Addressing Economic Racism in Canada’s Pandemic Response and Recovery

In the beginning of the pandemic, COVID-19 was said to be “the great equalizer”, impacting people across all walks of life. Now, well-documented racial health inequities for COVID-19 have proven otherwise, and it shouldn’t have been a surprise. Racial inequities have been found for nearly every health outcome. The evidence suggests that once you strip away the protection that newly-arrived immigrants initially carry, Black, Brown, and Indigenous Canadians in particular experience worse health outcomes than White Canadians.Our fourth Essential Solutions Project report tackles a truth few have been willing to acknowledge: these worse health outcomes are rooted in economic racism, which is the long-standing economic inequality built from our nation’s history of colonialism and white supremacy. Solutions must target the most fundamental reasons for racial inequity rather than fixating solely on short-term programs and policies that might alleviate inequities but leave intact the underlying systems which produced them. Download Addressing Economic Racism in Canada's Pandemic Response and Recovery - Report