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When Kelly Lopes learned in the spring that the Ontario government was ordering her teenage children to stay home from school for their safety, but she expected them and their parents to keep going to work, fear and anger settled. they manifested almost immediately.
In the seven months since then, however, the grocery store cashier said those emotions have given way to a numbness that she believes supports her as she battles the COVID-19 pandemic in Ontario’s worst-hit region.
He said that as the second wave has ballooned to shocking levels in Brampton, his job has gotten tougher and clients have gotten more combative.
“Many of us are burned,” Lopes said on Friday. “I understand that we are not paramedics or first responders, but we are still an essential element for a country that needs to eat. Without us, how do you get your food? “
The Peel region, just west of Toronto, has been leading the province in COVID-19 cases per capita for weeks, with more than 180 new cases weekly per 100,000 residents, nearly triple the rate for the province as a whole.
Brampton makes up less than half of Peel’s population, but accounts for more than 60% of COVID-19 cases.
Lopes said the fear she feels about working on the front line is compounded by clients who push back when she reminds them to keep their distance or wear a mask.
“They were tired. We are numb. We are overworked. We are frustrated, because they are not our rules,” he said. “We’re just trying to keep everyone else safe.”
And Peel’s data suggests that workplaces like Lopes’ have a role to play in the spread of the virus.
Dr Adalsteinn Brown, a public health expert involved in preparing the province’s COVID-19 projections, said Thursday that the virus is harder to control in regions like Brampton where families are larger and there is a higher percentage of essential service workers.
“These are long-standing structural factors here,” he said. “These are not pandemic-related transient things that drive these much higher infection rates.”
According to the latest census, a quarter of all households in Brampton are made up of five or more people, compared to less than 10% of households across the province. And only 12% of Bramptonians live alone, the census data show, compared to nearly a third of Torontonians.
Meanwhile, Peel Public Health said there have been 137 workplace COVID-19 outbreaks in the region since the start of the pandemic. A full third of these were in production or warehouse, while 14% were in retail and 11% in food processing.
Brampton has a disproportionate number of people working in the manufacturing industry, said Gagandeep Kaur, an organizer at the Warehouse Workers Center.
The city is home to several Amazon “fulfillment centers” and other large warehouses.
Kaur said he heard from workers that it is difficult to keep physical distances while moving around some of those warehouses.
But he said looking for a safer job isn’t an easy matter, noting that many workers are new immigrants to Canada trying to get back on their feet.
“If you are a new employee in that facility and are a new immigrant in this country, your priority at that time is not the working conditions or what the employer offers, because you have a family to feed or have the bills to pays, “he said.
Dr Farah Mawani, a social and psychiatric epidemiologist, said this is the kind of systemic racism that has put racialized people – and especially new immigrants – at greatest risk during this pandemic.
“We know that there is a very high share of racialized immigrants who are highly trained and skilled, but very underemployed. So they’re forced to work in production because they can’t get other jobs, “he said.”
He said the problem is even worse for temporary foreign workers, whose immigration status is tied to their employment at a certain company.
If they complain about poor working conditions, Mawani said, they risk losing not only their income but also their place in Canada.
Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown said he feels his city has been unfairly slandered by those who complain about the high rates of COVID-19 without examining the root causes.
“There has to be some appreciation for the sacrifice that many of our essential workers are making,” he said.
“When you think about it, if you go to a grocery store, wherever you are in Canada, chances are someone from Brampton helped transform that food.”
He said the city’s essential workers need more support from the provincial and federal governments, while the city itself requires its own COVID-19 isolation center.
Ottawa announced Thursday that it will open such a facility in Mississauga, Ontario, another part of the Peel region.
But Brown said it’s a 40-minute bus ride for some of Brampton’s most vulnerable residents, many of whom don’t have cars.
“An isolation center is useful when people can’t afford to rent a hotel room for 14 days, or don’t have a place where they can safely isolate themselves,” he said. “So I want to make sure we have that support.”
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