Tag Archives: Covid-19

Ottawa neighbourhoods with high percentage of single parents more exposed to COVID-19, data shows

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Sonia Poliquin, a single mother, and her nine-year-old son Robert-Michel, pictured at the Stonebridge Trail near Barrhaven. Many Ottawa neighbourhoods with a high percentage of single parent families also have higher rates of COVID-19. [Photo © Sonia Poliquin]
Sonia Poliquin, 46, remembers being screamed at by another woman in a Costco parking lot for leaving her nine-year-old son in the car as she ran in to get groceries.

She only had two options: keep her son in the car or bring him into the store to risk contracting COVID-19. That’s the reality for many single parents during the pandemic.

“If I want to go grocery shopping or do anything he has to come with me,” the Barrhaven resident explains. 

The Ottawa neighbourhoods with the highest total COVID-19 rates are also the ones with a higher percentage of single parent families, according to an analysis of Ottawa Public Health data which tracks COVID cases excluding cases in long-term care and retirement homes reported from March to October 2020. 

Total COVID rate per percentage of single parent families

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This is the trend among most Ottawa neighbourhoods, with a few exceptions. 

Single mothers are bearing the brunt, as they make up 78 per cent of single parent families, according to the 2016 Canadian Census. 

This bar graph shows the top five neighbourhoods with the highest total COVID-19 rates per 100,000 people from March to October 2020. The percentage of single parent families living in these neighbourhoods are at least 20 per cent or higher. [Visualization by Yasmine Ghania]

Ivy Bourgeault, a professor in the School of Sociological and Anthropological Studies at the University of Ottawa who specializes in gender and health, explains there are many factors that can increase the risk of exposure for single mothers.

“Mothers tend to do the hands-on body work with children, dressing, feeding, bathing, which puts them at increased risk,” Bourgeault says. “If you are in a partnership you are disproportionately doing that work but there is somebody to share that with. As a single mom, you don’t.”

The sectors in which single moms tend to work also have an impact. “Single moms are segregated into certain labour market areas that we now call the frontlines such as the retail and hospitality sectors,” Bourgeault explains.

The low incomes generated by these types of jobs cause single mothers to live in higher density housing which furthers their risk to the virus, Bourgeault adds.

Samantha Pha, 40, is dreading going back to her sales associate job at a big-box store as she’s a mom to a nine-month-old daughter. The Britannia resident has been on maternity leave since March and has been able to get half her income during that time but must return to work in February. 

She’s afraid of potentially bringing the virus back home to her baby who has had some medical issues including frequent fevers.

“My concern is her safety above and beyond everything because she’s my one and only,” Pha says as she begins to cry.

Samantha Pha, a single mother to a nine-month-old baby, describes her fears of going back to work in February in a big-box store. She didn’t feel comfortable sharing the name of the store. [Photo © Samantha Pha]

Pha chose to become a parent without a partner and went through a sperm bank.

“I said to myself ‘by the age of 40, if I don’t have a reliable partner who is willing to have children with me, then I will do this on my own,’” Pha says. 

She gave birth to baby Eleanor just four days before Ottawa went into lockdown.

Poliquin is also concerned about her son’s safety as she struggles to find a childcare centre to accommodate her work schedule. As a hairdresser at exhālō Spa, Poliquin has to work many long evenings and weekends. 

With the rest of her family in Sherbrooke, Quebec, her son often has to go to his friend’s house after school, who they have included in their bubble, to wait for his mom to finish work.

“The last thing I want is to have a stranger in my house to come babysit,” Poliquin says.  “Most of my friends are working in the public so I don’t want them to take care of my child when they are exposed to a lot of people as well.”

Music complaints in downtown Ottawa increased by 18% during summer months compared to last year

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There were dozens more music complaints made in wards in the downtown area this summer, compared to 2019. Summer 2020 music complaints in the downtown area were notably higher than every summer since 2016. [Photo © Yasmine Ghania]
It’s around 2 a.m. on a warm August Saturday night when Sally Dimachki is suddenly awakened by the thunderous sound of blaring music. The lounge a block away from her Sussex Drive apartment building was blasting music two weekends in a row. Dimachki had had enough.

Sally Dimachki is a downtown Ottawa resident who says she called the City of Ottawa bylaw to complain about a lounge that was playing music too loud for the second weekend in a row. [Photo supplied by Sally Dimachki]
“It felt like someone was down my window. That’s how loud it was. It scared me,” Dimachki says. 

She made her way down to the Moscow Tea Room, which had a speaker on its patio, and spoke to one of the waitresses.

Sally Dimachki recalls her encounter with a Moscow Tea Room waitress as the lounge was playing loud music late into the night. [Photo © Yasmine Ghania] 

“I was like, ‘you just woke up all the buildings around you … I’m going to call the police right now if you don’t shut it down,’’’ Dimachki recalls.

But as the music went on for longer, Dimachki’s patience grew shorter. 

She called the City of Ottawa bylaw and says an officer spoke to the owner of the establishment but isn’t sure if any tickets were issued. Moscow Tea Room was contacted to comment but didn’t provide a response.

Between May and August, there were 1,095 music complaints made in Ottawa wards in the downtown area, according to an analysis of the requests for service data reported by the city. The number has increased by 18 per cent compared to last year’s summer months.

A bar graph that visualizes the number of music complaints from May to August broken down by each of the wards in the downtown area. Rideau-Vanier has the highest number of music complaints. Visualization by Yasmine Ghania.

Rawlson King, city councillor for Rideau-Rockcliffe ward, which had the third-highest complaints among the downtown wards this past summer, says that while bars and private gatherings certainly contribute to the number of complaints, he believes the spike is largely due to the fact that people are spending more time at home. 

“In a sense their universe has become more hyper-local and so they’re going to be much more attune to issues in neighbourhoods,” King explains. “To me that’s more of the flavour versus people complaining because they’re worried too many people are having parties.” 

Rideau-Vanier and Somerset were the wards with the most music complaints in all of Ottawa, according to the city data. Notably, the number of music complaints in downtown wards this summer has been higher than any other summer since 2016.

A graph that illustrates the number of music complaints in the summer months of May to August from 2020 to 2016. Hover over each year to see the exact number of complaints. Visualization by Yasmine Ghania.

Frank Russo, a psychology professor at Ryerson University who specializes in auditory cognitive neuroscience, says he believes people have become more “hypersensitive” to loud music and other sounds since the pandemic began.

People can perceive noises to be louder than they actually are when they’re stressed, emotionally exhausted or facing challenging times, according to Russo.

He refers to a 2016 study conducted by the University Medical Center at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, which examined noise annoyance and found that the people most irritated by noise were also the ones who reported more mental health issues. 

But Russo explains music can also help people cope.

As the founding director of the SMART Lab, a research team at Ryerson University which studies music’s relationship with the human brain, Russo says music allows the brain to release dopamine, leading to an increased feeling of happiness and lower stress levels. 

“It can allow people to feel emotions they’re already feeling more deeply or even completely change people’s emotions,” Russo says.

While King notes the increase in music complaints isn’t alarming since he doesn’t think it’s dominantly related to private gatherings and COVID rule-breaking, he still has some worries for the coming months. 

“The key thing that we’re always concerned about is vigilance,” King says, urging Ottawa residents to continue physical distancing and wearing masks in order to contain the spread of infection. 

“When it’s a nice day or the holidays, for example, people want to slip in their old ways in a sense because of course we’re human beings,” King says. “That is the challenge; to continue reminding people that we’re not out of the woods yet.” 

A video taken in early November showing people enjoying the last few sunny days of the year in Ottawa’s Byward Market. Rideau-Rockcliffe councillor Rawlson King is concerned that people might not follow COVID-19 protocols under special circumstances such as the holidays. [Video © Yasmine Ghania]

Canada sees highest number of young women working part-time, can’t find full-time jobs since April

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Salsabil Rahman’s hours at the Canada Revenue Agency were cut by more than half due to the pandemic. She’s one of  thousands of women who have had to settle for part-time jobs this summer. [Photo © Shafayet Turash]
Three years ago Salsabil Rahman, 24, came to Canada for a better education, job and to help her family struggling financially in Bangladesh. She planned on saving thousands of dollars this summer working full-time at the Canada Revenue Agency. Instead she ended up being one of 107,300 young women who had to work part-time because they couldn’t find full-time jobs. The number of women facing this problem increased by 192 per cent, almost tripling among women aged 15-24 from April to August, according to Statistics Canada.  

“I saw it coming. The management said my department isn’t of high importance right now but obviously I was very sad,” Rahman says.

In February, the third-year Carleton University finance student landed a job as a project management officer for an appeal modernization project at the CRA. When the pandemic hit, Rahman’s 40-hour work week was downgraded to 16. She constantly searched for other full-time finance jobs but had no luck.

Frances Woolley, a Carleton economics professor, explains the increasing demand for full-time work is actually a sign that the economy is improving.

“When there (are) no jobs around people won’t bother looking. It’s only when people think that they have a chance of finding a job that they start looking so there’s some good news,” Woolley says.

There’s a particular increase in women’s part-time employment because women are more likely to accept part-time work than their male counterparts, according to Woolley. She draws this analysis based on more than two decades of her cited work which is mostly about feminist economics and inequality within the household.

She adds that it’s more common for women to work in the service sector which is currently hiring less full-time workers due to the pandemic, also contributing to the increase in women settling for part-time work.

A bar graph illustrating the increase in the number of women aged 15 to 24 who are working part-time because they can’t find full-time jobs. Visualization by Yasmine Ghania

Besides the financial loss, Rahman says she’s disappointed about the slash in her hours because it gives her less time to convince her employers to give her a permanent position upon graduation.

Both Rahman and her husband Mazharul Towhid, also a Carleton student, already have university degrees from Bangladesh but decided to continue studying in Canada in hopes for a better life. Thankfully Towhid was able to keep his full-time summer job as a financial analyst at Harris Computer Systems which paid for rent and bills.

“It’s very important that we have something set in the long run,” Rahman says. “We need to land on something very good, at least one of us.”

While Rahman only worked two days a week, she still made $1,200 a month meaning she wasn’t eligible for the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB). Her supervisor told her she could nullify her contract so she could get $2,000 from CERB but Rahman decided to continue working. 

“Calculating the long-term benefit, I didn’t want to take the risk of leaving. I already have a low opportunity of proving myself. I didn’t want to cut the chance even more,” Rahman says. 

Although both men and women are struggling to find secure employment, Woolley explains there are “gendered structural differences” that impede women’s advancements in the workplace. 

A new report released Friday from Ryerson University’s Diversity Institute and the Public Policy Forum finds that the number of men and women at entry level jobs are equal, yet men are promoted at double — sometimes triple — the rate.

Julie Cafley, co-author of the report, is calling on the Feds to ensure gender equality in COVID economic recovery plans. 

“We need to ensure that we’re not building back the economy the same way we’ve done it in the past,” Cafley says. “There’s a huge opportunity to build back differently.” 

Given the high chance many sectors will be forced to shut down amid rising COVID-19 cases, Woolley says it’s difficult to predict how the labour market will look in the next few months.

For now, Rahman says she’s focused on graduating university with high marks so she can be one step closer to a permanent position at the CRA.  

Owners, economists predict restaurant and bar sales decline during winter months

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After restaurants and bars in Ontario experienced a rebound in sales during the summer, some restaurant owners and economists are expecting a rapid decline in business with the arrival of colder months.

An analysis of data released by Statistics Canada in September showed restaurant and bar sales in Ontario increased in May, June, and July.

The increase in sales was preceded by the establishments opening up again after the province forced them to shut down in March and April, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

On Oct. 9, the Ontario provincial government announced indoor dining and drinking will once again be prohibited, as the province entered its second wave in late September.

Physical distancing rules also loosened up in many Ontario municipalities over the summer, possibly contributing to the slow increase in people going out to eat or drink after the re-openings, according to Anna Feng, an economist at the Conference Board of Canada. 

Despite the summer increase, sales at Ontario restaurants and bars in July only reached half the numbers of the previous year, in July 2019, according to an analysis of the Statistics Canada data.

Feng said although country-wide sales in the restaurant industry increased in July, according to the Stat Can numbers, the unprecedented drop in March and April means the industry has still not fully recovered.

“It’s the largest drop we’ve ever seen in history,” Feng said, adding that the July increase has not yet caught up with numbers from the previous year.

Although restaurants and bars this summer saw an increase in sales, they did not make a full rebound. (Visualization by Leila El Shennawy) 

Joelle Parenteau, one of the owners of Ottawa fast-casual sandwich restaurant Wolf Down, said the late summer months until now have been great for her business.

“We’re busier than ever,” Parenteau said.

One of the federal government’s first COVID-19 aid programs, the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB), is one reason Feng attributes to the increase, in addition to pent-up demand.

“There’s less concern (for) their financial condition,” she explained. “That means Canadians can spend a little bit more on those leisure [activities] and dining out over the summer.”

Feng said restaurant owners can expect to see a larger drop than usual in sales this year as soon as the weather is too cold for patrons to sit on patios.

“Now, people are going out because they’re sitting on patios, enjoying the summer and the fresh air,” she said. “But as soon as we enter the winter, the cold weather, the snow and blizzards, it’s just going to be impossible for people to sit on patios.”

Without patios, that leaves dining indoors. With the arrival of the second wave of COVID-19 in Ontario, and record-breaking numbers being reported in some of the province’s largest cities, Feng says indoor dining is likely to be limited even further.

“That will just take a further hit to the recovery of our restaurant industry.”

 A small winter dip is typical, according to Statistics Canada numbers, since last winter saw a small sales decline in the winter months. This graph also shows the drop in sales during the pandemic. (Visualization by Leila El Shennawy) 

However, Feng says, another major contributor to sales, food delivery apps such as Uber Eats and Door Dash, may help keep restaurants in Ontario afloat through the winter.

Parenteau said her restaurant relies heavily on takeout and delivery, and that they have been lucky in that regard.

“We’re fortunate to have been in a position where we could just double down on takeout and delivery,” she said. “We’re fast casual, so it’s much easier for us to transfer the sales over to takeout versus restaurants that rely on dine-in.”

Despite an August prediction by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce that 60 per cent of restaurants could close within three months without aid, Feng said it is unlikely Canada will experience permanent, mass closures of eating and drinking establishments.

Feng said the Conference Board of Canada’s own analysis predicts the Canadian restaurant industry will be able to return to its pre-pandemic state.

“In the very long-term, probably by the end of 2021 or by early 2022, we expect the restaurant sales to come back to its pre-COVID level,” she said.

Parenteau said her business is doing well enough that it will likely survive the pandemic. Still, she says, the uncertainty has been difficult.

“It’s been a little more stressful than usual because you just never know what piece is going to fail next,” she said. “It seems like every week there’s something new, a struggle.”

How two brewers have stayed during Covid-19

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Brad Fennell (left) and Mitch Veilleux (right) in front of their old and small brewer tanks they had to replace this summer. Sean Sisk Photography/Sean Sisk.

From June to July there was almost an 80 per cent increase in jobs in bars, breweries, nightclubs and taverns in Ontario, according to analysis of a recent report from Statistics Canada.

This is the highest increase in jobs in the sector Statistics Canada categorizes as “drinking places” since the Covid-19 pandemic shutdown the economy in March. For Overflow Brewing Company, almost all the jobs they lost have been refilled because of a spike of online sales and the help of laid-off workers from the airline industry.

From March to July employment rates of drinking places have dropped by almost 50 per cent, according to the same report by statistic Canada. For Overflow it was even more drastic: “On March 16 there was nobody else here but Mitch and I,” says Brad Fennell, co-owner of Overflow.

http:// A graph showing the largest dip of employment being in May, and the largest jump being in July. Max Bakony.

 

Together Fennell and Mitch Veilleux opened the brewery in 2017. Until the spring of 2020 they had only two online sales.

“Then on the 16th of March it started with one, and then 10, and then 20, and then upwards of a hundred (online sales) a day,” says Fennell.

Today Overflow is no longer one of the only craft breweries delivering beer, but its ability to offer the service early during the pandemic helped save their business.

By mid-summer they couldn’t hire enough from the beverage industry, so 50 per cent of their new hires ended up being flight attendants: “If you can serve somebody up 20,000 ft. in the air, in a steel tube, and be relaxed under the pressure,” says Fennell. “You can certainly work here.”

From March to July airline sector jobs in Ontario dropped by almost 20 per cent.

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A graph showing the largest dip of employment in airlines being in May. Over the following three months Overflow hired many of those who lost their jobs in the skies. Max Bakony.

 

The news that former airline workers are finding work at Overflow was heartening for Wendy Shaw. She’s an employment counselor and outreach specialist for Youth Services Bureau, a non-for-profit organization offering job seekers of all ages support in finding employment.

“I think it’s incredibly important that people start looking at other options,” says Shaw. For example, “if you don’t have smart serve, you’re probably not going to be able to work in a brewery, or work in a senior’s residence, or work in safe food handling…”

Shaw urges job seekers to invest in the credentials needed to work in multiple industries. She says the current job market is fierce.

More online sales didn’t make things easier for Overflow as the flip in their business model came with new problems:

“We were running out of beer,” says Veilleux.

According to the brewer, their tanks weren’t big enough to produce the quantity they needed for the high-volume low margin business they had transformed into. “We had to sell our old (brewing) tanks, buy new ones, integrate them, and start brewing with twice the number of ingredients,” says Veilleux.

At the height of their sales, they were starting from scratch.

The expense of supporting the online sales kept their profits nil while their revenues remained high. Because of their high revenue, they didn’t qualify for most programs offered by the Federal government. An unfair predicament according to Veilleux: “We could have used that little bit of relief”

Two weeks ago after the Speech from the Throne, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his plan to create one million new jobs for Canadians and to reintroduce the finical assistance available to Canadians and Canadian businesses this summer. Veilleux and Fennell are proud of how both the provincial and federal governments helped Canadians.

However, they stress that to reach that quota set by Trudeau jobs have to be created organically by better supporting the businesses providing them.

Overflow sign beckoning beer enthusiasts into their brewery (left of the picture). Max Bakony

Canada set to see lost revenue from tourism industry due to COVID-19

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In an unprecedented move, Canada announced it would tighten its borders indefinitely to slow the spread of COVID-19, restricting all non-essential travel, including tourism.

This action comes at a time when Canada’s tourism commission reported its strongest year of growth in international visitors to the country.

The government is already taking action to assist Canadians facing economic hardship. Included in their aid package are supports for Canadian businesses that have had to close or shutter due to the pandemic.

Weeks before the federal government was scheduled to release its upcoming budget, allocations for hard-hit industries like airlines may require revision to compensate for losses beyond their usual spending. The visitor economy makes a sizable contribution to Canada’s overall economy.

Canada’s tourism industry has provided a steadily growing stream of revenue to the government, but will see a drop as a result of travel-related restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Even as the full impacts of Canada’s border closures are not yet fully felt, it is likely that the tourism industry will see major losses. This drop will interrupt a trend of strong growth in international tourists visiting Canada.

The federal government’s aid package aims to benefit citizens and businesses with any economic hardships as a result of COVID-19. It is likely that those out of work in the airline and tourism industry will seek such aid.

Some of the hardest hit workers are those in the tourism and hospitality industry, who rely on in-person interactions and spending by international and domestic visitors for their livelihood.

In 2018 there were a total of about 585,000 people employed in Canada’s tourism industry, working in a variety of related sectors, according to the most recent data from Statistics Canada.

Canada’s tourism industry employed an estimated total of 585,000 people in a variety of sub-sectors, according to tables from Statistics Canada.