Thank you.
As Kennes mentioned, I'm with the Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic, which is a community legal clinic that provides free legal services to low-income members of the Chinese and Southeast Asian communities.
During the SARS outbreak, our clinic saw first-hand how racism and xenophobia affected the Chinese Canadian community. For instance, we were contacted by tenants who were evicted simply because they were Chinese. There were clients coming to our clinic who lost their jobs because the Chinese restaurants where they were working were laying off people due to business downturn. We also heard from Chinese workers who were terminated or were told to stay home because of perceived fear from their non-Asian colleagues. As a result of that, many had to leave their job without any compensation. Some were not able to access EI payments because of their status. Many were working in a non-unionized setting. There were also the IRB—Immigration and Refugee Board—staff who insisted on wearing face masks during hearings concerning Chinese refugee claimants. Even an MPP from Brampton at that time suggested that SARS was caused by the federal immigration policy, as if the transmission of SARS should be blamed on immigrants.
Right now, with the coronavirus, we are already hearing similar stories. This is happening even in the legal profession. A legal clinic in Toronto is imposing a quarantine on a Chinese Canadian lawyer who just came back from China, even though he was nowhere near Wuhan and had no signs of having contracted the virus.
At the same time, we know that in Canada every year we have about 12,000 people hospitalized and 3,500 deaths because of influenza. No one has ever suggested that we should quarantine people just because they have the flu.
While Public Health Canada and the local public health organizations are working very hard to stop the spread of the coronavirus, we need all levels of government to take the lead to stem the virus of racism. We need the government to provide support not only to those who suffer physically due to the coronavirus but also to those who suffer economically as a result of racism.
We have a number of recommendations for this committee. Not all of them deal with health issues, but we would like this committee to bring them to the government's attention.
First of all, we are calling on the government to set up an emergency fund to assist workers and help them recover a share of wages lost as a result of coronavirus-induced job loss. It could be modelled on the wage earner protection program we have currently, which is reserved for employees of bankrupt businesses.
Second, we are suggesting that the government should consider setting up a fund to assist small businesses that are losing business as a result of lost business.
Third is a recommendation for the Public Health Agency of Canada and the provincial ministries of health. We are asking them to set aside funding for public education campaigns to provide accurate and consistent information about the coronavirus, in different languages, not just English and French. This kind of multi-language public service announcement must also be disseminated through social media, as well as first-language media.
Finally, the campaign to provide information about the virus must be accompanied by an anti-racism campaign. To that end, we are calling on public health to work with the office of the national anti-racism secretariat to combat racism and xenophobia arising from the coronavirus outbreak, and to provide immediate support through funding to Chinese Canadian community groups working on anti-racism. Also, it should develop some long-term sustainable funding to combat anti-Chinese racism and hate in Canada.
Thank you.