding formula in the coming year. It meant Queen’s Park would only provide 70 percent of a region’s healthcare costs while municipalities had to cover the remaining 30 percent, a change from the prior 75/25 funding model.
According to Peel Region’s 2020 budget, there had been plans to change the funding model to 60/40 in 2021. But that increase in dollars from provincial taxpayers is currently on hold.
The situation in Peel’s long-term care and retirement home sector, like much of Ontario, has been dire since the beginning of the pandemic. Of the 625 deaths due to COVID-19 in Peel since the start, 411 were LTC or retirement home residents.
The five facilities run by the Region of Peel have fared much better than the other homes in the sector. Twelve of the 411 deaths involved outbreaks at the five facilities run by the Region. Residents in many private, for-profit facilities, which have failed to provide a reasonable standard of care, have been devastated by the pandemic.
Camilla Care Community, a private facility in Mississauga owned by Sienna Senior Living, accounted for 74 resident-deaths due to COVID-19.
But the standard of care in the Region’s five facilities is now being jeopardized and concerns over inadequate funding from the Province are being raised while the elderly care sector is in crisis.
The Region of Peel operates Peel Manor and Tall Pines in Brampton; Malton Village and Sheridan Villa in Mississauga; and Davis Centre in Caledon.
The new funding model announced in 2019 was not a good sign for the Region of Peel, which receives public health dollars through the Central West Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) which includes Brampton and Mississauga Halton LHIN, the two worst funded LHINs in the province. Funding goes toward hospitals, community care programs and long-term care homes.
The Pointer obtained 2020 funding figures for long-term care from the Province and they do not bode well for Peel.
Central West LHIN received the lowest funding in Ontario for LTC homes in 2020, at $170 per resident, and Mississauga Halton LHIN received the second lowest, at $176.
The South East LHIN, which includes Kingston, Quinte, Lanark and Grenville along with other municipalities, tops the list, at $404 per resident for LTC, more than twice the per capita amount Peel’s two LHINs received for long-term care. The North West LHIN received $363.60 of funding for LTC per capita in 2020 and nearby Hamilton Niagara Haldimand Brant received $362.34. (Figures were not provided for two LHINs, Waterloo Wellington and North East.)
Discussions on LTC homes during the Region’s 2021 budget deliberations put funding centre stage. Nancy Polsinelli, Peel’s commissioner of health services, said the cost to deliver aid in its five LTC homes is increasing, but the amount of money the province is providing is not following suit.
The region’s taxpayers are contributing $102.74 million toward operating costs to maintain the current level of service. Despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been no increase to full-time staffing at the five homes. Only 742 full-time staffers, just like the previous year, will be part of Peel’s LTC team. A regional spokesperson told The Pointer 410 of the staff members are nurses and personal support workers (PSWs).
Regional staff had to work just to keep this number from going down. In April, Premier Doug Ford banned PSWs from working in more than one home to slow the spread of the virus. It led to 14 percent of Peel’s full-time staff leaving their LTC positions, creating a shortage.
The spokesperson said 67 regional employees were redeployed to the five homes. Through funding from the Province’s safe restart agreement, the Region also hired 37 contract staff on a two-year term. None of these new hires are PSWs or nurses. The spokesperson said the individuals will help with screening, activities, housekeeping and inventory management within the homes.
“The staffing within our long-term care homes is regularly monitored and assessed, and we will continue to make adjustments as required to meet the needs of our residents. If the need arises for additional staff, based on the need and position, we will consider redeployment of municipal staff or hire more temporary staff utilizing additional funding from the Ministry of Long Term Care,” the spokesperson said.
Maintaining staffing levels comes as the demand for LTC homes in the region increases. In total, 994 people were on the wait list for four of Peel’s five LTC homes in June 2019. As of October 2020, the waitlist had increased to 1,172.
Staff have also been brought over from the Region’s Adult Day Services program to work in LTC homes. The day program works with seniors in the community who aren’t ready to move into congregate care settings but require assistance with day-to-day activities and to prevent them from suffering a range of damaging conditions due to social isolation.
“Managing complex care increasingly dominates this work. More than half of the people who come to Peel’s day programs have dementia or some type of cognitive impairment. Close to three quarters of the program’s clients need intensive support, such as medication management,” Polsinelli said.
The in-person program has been on hold since March of last year due to the pandemic and is being temporarily replaced with a virtual program. Like LTC homes, the demand for this program continues to increase as well; 420 people are currently on the waitlist. The 2021 Peel budget does not propose any new services or staff members for the program, putting blame on the provincial government’s lack of funding for the inability to grow the much used resource.
“Increased investment in community support services, including programs like our Adult Day Services program, will support seniors and their caregivers, allowing them to age in place for as long as possible,” the regional spokesperson said. The Pointer asked the Ministry of Health about funding for the program but did not get a response ahead of publication.
Polsinelli indicated the problems don’t stop with the pandemic. Once the world starts to see a consistent level of normality, funding issues will still exist. The Region has submitted a presentation to the LTC COVID-19 Commission, speaking to the ongoing pressures the sector has faced and how they can be addressed.
One of the recommendations is to increase support for person-centred care. “The Province needs to prioritize the emotional wellbeing of people living in long term care homes to enable health service providers to improve quality of life outcomes for seniors,” the presentation states.
In order to implement this, Region of Peel staff recommend the Province re-evaluate the funding model for residents with “responsive behaviours,” a term that describes actions or words people with dementia use, to ensure funds match up with staffing resources based on needs that must be addressed.
Krystle Caputo, the press secretary for Merrilee Fullerton, Minister of Long Term Care, pushed back against suggestions that her government has not provided adequate LTC funding, telling The Pointer the ravaging of LTC homes was due to the previous governments. “We have provided PSW wage enhancement programming that has enabled homes to hire over 8,600 frontline workers…Our government is fixing a broken system and making long-term care a better place for residents to live, and a better place for staff to work.”
A week ago, Fullerton came under fire after her testimony before the Long-Term Care COVID-19 Commission was released, revealing she had failed to push for increased safety measures inside LTC homes early in the pandemic, despite her own concerns. The transcripts of her testimony show Fullerton made her concerns clear to her government, but she did not go public with them and retreated when the PCs, led by Premier Doug Ford, would not put stronger measures in place to protect seniors, despite Fullerton’s suggestions.
Ford and his government have faced heavy criticism for the lack of funding to hire PSWs, for his protection of private companies in the sector through legislation that would blunt the ability to sue those who neglected their responsibilities and for failing to enforce safety standards in LTC and retirement homes even after the crisis revealed alarming practices inside dozens of facilities.
According to new research by the National Institute on Ageing, more deaths and positive cases in Ontario among staff and residents have been reported in the second wave compared to the first.
Out of the 1,396 care homes in the province, 408 have been affected by the second wave of the virus, compared to 479 homes in the first wave. Yet the second wave has seen 2,225 resident-deaths, compared to 2,072 in the first wave.
Critics, including the Opposition NDP, accuse the PC government of failing to act after the first wave laid bare what was happening in LTCs across Ontario.
Currently, 13 homes within the region have ongoing outbreaks. Peel Manor, Tall Pines, and Malton Village, three facilities owned by Peel Region, are on the list. Sheridan Villa and The Davis Centre, the two other LTC homes run by the Region, resolved their last outbreaks in January.
Email: nida.zafar@thepointer.com
Twitter: @nida_zafar
Tel: 416 890-7643
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Gander airport continuing with revamp of its iconic international lounge
By: Nicholas Mercer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter,
The Central Voice
As a child, Percy Farwell would sit in the international lounge at the Gander International Airport and watch people pass by.
Farwell wondered where they were coming from or going on his perch near Arthur Price’s Wandering Birds’ sculpture in the centre of the lounge.
He and his friends were regulars at the airport. On many summer days, they’d hop on their bikes and head for the lounge.
It was their way to pass time in the central Newfoundland town. There, they’d find the best ice cream in Gander, pop quarters into the helicopter game found at the bottom of the escalator and just enjoy the space.
“It is important from a heritage perspective,” said Farwell, now the mayor of Gander. “The lounge and the airport have been recognized around the world.”
Opened in 1959 by Queen Elizabeth II, the international lounge at the airport is undergoing renovations as a part of a planned revamp of the historic space.
It is not a restoration of the space back to its original look — tenants would have to be moved to accommodate that — but the authority is giving it a treatment that will bring it back to how people remember it.
While that work has been slowed down by the COVID-19 pandemic, the airport continues to work toward knocking things off the list.
Work was recently completed to remove the glass passenger tunnel known locally as the birdcage.
“It is a bit behind where we’d like it, but we are committed to making it happen,” said Gander International Airport Authority CEO Reg Wright. “I’d like to make happen at least some of the key components by the summer.”
Like Farwell, Wright was another son of Gander who spent time at the “Wandering Birds” watching people come and go. He remembers the texture of the sculpture, which has since become smooth from passengers touching it for good luck en route to their next flight.
The project is meant to breathe some new life into a space that has remained largely unchanged since then.
The renovation will produce a better utilization of the almost 9,000-square-foot lounge. There is also a desire to place interpretive boards around the lounge, install a theatre that will show aviation-themed films and create a gallery.
Work is scheduled to start on a new bar for the lounge.
“From our perspective, less is much more,” Wright said of the authority’s plan to keep the look and feel of the lounge as close to vintage as possible. “Wherever we can, we want to preserve it in the current form. If there is anything that is obtrusive and modern, the birdcages would be an example, we’re trying to remove that.”
He added the authority is trying to do a treatment of the lounge as people remember it.
The renovation plan was announced in 2019, and the airport authority received $1.5 million in funding for the project.
That money came from the airport authority, the provincial government and the federal government through the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency.
The project aims to highlight and preserve the airport as an important historical structure to the history of Gander and the industry.
It is something striking the right note with the Gander Airport Historical Society, a group dedicated to preserving the town’s aviation history, which has been working with the airport authority on panels and other aspects of the project.
“We’re happy about the whole situation,” said the Gander Airport Historical Society’s Jack Pinsent.
Perhaps an understated part of the renovation process is the airport authority’s plan to allow the public to enjoy the lounge by opening it up to them.
The lounge is already a tourist destination, and Wright wants to see it become a hub for the community. That would allow the public to enjoy the space again, which includes the impressive “Flight and its Allegories” mural by artist Kenneth Lochhead.
It has been closed to the public since the late 1970s, when security measures were heightened.
“As much as we envision it as being able to welcome guests from away, really we want to make it a place where Gander can gather again,” said Wright. -
Family of amateur historian finding home for treasure trove of photos, records
By: Nick Pearce, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The StarPhoenix
Thousands of rare photos and artifacts spanning decades of First Nations and Saskatchewan history will find a new home.
Amateur Arcola historian Adrian Paton died last month at 86, leaving behind a treasure trove of historical photos of First Nations in Saskatchewan from around the turn of the century. The collection has passed to family members, who are considering how to share the historical photos with the public and, if possible, repatriate the artifacts to their home communities.
“The picture is valuable, but the story behind the picture is what makes it incredible,” said his daughter, Val Guillemin.
She helped Paton compile his 2018 book, An Honest, Genial and Kindly People, which features photos and stories Paton gathered over three to four decades of research.
That research grew to be a valuable source for Indigenous communities piecing together family histories, she said.
One of those people was Candace Wasacase-Lafferty, a board member of Wanuskewin Heritage Park and a senior director of Indigenous Engagement at the University of Saskatchewan. She’s helping Guillemin find a suitable place for her father’s work, whether that’s through an exhibit or by repatriating some of the artifacts.
Wasacase-Lafferty has personal ties to Paton’s work. Her father, who was in residential school, was about eight years old when his mother died. She grew up with few stories about her grandmother. When she found Paton’s book, she pored over every turn of the century photo of her home community of Kahkewistahaw First Nation, thinking her grandmother could be there.
“I’m like 50 years old and I finally feel I’ve seen really who I am,” she said.
Wasacase-Lafferty compared it to an “odd, cold and sad” Plains Cree exhibit at the British Royal Museum she saw 10 years ago, saying Paton’s work is an example of how it could be done better. It acts a model of Indigenous and non-Indigenous relations, she said.
University of the Fraser Valley history professor Keith Carlson, who worked with Paton at the U of S, said the rarity of the documents is also historically significant. Many of the records haven’t been preserved elsewhere, he said.
Carlson, a former president of the Saskatchewan History and Folklore Society, assisted Paton with his collection. He said Paton’s work was notable for investigating archival sources, like old newspaper articles, to track down photos and build histories around the images.
That can be a valuable resource for families learning about their histories, including by replicating highly specific details like the designs on regalia in the photos, he noted.
That’s valuable for people like Ocean Man First Nation Chief Connie Big Eagle.
When she visited Paton’s house, she lingered in front of an old photo that caught her eye. Paton told her the name of the man in the picture, leading Big Eagle to discover it was a photo of her great-grandfather that she had never seen before.
“It was like there was a connection, an understanding or something, of who we come from.”
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Frustrated Squamish Nation Present Survey to CN Rail in Hope of Operational Changes
By: Elisia Seeber, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, North Shore News
Squamish Nation council has presented a survey of 300 of its community members’ concerns regarding ongoing disruptions from rail operations just metres from their homes to CN Rail this week, in the hope immediate short-term changes will be made.
With three rail tracks just 30 metres from some homes in the community of Eslhá7an, near Mosquito Creek in North Vancouver, residents say they have been putting up with unacceptable levels of noise, pollution and health impacts for far too long.
“Think of a loud muscle car or motorcycle revving up outside your house late at night,” said Keith Nahanee, who lives just 45 metres from the tracks in Eslhá7an.
“Now times that noise by 10. That’s what it’s like.”
Nahanee, who has been dealing with the rail issue his whole life, said CN Rail trains were left idling just across from homes routinely at around 11 p.m. each night.
“Not only do we hear the engines humming, but some houses rattle because of the engines,” the 48-year-old said, adding that he was consistently woken by the loud diesel engines and train cooling systems.
“If they’re going by, that’s fine but they sit out here and idle. Sometimes the guy ends his shift out here. He’ll leave the train there and he’ll go home and it’s idling from around 10 p.m. or 11 p.m., or midnight, until someone picks it up the next day.”
Nahanee is one of the residents, mostly elders, – from Eslhá7an to Yekwaupsum – who filled out the survey detailing their concerns regarding the rail operations. But it’s not the first time he or other residents have made their voices heard, saying he had been sending complaints to CN Rail three times a month since he could remember.
He said the response, if received, from CN Rail was the same each time, which explained idling was necessary for most of its locomotives, which are not designed to be easily turned on and off.
Nahanee said the first thing the community really wanted was for the trains to idle somewhere else during the middle of the night, further from homes.
“I mean, that’s all we want,” he said. “Between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m., just let us sleep.”
Khelsilem, Dustin Rivers, spokesperson for Squamish Nation, said the nation conducted the survey after a virtual meeting was held with CN Rail on Oct. 3, 2020, between nation council members and CN senior executives to reopen discussions on how to solve the ongoing disturbances to residents in the communities of Eslhá7an and Yekwaupsum.
“The Squamish Nation has been dealing with these issues over many, many, many years and it seems like every so often we get some progress and then after a number of years the issues come up again,” he said, adding it was “frustrating” to be back at this stage.
“Our leadership is really upset with CN and how they are treating our residents of our community, and while the Oct. 3 meeting was diplomatic and a point to sort of re-establish a relationship, we’re still not seeing the kind of action that we would like to see on the ground to respect our residents and our elders in our community.”
Khelsilem said leadership was hoping that would change and communications would become more fluid again with CN, after presenting the results of the survey on March 3.
He said community members provided “a lot of explicit and specific feedback regarding issues around shunting, whistling, and idling which is basically directly in front of a lot of people’s houses.”
“The biggest issue, of course, for our members, is that there’s a significant amount of activity, noise, pollution, and disruption happening during the evening and late into the night,” he said.
“We have a number of families with young children, we have families who work and are trying to make a living for their families to provide for them, we have elders who are recovering from significant health issues … all of whom are being severely impacted.”
While CN Rail has progressed on various initiatives over the past several years to reduce noise, such as train whistling cessation, rail lubrication, and installing automated gates at at-grade crossings, Khelsilem said more operational changes were needed.
“There needs to be a change and a moratorium on when some of their operations are happening around our reserves,” he said, adding that the nation was calling for an end to locomotive idling adjacent to residential properties as a short term solution.
Khelsilem said the issue dates back to the colonial history of the railways within Canada and how they were developed.
“If you were to apply contemporary standards to rail lines, they would never allow rail lines to be built that close to a residential area like ours is,” he said.
“If you look at the rest of the North Shore, there’s not a lot of areas where there are rail lines in that close proximity, but because of the colonial history of governments unilaterally deciding and making these decisions, including the expropriation of reserve lands to suit the rail line expansions, we have this sort of horrible legacy of racist decisions that today we’re feeling the impacts of in our community.”
He said future long-term goals would be to see some of the rail lines near the community of Eslhá7an decommissioned and the idea to move the railway underground or below grade be explored.
In response to complaints in July last year, CN Rail issued a statement saying the whistles are required by law for safety reasons and that idling is necessary for almost half of its fleet of locomotives, which are not designed to be easily turned on and off.
“As a backbone of the Canadian and British Columbian economy, we operate our railroad 24 hours a day, 365 days a year; therefore, there will always be some noise associated with these operations,” the statement read.
“CN is aware of the fact that it operates in close proximity to the communities through which we travel and is committed to make every effort to minimize the effects that may occur as a result of these operations.”
CN Rail is now reviewing the results of the nation’s community complaints survey. Khelsilem said the nation would continue communications with CN Rail on short-term and long-term solutions.
“They’re open to potential changes, but no commitments have been made,” he said. -
Muzzo’s parole conditions prohibit his return home
By: Mark Pavilons, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, King Weekly Sentinel
A list of stringent conditions are imposed on convicted impaired driver Marco Muzzo.
The Parole Board of Canada granted full parole recently, with a long list of conditions.
The former King resident cannot have any contact with the victims or victims’ families. He’s banned from entering both York and Brampton.
Muzzo must follow his treatment plan with a focus on substance use, emotions management, victim empathy and reintegration stressors. He’s also to refrain from drinking alcohol and entering establishments that serve alcohol.
The 34-year-old first-time offender was serving a nine-year, four-month sentence for four counts of impaired driving cause death and two counts of impaired driving causing bodily harm. Along with the sentence, he has been banned from driving for 12 years.
Muzzo was convicted in the 2015 impaired driving related deaths of four members of the Nevile-Lake family. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison and given a 12-year driving ban.
The collision claimed the lives of nine-year-old Daniel Neville-Lake, his five-year-old brother, Harrison, their two-year-old sister, Milly, and the children’s 65-year-old grandfather, Gary Neville. The children’s grandmother and great-grandmother were also seriously injured.
Victim statements, including four presented during the hearing Feb. 9, revealed the families’ unrelenting grief, anger, fear and frustration.
“Their anguish is palpable. Your choices and actions have left them struggling psychologically, emotionally, physically and financially … Their voices confirmed the profound irrevocable devastation resulting from your offending,” the board report stated.
The board noted they placed considerable weight on the victims’ statements with regards to Muzzo’s liberty within the community.
The board pointed out that Muzzo made gains through counselling while incarcerated, and this led the board to grant day parole in April 2020.
He was released and sent to a Community Residential Facility where similar conditions were enforced.
There have been no known breaches to those release conditions and Muzzo adhered to all the rules.
“This indicates positive progress toward reintegration.”
Muzzo has opened a satellite office of the family’s contracting business, and he’s working three days per week. He remains at his apartment, visited by his family and fiancee. Muzzo has also spent time volunteering, and plans to help renovate and transform a school into a homeless shelter.
The board noted Muzzo wants to return home to his residence in King, but since it’s close to a memorial site for the victims, there’s a possibility of unintended contact.
The board believes Muzzo’s hope to move back to King is self-serving and doesn’t fully empathize with the victims.
“… your insistence on returning to live in the community where the victims are memorialized and the surviving victims regularly frequent, is concerning.”
While reintegration is the ultimate goal, the board noted he “still has work to do, particularly in the ares of victim empathy and community acceptance. It will be important for you to always be mindful that your liberty in the community is conditional, and that you remain under supervision until warrant expiry.”
“The board recognizes that returning home may facilitate your reintegration. However, there is no suggestion that you cannot be rehabilitated and process through full reintegration into society if you do not live in or have access to a particular area.
“Any return to the area at this time is premature, and would have a significant negative impact on the victims.”
The board noted Muzzo has made gains through counselling in terms of his alcohol use, but the conditions remain in place.
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Young Canadians less confident about jobs during pandemic
By: Lynn Desjardins
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Canadians aged between 14 and 29 are feeling less confident about their job prospects and how prepared they are for the future of work, according to a recent online survey. Young women report feeling more pressure to succeed and feel they are not doing as well as male peers. Worry is especially prevalent among women whose jobs have been affected by the pandemic and those who identify as a visible minority or LGBTQ2S+.
In Canada, Gen-Z women are said to make up 2.5 per cent of the labour force, but they account for 17 per cent of the drop in employment during the current pandemic.
Several aspects of the pandemic have affected young people’s outlook on their careers. Among them are interruptions to their education, new realities because of social-distancing measures and general feeling of anxiety over COVID-19. Several believe their education during a pandemic is not adequately preparing them for obtaining employment.Online education thought to provide worse preparation
Seven in 10 young Canadians are learning remotely to some extent. Among them 28 per cent are attending classes only online and 45 per cent say their online education during a pandemic is doing a worse job of preparing them for the careers they seek.
More than half of respondents have faced job interruptions such as reduced hours or termination. More than half of them say the pandemic has had a negative effect on their mental health and 45 per cent say the pandemic has negatively affected their optimism about the future.
The online survey involved 1,800 Canadians between the ages of 14 and 29 and was collected by the polling firm Ipsos for RBC Royal Bank of Canada which is the country’s largest bank.
RBC has a program called Future Launch which has funding of $500 million over ten years and is dedicated to “empowering Canadian youth for the jobs of tomorrow.”Women have paid a heavier price
Beyond this age group, women overall have paid a heavier price than men in terms of employment during the pandemic. In 2019, Canadian women over the age of 15 made up 47.7 percent of the work force. Of this group, 61.2 per cent participated in the work force before the pandemic in 2019. A few months into the pandemic, by April 2020, that proportion had dropped to 55.5 per cent. The Royal Bank commented that “COVID-19 rolled back the clock on three decades of advances in women’s labour-force participation, setting Canada’s economy up for a slower recovery than might otherwise be the case.”