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On March 17, the International Organization for Migration and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees announced that, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, any travel related to refugee resettlement would be suspended, including government-sponsored and privately-sponsored refugees to Canada.

The suspension of resettlement, along with stay-at-home orders and border shutdowns, have important ramifications for refugees who, by definition, have been forced to leave their home countries to find safety. With many refugees remaining displaced for years in camps or urban settings, resettlement is a vital tool that allows families and individuals to find stability in a new country. Canada, a global leader in resettlement, was set to bring in over 30,000 refugees in 2020. However, there have been less than 10,000 refugees resettled worldwide so far this year.

Though some right-wing outlets have suggested that refugees pose too much of an economic burden, research suggests that countries tend to actually benefit economically once refugees are resettled. Not only that, but Canada may be ignoring its international obligations by turning away asylum seekers who arrive at the border seeking safety.

Earlier policies in response to COVID-19 barred entry to all refugee claimants attempting to come to Canada, but a more recent policy has allowed for certain exceptions: some claimants can enter Canada from the United States at official border crossings before being made to quarantine for fourteen days in hotel rooms reserved by the Canada Border Services Agency. This exemption only applies under specific conditions, such as when claimants have close family in Canada or face the death penalty in their home country.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic began, asylum claimants were also able to enter at unauthorized border crossings, such as the Quebec-New York crossing at Roxham Road, and make an asylum claim once in Canada. Now, those entering at unauthorized border crossings are being turned away and sent back to the U.S. where they risk being deported back to their home country.

The Canadian Council for Refugees has called the new ban “wrong and unnecessary,” and Amnesty International has said that the measure violates the rights of refugees seeking safety, citing Canada’s obligations under the UN’s 1951 Refugee Convention. Advocates have even argued that the Canadian government could face legal consequences for violating “non-refoulement,” the principle that individuals cannot be returned to a country where they will face persecution or torture.

Reverend Scott Jones, the executive director of Micah House, a refugee shelter in Hamilton, Ont., says he’s seen a noticeable reduction in the number of referrals his organization handles, from between 60 and 70 in a typical month to between five and 10 since the COVID-19 pandemic began. Micah House offers short-term stays to refugee and asylum claimants, as well as assisting them with resettlement and connecting them to other services.

But services for refugees and asylum seekers who are already in Canada have also been restricted. The Canadian government has instructed resettlement service providers to only “focus on providing critical settlement and resettlement services,”, and in-person appointments with the Immigration and Refugee Review Board of Canada — which determine permanent residency claims for some refugees — have been temporarily suspended.

For now, guests at Micah House are in limbo, as many of the aspects of resettlement, like beginning school and accessing housing, remain out of reach. But, so far at least, they’ve been able to stay healthy. With more than 600 cases of COVID-19 in Hamilton, Micah House has managed to avoid any positive cases in their facility. Refugees in other centres have not been as fortunate.

[icc_block_quote quote=”I do know, at least a couple of our clients are suffering pretty greatly because of this. They already have barriers of language, barriers of culture, they don’t have access to family.” author=”Reverend Scott Jones” border_colour=”#000000″]

Willowdale Welcome Centre in Toronto had the largest COVID-19 outbreak in the city’s shelter system, which includes 72 other facilities. More than a dozen staff members and 185 clients at Willowdale tested positive for COVID-19, according to reporting from the Toronto Star. So far, no deaths related to the outbreak have been reported.

Beyond just the health effects of COVID-19, refugees in Canada also need to cope with the psychological impact of living in isolation. Being in a new country — sometimes without the ability to speak English or French — and away from their support systems, often after having lived through considerable trauma, refugees are already in a vulnerable position. Add to that lockdown measures and isolation in an unfamiliar place, and the effects can be even more severe.

“I do know, at least a couple of our clients are suffering pretty greatly because of this. They already have barriers of language, barriers of culture, they don’t have access to family,” says Jones. “There’s a level of discomfort for them that’s added on.”

Not only does Canada have a legal and, arguably, moral responsibility to assist these groups, the country also stands to benefit from doing so. Contrary to some right-wing discourse that casts refugees as an economic burden, research shows that newcomers actually have a net positive benefit economically.

One recent study tracking newcomers over 30 years across 15 countries in Western Europe found that increases in migration “significantly increase per capita GDP, reduce unemployment, and improve the balance of public finances,” and that “the additional public expenditures, which is usually referred to as the ‘refugee burden,’ is more than outweighed by the increase in tax revenues.”

Newcomers to Canada, says Jones, are more likely to be essential workers, especially during the first few years after they arrive, making them even more vulnerable to the risks surrounding COVID-19. “They’re working at slaughterhouses, they’re working in fields, they’re working in greenhouses, they’re taxi drivers, and so forth. It’s a group of people that have one more area of marginalization,” he says.

As the pandemic continues, Canada has the opportunity to provide more resources to this underserved group and uphold its international obligations. Meanwhile, the situation for refugees around the world remains uncertain: the UN has stated that it will lift resettlement travel restrictions “as soon as prudence and logistics permit.” Currently, no plans have been announced.

Canada’s health-care workforce has been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, with over 3,600 health-care workers testing positive for the virus so far. Early on, the pressure that COVID-19 was expected to put on the health-care system forced policymakers to consider new measures to increase their supply of doctors. One of those measures was the introduction of a certificate that would allow internationally trained doctors without Canadian medical licenses to practise in Ontario temporarily under certain strict conditions.

The new temporary licensing policy, called the Supervised Short-Duration Certificate, dips into Ontario’s supply of international medical graduates (IMGs), many of whom are currently unable to work in their fields. (IMGs also include Canadian citizens who studied medicine abroad.) A similar measure in British Columbia also allows internationally trained doctors to practise during the pandemic.

But these new measures highlight the long-standing difficulties internationally trained doctors face when trying to gain their full medical license in Canada. In Ontario alone, there are 13,000 internationally trained doctors who are not currently working in their field according to statistics from HealthForceOntario. The new measures seek to use the untapped potential of these IMGs, but they also raise the question: Why wasn’t Canada employing this skilled workforce already?

For an IMG to become a fully licensed doctor in Ontario, they need to have graduated with a medical degree from a university recognized in the World Directory of Medical Schools, pass a series of written and practical exams, and complete a residency program. While Canadian-trained graduates have a similar licensing process, IMGs sometimes encounter more barriers along the way.

One of the main obstacles IMGs face is at the residency stage. Provinces set aside a limited number of residency spaces for IMGs — far fewer than the number who apply — creating a bottleneck of qualified applicants and making it difficult for graduates to proceed to the next step in their medical licensing qualifications.

[icc_block_quote quote=”I think at some point we need to ask the question: Shouldn’t residency seats go to the individual who is going to make the greatest contribution” author=”Deidre Lake” border_colour=”#000000″]

“I understand that, as a medical system, we invest in our Canadian medical graduates,” says Deidre Lake, executive director of the Alberta International Medical Graduates Association (AIMGA). “But we also have IMGs coming with training and experience that we haven’t paid for, and that has been really, in some sense, a cost savings, and yet we’re only letting them apply for a limited number of seats.”

“I think at some point we need to ask the question: Shouldn’t residency seats go to the individual who is going to make the greatest contribution and shouldn’t IMGs have a fair chance applying for residency seats alongside Canadian medical graduates?” she says.

Even after the COVID-19 pandemic, Canada could help address its low number of doctors by tapping into this reserve of international medical graduates waiting to practise. Canada currently ranks twenty-fifth among Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries when it comes to the ratio of doctors to population, with 2.8 doctors per 1,000 inhabitants. Austria, first on the list, has nearly double that figure, with 5.2 doctors per 1,000 inhabitants.

Canada also has comparatively long wait times for specialist appointments and emergency room care compared to other industrialized countries, as well as a lack of family physicians in some provinces — which could be linked to the country’s shortage of doctors, according to a 2018 report from the Fraser Institute.

Current trends suggest we will see only “a small increase in the physician-to-population ratio” between now and 2030. And, if we factor in the current rate at which IMGs are entering health care, “the ratio will only improve from 2.74 physicians per thousand population in 2015 to 2.97 in 2030” without considerable increases, the report states.

In addition to policy issues, potential bias toward immigrant IMGs could also pose a barrier to those trying to practise in Canada. One study published in the medical journal Canadian Family Physician found that, though immigrant IMGs tended to have more years of training and clinical experience, “a relatively greater proportion of Canadian IMGs” were successful in obtaining residency positions.

Not only that, the limited number of immigrant IMGs who are eventually accepted into residency programs are more likely than their Canadian counterparts to experience discrimination on the basis of their background. A 2011 study of discriminatory behaviour experienced by family medicine residents in Alberta found that “a significantly greater proportion of [immigrant] IMGs perceived ethnicity, culture, or language” to be the basis of the discrimination they experienced, mostly in the form of “inappropriate verbal comments.”

Despite the issues IMGs face because of the country they come from or where they have studied, having a diversity of experience in health care can have many positive effects — and some IMGs have been able to put their cross-cultural and multilingual skills to use during the COVID-19 pandemic, including those who haven’t gained short-term certification. AIMGA has put together videos, written material, and digital information sessions about COVID-19 in several languages, translated by its diverse group of over 1,000 members from more than eighty countries.

AIMGA also assisted Alberta Health Services by calling 500 workers in the midst of a COVID-19 outbreak at a meatpacking plant in order to give them more information about the virus. Sixty percent of the calls were to Filipino workers, conducted with the help of four Filipino AIMGA members who were able to communicate with them in their native language about the risks and symptoms associated with COVID-19.

[icc_block_quote quote=”We have members who are working as Uber drivers, who are working as health-care aides, or at a warehouse, or in a security position, and that’s certainly not what they had in mind when they chose to immigrate to Canada” author=”Deidre Lake” border_colour=”#000000″]

The volunteers engaged in this work do so, says Deidre Lake, because being a physician is their calling, and the urge to help others — especially during a medical crisis — is hard to ignore. “It really is detrimental to the individual, to the community, and to society when you have a highly educated, highly skilled individual who is unable to utilize their skills and knowledge,” she says.

But is asking IMGs to put themselves in harm’s way during a pandemic without also allowing for more long-term licensing options fair? Seventy-six physicians in Ontario are known to have contracted COVID-19 so far, and as the health-care system continues to be affected by hundreds of new cases in Ontario each day, the strain on the province’s physicians will likely continue to grow.

Meanwhile, a significant supply of IMGs — some of whom specialize or have experience in fields relevant to COVID-19, like ventilation and infectious diseases — languish in a state of unemployment or underemployment.

“We have members who are working as Uber drivers, who are working as health-care aides, or at a warehouse, or in a security position, and that’s certainly not what they had in mind when they chose to immigrate to Canada,” says Lake. “It’s heartbreaking, really, when we as a country can’t utilize the skills and knowledge that they’re coming with.”

Canoo member Joy Abasta became a Canadian citizen in February 2020. She says she chose Canada because of the country’s diversity, move towards inclusion, and the high respect for others’ rights and freedoms.

As a new citizen, Joy is actively and continuously learning about the Indigenous Peoples in Canada, and she knows it is both a privilege and a responsibility to be learning and living in the unceded Coast Salish Territories. She also believes that while immigrants and new citizens have much to contribute to Canadian society, it is also important to acknowledge that we all have to work together towards decolonization and reconciliation with the Indigenous Peoples to be a truly inclusive and progressive country. As a public health leader, she is an advocate and an ally in achieving culturally competent and gender-sensitive communities in British Columbia, and hopefully, in all of Canada.

Joy’s favourite place in Canada is Whitehorse, Yukon. “A week after my oath of citizenship in February 2020, my partner, Wesley, and I flew to Whitehorse, Yukon,” she explained, “There, we chased the Aurora Borealis, we met a Canadian ranger, and experienced dogsledding and snowmobiling. I learned more about trapping and got to feel and try on clothings made of real arctic fox, mink, and wolf pelts. The most unforgettable of them all was when we visited the Beringia Interpretive Centre where we learned more about Indigenous Peoples, human migration theory through the Bering ice bridge, and admired the remains of woolly mammoth, giant sloths, and saber-toothed cats.”

When travel restrictions due to the pandemic are over, Joy plans to visit other provinces and use her Canoo membership in museums and art galleries. She hopes to see the beauty and hidden gems of Winnipeg, Toronto, and the Maritimes.

Joy believes that cultural places and public art installations play a major role towards awareness and inclusivity: “These cultural places serve as a medium where we learn the country’s history, its traditions, cultures, and even the dark past. Social inclusion will only be achieved if we learn from history and that we truly welcome everyone regardless of their skin colour, race, gender, and social class.”

In the 20 years since Vincent Lam became a physician, he has experienced two widespread viral outbreaks: first SARS, which hit Toronto in 2003; and now the COVID-19 pandemic, which has left the city in a state of total shutdown since mid-March.

Lam is the co-author of the book The Flu Pandemic and You, and the medical director of the Coderix Medical Clinic, an addictions medicine centre in Toronto. He is also an accomplished fiction writer — his book Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures won the 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize.

We spoke with him about what it’s like to work on the frontlines, how to manage the fear and anxiety surrounding pandemics, and the subtle ways that racism functions and flourishes during a crisis.

Sejla Rizvic: I wanted to discuss your previous experience working as an emergency room doctor during the SARS outbreak and now as a medical director during the COVID-19 pandemic. How do those two experiences compare?
Vincent Lam: It’s interesting because actually, as a physician, it isn’t that different. Many of the things that we were doing as precautionary measures are in fact the same things that we’re doing now. So in terms of screening, in terms of using personal protective equipment, that is all exactly the same. I think the biggest difference is just that the COVID-19 situation has had more of an impact. There have been more cases in the health-care system itself, and in the community at large things have been seriously affected.

During SARS, I remember feeling like we were in a bit of a parallel world, in the sense that in health-care we were taking care of people who were potentially sick and we were taking all these precautions and everything was really different. But in the city itself everything was pretty much business as usual. I mean, there were news stories, but there weren’t the same kinds of widespread public health interventions. The work was really the same, but the big difference was just the sense that we were in our own little bubble doing all this stuff. And now we’re all impacted.

I want to discuss your book The Flu Pandemic and You and some of the insights you offer about the anxiety that tends to surround pandemic events. How does anxiety affect our experience of this time?The principles that my co-author, Colin Lee, and I discuss in that book are almost entirely parallel between an influenza pandemic and the novel coronavirus pandemic. I think what we really need to understand as a society is that anxiety is normal. And the function of anxiety, as human beings, is to get our attention and to alert us to threats.

So it’s actually an incredibly useful role. Once we understand this is the role of anxiety, then we have to think “Okay, anxiety is supposed to function as this warning system so that I do something. What should I now do?” If people are able to formulate useful actions and figure out what they can do to help to protect those around them, to keep themselves and their families safe, then that’s really, really useful. If people have less productive reactions to anxiety, and of course we see some of that, then that’s not going to be helpful.

In an article for the Globe and Mail that you wrote in January, you state that: “Our minds are biased toward overestimating the significance of novel risks and nonchalantly accept familiar ones.” But what happens when the novel risk becomes the familiar risk, and governments and people begin to loosen lockdown restrictions prematurely?
One of the things that we can do with risk is to come to terms with it and still understand that it’s there, without it being the only thing that we’re paying attention to. But at the same time, we should modify our behaviour.

I remember getting into cars that didn’t have seatbelts in the back when I was a child. Now we think that’s really bizarre. Now our reflex is to put on a seatbelt when we get into a car. There’s a reason for that: if the car is going to crash, then we’re less likely to be injured or killed. But it’s not as if everytime we get into a car we sit there for ten seconds and imagine a horrific crash, right? We just get in, put the seatbelt on, and drive.

I think that’s really what we have to figure out if we reopen after the pandemic and before there’s a vaccine. It’s this question of what patterns can we change; figuring out what can we do that will allow life to continue while still modifying our behaviour in a way that reduces risk.

Coming back to the question of anxiety, I think the danger is that if people have this kind of defiant response, it’s really a response to anxiety. People don’t enjoy feeling anxious — it makes them feel vulnerable, it makes them feel like they have less agency, perhaps. So, in order to get away from that emotional state, some people will seek a way to feel better through an expression of defiance. Which is that, “You know what, I don’t have to be scared of whatever it is. Don’t tell me what to do.” There’s a sense in which that feels good, because it feels like I’m taking back my control, I’m asserting my agency, I’m acting in a powerful way by doing whatever it is that I want.

It’s an understandable way to try to get rid of feelings of anxiety. It’s just that it actually is not very helpful. People are going to try and achieve that really short-term sense of feeling powerful, of feeling good, of feeling defiant, and trade away sensible precautions for the sake of that short-term emotional benefit.

There has also been rampant anti-Asian racism and discrimination surrounding the novel coronavirus. Have you personally experienced this kind of discrimination?
I’ve been pretty fortunate, and I think Canada is still relatively fortunate, in that I don’t think we’ve had as much anti-Asian racism as a lot of places in the world. But we have had some unfortunate incidents.

I think there is a sense of wanting to take back some measure of personal power. If I’m feeling vulnerable, if there’s a situation that I don’t like, it feels satisfying in some ways to be able to point a finger, to be able to blame someone even if there’s no actual substantive truth to it. It does kind of give this sense of satisfaction in some way. So I think it comes from that place.

I don’t want to say too much about my patients because, ultimately, I’m their care provider and I have a duty of confidentiality toward what they say to me. But I can say that I’ve experienced flavours of comments that I think do come from a place of fear.

If someone is a person of Chinese descent and considers themself to be part of Canadian society — and especially if one is in a position of respect, a position of authority — it’s hard to know what to do with comments that may have some sort of racist implication. You’ve probably seen the whole Derek Sloan debacle with respect to his comments about Theresa Tam.

I think the incident you’re referring to is when Conservative MP Derek Sloan who, in a video posted to Facebook and Twitter last month, criticized Chief Public Health Officer of Canada Theresa Tam, and questioned whether she worked “for Canada or for China.”
It’s really quite difficult to know what to do as a person of Chinese descent in response to one of these incidents. I think Theresa Tam handled it perfectly — she made it clear that her role is that of a professional who is deeply engaged in doing the best possible job in a difficult time, and therefore she is not going to engage in what she called “noise.”

I’m sure it must be very hurtful for her, as Canada’s top public health official, to receive comments which may have a racist tone to them from an elected member of Parliament in the House of Commons. I can imagine that the personal dilemma for her might be — and I’m speculating because I don’t know for sure — that she feels the best way to really demonstrate her solidarity (not that she should have to) and demonstrate the value that she has as a member of Canadian society is to simply do the best job possible and to not allow herself to be drawn in and distracted by these really unsavoury comments.

I very much feel the same way. I do experience comments that are maybe tinged with something, but I feel that I’m here as a professional and what I should do is what I do best. And in the larger picture, that in itself should demonstrate who I am and what I stand for. But it doesn’t mean that those comments are not hurtful. It doesn’t mean that those comments are acceptable.

It’s just quite difficult, when one is in a professional capacity, to always respond to those comments in a way that is both effective as a professional and will address them directly. So sometimes one makes the decision simply to prioritize professionalism and to forgo any kind of direct confrontation. At the end of the day, I don’t really know whether that’s the best response in terms of confronting racism, but I think it’s often the decision that ends up being made, which I myself have made.

Sloan has since refused to apologize for those comments and claims that his statement was simply “rhetorical.” What do you make of that explanation?
In modern culture, we’ve learned that racism is wrong — and I think lots of people who are racist will even quite happily say that racism is wrong. It creates this tendency to couch comments in some sort of justification or some sort of double-speak. Sloan’s comment was called out by Canadian media; he responded to it and didn’t apologize. He just said that he didn’t refer to Tam’s ethnicity or country of origin. It felt very much like he was double-speaking his way out of a very embarrassing political situation.

I think because we live in a culture where, for the most part, we have all agreed that it is wrong to be racist. And what that means is that comments which are based on race or ethnicity, or that have some kind of underlying edge to them, are usually not stated in a way that is overtly racist. I think some of that is happening during this pandemic, and it’s a tricky thing to know how to deal with.

As we’ve reported before, people of Asian descent have been the targets of COVID-19-related harrassment and discrimination since the beginning of the pandemic. But COVID-19 has also highlighted existing prejudices against other groups, with Jewish and Muslim communities reporting an uptick in harassment, mistreatment, and the spread of disinformation about them in recent months.

In Montreal, Hasidic Jewish communities have spoken out against being unfairly scrutinized after several people made false reports to the police claiming to have witnessed community members congregating in synagogues and other indoor spaces. At a recent anti-lockdown demonstration in Columbus, Ohio, a protestor held up an anti-Semitic sign with the words “The real plague” next to an image of a rat and the Star of David. In France, a candidate for the far-right National Rally party had his party support revoked after liking a video shared on the social media website VK, promoting an anti-Semitic COVID-19 conspiracy theory.

The United Nations has reported an “alarming rise” in anti-Semitic hate speech during the COVID-19 pandemic. “It is imperative for the civil society organisations and faith-based actors to signal a zero-tolerance policy towards antisemitism online and offline,” said Ahmed Shaheed, the UN special rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief.

Incidences of Islamophobia have also grown, including in India, where the term “Corona Jihad” was reportedly trending on Twitter just weeks after religious riots in New Delhi killed fifty-three people. In the U.K., far-right extremists have been sharing false and misleading images of Muslims, who they claim are flouting physical distancing rules. And in Thunder Bay, Ont., the husband and son of a doctor who is treating COVID-19 patients were verbally attacked while shopping at a grocery store.

“Even as Canadian Muslims die from COVID-19, we worry about how the entire Muslim community could face castigation in the case that even a single Muslim breaches quarantine,” writes Mustafa Farooq, CEO of the National Council of Canadian Muslims, in a recent Edmonton Journal op-ed.

In the face of increasing hostility, these communities have also been forced to alter some of their religious practices as lockdown measures remain in effect.

During recent Passover celebrations in early April, instead of gathering together around a table, many Jewish families celebrated their traditional Seder dinners digitally, using video-conferencing apps.

Some celebrants adapted elements of the Seder to reflect the current times, like choosing to complete the ritual washing of hands — often done symbolically — to be done for real, as an acknowledgment of current public health guidelines. Other elements of the Passover experience also had a special resonance; gathering to remember the ten plagues that led to the exodus of Jewish people from Egypt while a different kind of “plague” looms made this year’s celebration stand out from those past.

Now, in the midst of Ramadan, Muslims are trying to navigate new restrictions that are affecting their daily fasts and upcoming Eid celebrations.

“Islam as a religion is a very communal faith, and Ramadan is kind of the zenith of that communal spirit,” says Safiah Chowdhury, a 31-one-year-old Muslim woman living in Toronto who is active in her faith community. “With the orders for physical distancing and the closure of our mosques at this time, it inhibits a lot of the community spirit that typically is replete during Ramadan. It’s changed significantly,” she says.

These difficulties are coming at a time when celebrations like Ramadan are most needed. Studies have shown that religious practices across faiths can increase overall happiness. A 2010 Gallup poll found that, out of a sample size of over 675,000 Americans, those who identified as “very religious” (about 41 per cent of the population) had higher rates of emotional health, healthy behaviours, and overall well-being at that time. But with the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated shutdowns, the ability to lean on one’s faith community for support is greatly diminished.

“The digital way of gathering is okay, but it’s no replacement for being around hundreds of community members all in their Eid best,” says Chowdhury. She adds that there have been efforts to find digital workarounds — like celebrating iftar (the nightly breaking of the fast) over video, and offering religious programming online — with some positive effects. “None of this really replaces actual prayer, but it does provide a lot of knowledge, insight, and reflection,” she says.

Even with physical distancing measures in place, some cities have been stepping up to accommodate religious celebrations in new ways. For the first time, the City of Toronto is allowing the Islamic call to prayer to be broadcast from local mosques. Normally, amplified sounds are prohibited by the city’s municipal code but officials have agreed to make an exception, acknowledging the difficulties the city’s Muslims are facing during the pandemic. “Spiritual, emotional, and mental well-being is important during these difficult times,” Tammy Robinson, a city spokesperson, told the CBC.

Similar to the nightly 7:30 p.m. applause in support of health-care workers, Toronto’s call to prayer exception is meant to signal a sense of community with Muslims quarantined in their homes and separated from family and friends. Chowdhury, for her part, says measures like these provide a bit of solace during an otherwise difficult time. “If you’re in the vicinity and you’re able to hear it, it’s just really calming and reaffirming,” she says. “It’s been one of the nice things about Ramadan in isolation.”

For anyone trying to make sense of the COVID-19 pandemic, accessing reliable information online has become a minefield of mis- and disinformation, myths, and conspiracy theories.

Responding to the alarming trends that have emerged online, the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned of an “infodemic,” which they define as “an overabundance of information, some accurate and some not, that makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it.”

Much of the COVID-19-related disinformation and conspiracy theories being propagated online rely on anti-Chinese and other racist narratives. A recent report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) found that existing extreme right-wing channels have used COVID-19 as a “powerful propaganda tool” to further radicalize their followers on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube.

One way to push back against disinformation, according to the ISD, “is to flood the information space with evidence-based accurate information in digestible formats.”

Diligent reporting and fact-checking is essential to curbing mis- and disinformation. That’s why the Institute for Canadian Citizenship has teamed up with The Walrus Fact-Checking project to debunk claims related to COVID-19. Below are two widespread claims that our fact-checkers found to be lacking in evidence and rooted in xenophobia.

FACT CHECK: Was COVID-19 intentionally created in a Chinese lab?

One of the most popular myths — recently repeated by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and President Donald Trump — is that the virus that causes COVID-19 was intentionally created in a Wuhan lab. The Walrus Fact-Checking project investigated the claim and found no evidence to support it:

“A team of researchers analyzed the genome sequence of the virus and wrote in Nature Medicine that, based on their findings, ‘SARS-CoV-2 [the novel coronavirus] is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.’

According to the study, the genomes of the virus show evidence of natural selection, which means that it has evolved in ways that are unexpected and entirely different from viruses available to laboratories.”

There are other theories about the origin of the virus as well — namely, that the virus was leaked accidentally from a lab, or that it originated in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. But scientists still can’t say with confidence where the original animal to human transmission occurred.

Though there is some evidence that links several cases of the novel coronavirus to the market location, other data suggest that the earliest cases of the virus had no known link to the market. Unfortunately, rather than relying on the available facts, much of the discussion regarding the origin of the virus has been used to fuel discrimination. Some social media users have taken the “wet market” origin theory and used it to promote damaging prejudice against Chinese food and culture.

“The outbreak has had a decidedly dehumanizing effect,” writes Jenny Zhang for the food website Eater, “reigniting old strains of racism and xenophobia that frame Chinese people as uncivilized, barbaric ‘others.’”

FACT CHECK: Would travel bans against China have prevented the spread of COVID-19 in Canada?

Since the outbreak of the virus, countless anti-Chinese attacks have been recorded worldwide: a family in Perth, Australia had their driveway vandalized with the words “virus get out”; the French newspaper Courrier picard ran an article with the headline “Alerte jaune” (“Yellow alert”); and in Vancouver, an elderly Asian man was shoved to the ground outside a convenience store while his attacker yelled racial slurs and referenced COVID-19.

These individual acts of racism have also been echoed in calls for policy measures that target Chinese travellers. Another Walrus Fact-Checking article examined the claim that an earlier travel ban against China would have protected Canada from COVID-19, and found there was little evidence to support it:

“Not only do targeted bans discriminate against travellers based on their national origin, research on HIV/AIDS, Ebola, influenza, and H1N1 has found that placing travel restrictions on a specific country are not generally effective…Think Global Health compared the number of cases in countries that had implemented travel bans on China with those that had not, and found that travel bans don’t appear to be affecting the spread of the virus.”

Jumping to xenophobic conclusions without ever examining their factual basis is a feature of the “infodemic,” and something that policy makers, the media, and the public must join together to combat.

As Scott Radnitz writes in the Guardian, although the infodemic and the pandemic are running parallel to each other, there are some clear differences between them. Spreading false information has been made far easier than spreading a virus, with tools like social media making it possible to transmit ideas without ever being in physical contact with others. And unlike people who have contracted COVID-19, those who spread misinformation are not always ”passive conduits” — some, like extremists and hate groups, do so with the intention of sowing fear, panic, and hatred. But transmitting myths and misinformation can be stopped, and, with the right information spread widely enough, can sometimes even be reversed.

By Sejla Rizvic

As we were unable to gather in person for 6 Degrees Montréal due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we invited two Montreal leaders to have an online discussion around community, activism, and community leadership.

Caro Loutfi is the executive director of Apathy is Boring, and Fabrice Vil is the co-founder and president of Pour 3 Points.

6 Degrees: How has the current context of COVID-19 changed your work? More specifically, how has it changed the impact of your work?

Caro Loutfi: As far as our programs go, our participants are currently meeting using screens, just like the three of us are doing right now. We think it’s important to continue to offer opportunities for young people to get together and find community in these isolating times. Having a community of peers to interact, learn and engage with, and with which they can keep their projects going is really valuable.

Fabrice Vil: Pour 3 Points is an organization that trains sports coaches to do outreach work with the young people they’re already interacting with. These training programs usually take place in physical settings like group retreats where everyone gets together. The sense of community we’ve built is still present in this remote context, but now our gatherings take place online.

Caro, you mentioned the word community, and that really speaks to me, because it’s been fundamental to how I first experienced this lockdown. What are some of the thoughts you’ve had regarding community leadership and notions of equality and social justice?

CL: Our mission at Apathy is Boring is to get young people involved so they can be engaged as active citizens in their communities and in our democracy. In times like these, civic engagement and collective engagement are really important. Our mission and our main objectives are directly connected to the issues currently affecting local and global communities.

This isolation and the fact that many of these young people who are working and active in their communities now have to do so virtually is a big issue. Some of them simply don’t have access to the internet, so that’s an issue we’re very aware of right now. What role should governments and businesses play when they have the power to decide who gets access? It’s about money and it’s about support. I believe internet service providers hold a lot of responsibility right now.

There are two issues we’re particularly focused on. Firstly, the issue of connectivity and how one can be engaged as a citizen without access, without that privilege. Secondly, what are we doing to support people who are dealing with mental-health issues? On the one hand, it’s important to respect social distancing to prevent the spread of COVID-19, but on the other hand, we are paying a price when it comes to mental health in various communities, especially with young people from marginalized communities.

FV: Those questions also speak to me. The issue of connectivity has been one of the major challenges our coaches face. Particularly for this one coach in Laval who told me, “Fabrice, I wonder whether I should just call Bell myself and figure out a deal with them so kids in the neighbourhood can have internet access.” That stayed with me because it’s also an issue for adults. For example, the easiest way to access emergency benefits right now is online. So, if you don’t have an internet connection and you’re unable to work, you can’t even access the financial resources you need to cover basic necessities.

Another factor that speaks to me is this issue of vulnerability. In the last few days, we’ve seen more and more data showing that Montréal-Nord is one of the hot spots for the virus; the propagation rate there is the highest in the city. Previously, it was Côte-des-Neiges, and now it’s Montréal-Nord, which also happens to be one of the poorest boroughs in the country. To me, this demonstrates just how many factors are at play here.

When the pandemic first started, people in the Black community were saying that the coronavirus was only affecting white and Asian people, not Black people. This disinformation was being spread within the community. So, I was part of this campaign where we were telling people, “Look, Idris Elba and Kevin Durant both got sick, Manu Dibango died…” Following this, Black communities mobilized and said, “Stay home! We’re affected, too!” And in the U.S., we’re seeing a disproportionate number of Black people dying because of this virus. But in Quebec, and I think in the rest of Canada, we don’t have access to data based on skin colour, so we just don’t have that information.

And then there are essential workers, who are often racialized people. People we don’t see. For example, hospital orderlies, delivery people, and many others. From an inclusion perspective, I believe this is a crucial factor – you can’t just talk about the population as a whole.

CL: It’s unbelievable that we don’t have racial demographic data telling us how COVID-19 impacts our communities, because the impact is obviously going to be different according to the context of each community. The government can’t offer services that meet the needs of specific communities without that data.

If we put enough pressure on the government, maybe they would start collecting that data.

FV: I just want to follow up on this idea of putting pressure on various levels of government, because in the current context I’ve been thinking a lot about the notion of power and how individuals on the ground have this power that often remains unknown or invisible. This might be a strange parallel to draw, but we’ve now seen a virus enacting this! It’s this purely biological thing, but similarly in society there are conventional structures in place, and some of them have been weakened.

No one is really talking about our youth as being part of the solution right now. What do they have to say? They’re not necessarily being heard, but there is a latent power there. This pandemic has shown us that the people in suits to whom we’ve granted a certain legitimacy are only legitimate to a point, they’re not all-knowing. It would be cool to start honouring all forms of power throughout our social structures.

CL: Yes, that’s actually our vision at Apathy is Boring: for young people to find their power and to act on it. This doesn’t necessarily mean acting on that power in a formal way, like taking part in the election process. It can also mean community involvement, or involvement in terms of information sharing or community support.

I absolutely agree that this invisible power exists. We do a lot of research here, and we’ll be working on a report over the summer that will look at how young people across the country are reacting to the pandemic and how it will influence the ways in which they get involved in their communities, and how it will change their mentality. New ways of doing things and new issues will emerge. There already are concerns around the power our governments hold. There are historical examples of moments like this where governments have a hard time coming to terms with the fact that they don’t wield the same power over citizens in the aftermath of a situation like the one we’re in.

So, it will be interesting to see how young people will perceive the government and our institutions and leaders. And also, how it will change relationships between citizens. Between young people and decision-makers, like people in positions of power.

FV: I look forward to reading that report. It’s being released next fall?

CL: Probably. We’ll be collecting data over the summer. The report isn’t specifically focused on the pandemic, but it will be looking at how young people are getting involved in their communities. Are they engaged or not? How? What drives them? What are their interests? But given the current situation, we will be including a section on how the pandemic has changed the way they do or envision things.

6 Degrees: What is a call to action you might have for the government, individuals, or leaders on how to be active citizens in this current context?

CL: Following our conversation I would have three suggestions. I think the government and service providers should work towards offering free internet access. I think it would be really interesting if this could happen, especially for people who don’t have access right now during the pandemic.

Secondly, I think we’re in need of a better approach to mental health across all provinces. Each province is different, but there are definitely holes in our system as far as services go. We need to be offering free services to young people who, once again, really need these resources.

And finally, I’ll repeat what Fabrice said regarding this power we don’t necessarily see. I really appreciated the virus analogy. It’s this invisible power that has completely changed the way we do things. I believe we should be talking a little more about the power young Canadians have to mobilize, to change how we do things. They might perceive this power as being invisible, but it’s there nonetheless and it can have a huge impact.

FV: I agree with everything you just said, Caro, and there’s one other aspect that comes to mind: we’ve just witnessed that we have this real capacity to mobilize collectively when faced with an emergency situation. We’ve been able to achieve things together — as citizens, as businesses, as governments — that we never thought we’d be able to do. And now, I expect us to do the same for all these issues that may seem to be less urgent, whether they’re social or environmental issues. I believe that keeping up this pace and level of pressure is our collective responsibility.

Because when we’re not dealing with the virus in a few years, we’ll be dealing with water levels rising. And that’s coming fast. So, we have to keep in mind what we’re going through right now and remind ourselves that we’re able to make dramatic changes. I believe in us.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Caro Loutfi is the executive director of Apathy is Boring, and Fabrice Vil is the co-founder and president of Pour 3 Points.

6 Degrees: How has the current context of COVID-19 changed your work? More specifically, how has it changed the impact of your work?

If we put enough pressure on the government, maybe they would start collecting that data.

FV: I look forward to reading that report. It’s being released next fall?

6 Degrees: What is a call to action you might have for the government, individuals, or leaders on how to be active citizens in this current context?

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

By Sejla Rizvic

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced us to adopt a whole new glossary of terms with which we may not have been familiar. References to N95 masks, intubation, and R0 (the number used to describe the estimated rate of disease transmission) have all entered the public discourse, and some terms may still be unclear — such as the precise difference between “self-isolation” and “quarantine.” This new vocabulary can lead to uncertainty and misinformation during a time when clarity of language is most needed.

To further confuse things, the virus itself has been referred to by several different names, including simply “coronavirus” (the name for the broad category of viruses it belongs to), “COVID-19” (the name of the disease caused by the virus), and “SARS-CoV-2” (the name of the current strain of the virus).

Experts warn that when confusion about language is combined with the anxiety of living through a global pandemic, it can create an environment where misinformation flourishes. This can be dangerous to public health for many reasons, including the potential for discrimination and racism.

We see this in the use of terms like “Wuhan virus” or “Chinese virus,” which have been picked up by right-wing media outlets and, until quite recently, used by U.S. President Donald Trump, fueling already rampant anti-Chinese and anti-Asian racism during the pandemic.

In February, the Asian American Journalists Association came out with recommendations “Urging journalists to exercise care in their coverage of the coronavirus outbreak in China to ensure accurate and fair portrayals of Asians and Asian Americans and to avoid fueling xenophobia and racism.” The guidelines advised news outlets not to use photos of Asian people wearing masks or generic images of Chinatowns in articles without providing proper context, as their use could further stigmatize those communities. The association also warned against the use of terms like “Chinese coronavirus” and “Wuhan virus,” which imply a connection between the virus and a geographic location — an assumption that experts agree is both harmful and inaccurate.

“That term, at this point, obscures more than it clarifies,” says Gregory Trevors, an assistant professor of educational psychology at the University of South Carolina who studies misinformation. “More cases of the virus are outside Wuhan rather than inside Wuhan. And nothing about the virus makes it ‘Chinese,’” he explains. “So, it’s not a useful term.”

There are numerous historical examples of names that stigmatized communities and promoted incorrect information about the origin and transmission of a disease. An outbreak of hantavirus, first identified after the death of a Navajo man in 1993, became known as a “Navajo disease”; Ebola, named for a river near the region where it was discovered, led to countless racist incidents targeting West Africans in 2014; and the disease we now know as AIDS was once called GRID, or “gay-related immunodeficiency.” Names like these can lead to less effective policy measures, fuel xenophobic attacks and discrimination, and contribute to widespread public misinformation.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has had guidelines for naming new viruses in place since at least 2015. They recommend against the use of geographic locations and other factors that could be misleading or encourage discrimination. But the formal process of naming diseases can be tricky, and once certain names are popularized it becomes difficult to change them.

According to Trevors, the impulse to accept stigmatizing information from dubious sources is linked to our emotions and the way we make decisions in uncertain situations. “When we have fear and anxiety, we’re drawn to find certainty. We don’t like that uncertain state,” he says. “So we try to seek out something that makes us feel security in our lives.

“If we don’t really have a good handle on germ theory, we’re going to grab onto pretty much any information that makes us feel like, ‘Oh yeah, I finally have a handle on this, I finally have some knowledge that’s going to protect me.’”

A recent report from the WHO echoes this claim, connecting the stigmatization around coronavirus to three factors: the new and unknown aspects of the disease, our fear of the unknown, and the tendency to “associate that fear with ‘others.’”

Unfortunately, this thinking tends to lead to harmful and inaccurate conclusions, and moves us farther away from the global and community-level cooperation needed during a crisis.

“It is damaging. It undermines cooperation, it undermines the idea that we have a shared goal, a shared stake in the situation,” says Trevors. “Every time we use divisive language like that it just further undermines our capacity to respond the way we need to respond.”

While the language surrounding coronavirus continues to change, a concerted shift toward terminology that is accurate, compassionate, and resistant to misinterpretation can have profound effects. In a press conference on March 20, Maria Van Kerkhove, an epidemiologist working for the WHO, explained why the organization had decided to switch to using the term “physical distancing” rather than “social distancing.”

“[P]hysical distance from people so that we can prevent the virus from transferring to one another; that’s absolutely essential. But it doesn’t mean that socially we have to disconnect from our loved ones, from our family,” she said. During times of crisis, social cohesion and support is essential to promote public health.

By Sejla Rizvic

Canoo member Mariam Ghaffar immigrated from Pakistan to Canada about five years ago. She chose to settle in Calgary, AB, in part due to the simple fact she had family in the city. She received her Canadian citizenship in June of 2019. Mariam is excited to be an active citizen, and for her, active citizenship means “fulfilling my duties and knowing my rights” as a Canadian.

What Mariam loves most about Canada (and Calgary in particular) is the friendly people, the vast diversity and multiculturalism, and the clean environment and natural areas. She regularly uses the Canoo app to gain free, day-use admission to national and provincial parks in Alberta for herself and her three children. Of the many she’s visited, her favourites are Jasper National Park and Waterton Lakes National Park. “It’s so beautiful!” explained Mariam about Waterton Larks, “The lakes, the rocks, everything is magical!”

Although all national and provincial parks are temporarily closed for now, Mariam is excited to get back outside when the weather is warmer and the restrictions are lifted. She hopes to get in a few more visits with her Canoo app (which she calls “excellent!”) before her membership expires.