Yes, that's correct.
The federal government was good enough to provide funding for our province for pandemic pay. Unfortunately, in the divvying up of that pandemic pay, despite midwives meeting all of the criteria for essential workers who are eligible, they were not paid out, because within the gender bias of policy-setting, midwives were not included as an eligible category. Midwives are consistently treated as afterthoughts within the health care system.
The impact on midwifery practices was that they had to pay for additional staff, for changes to their facilities, and for personal protective equipment for themselves and their students out of their own operational budgets. For some practices, community members got together and sewed midwives' masks and made them gowns out of bedsheets.
To have that happen to a health care profession that has gone above and beyond and pivoted to meet the needs of the community is incredibly disheartening, and midwives definitely felt the insult. It definitely added to the stress and burden of the pandemic personally and professionally.
I just want to say that as far as sustaining and growing midwifery is concerned, midwifery cannot grow if it's stunted from the beginning by underfunding, or outright cutting of its educational programs. Further, it can't grow if it's starved by policies and compensation practices that don't value its workers. Their treatment around pandemic pay is entirely consistent with that.