On the brink: Canadian relief workers struggle to make ends meet in a pandemic

OTTAWA / TORONTO (Reuters) – Halima has supported herself and her three children for 15 years by working long hours caring for older clients in retirement homes or their personal homes in Toronto.

But when COVID-19 infections soared last year, Halima’s hours were cut as health care providers in Ontario were limited to working in just one facility, and suddenly she couldn’t pay the C $ 1,800 ($ 1,407) monthly rent for her apartment Pay.

Wanting to be identified only by her first name, Halima has managed to keep a roof over her head by running less errands. As a part-time worker, she has no benefits and no paid sick days.

“Food and rent, everything is very expensive. It’s hard to live now, ”said Halima in an interview.

Canada is struggling to tame a second wave of COVID-19 and stop the spread of new variants. Seniors have been hardest hit by the pandemic: 70% of more than 20,000 COVID-19 deaths in Canada have occurred in long-term care homes.

Personal support workers (PSWs) have long grappled with housing insecurity in expensive Canadian cities, but the pandemic has exacerbated the situation for many, pushing some to homelessness and leaving others on the brink, according to workers, shelter administrators, union officials and health advocates.

At the heart of their struggle are low wages and fewer hours amid pandemic constraints preventing them from working in multiple care homes. The problem is most acute among part-time workers in for-profit care homes.

In densely populated Ontario, most PSWs are female, and about 60% work in for-profit healthcare facilities, many in high turnover part-time jobs, according to a recent report from the Canadian Women’s Foundation.

Some are paid close to minimum wage, which means that even with full-time hours, they barely earn enough to avoid the poverty level of a single person with no family members. A recent survey found that 67% of PSWs reported earning less net wages now than before the pandemic.

Even full-time caregivers earning the median wage in Ontario would fall below the poverty line of a family of four in Toronto.

“I suspect that people who were one to two paychecks away from homelessness … now don’t have that isolation,” said Naheed Dosani, a doctor and health law activist in Toronto.

Dosani added that the “broken” system that makes frontline workers, including essential health workers, homeless, also poses a health risk to the community, as workers can carry COVID-19 from nursing homes to shelters and back again.

Indeed, an outbreak at a homeless shelter in Ottawa started last year involving two women who had long-term care jobs but lived in the shelter.

“They just can’t make enough money to pay for Ottawa’s rental conditions,” Dr. Jeff Turnbull, medical director at Ottawa Inner City Health, told a committee investigating COVID-19 in Ontario healthcare facilities in late December.

“And so they brought COVID from a long-term care facility to the shelters where we had an outbreak,” Turnbull said.

There are no official statistics on PSWs living in shelters and other emergency housing, although frontline workers in Ottawa and Toronto have told Reuters it is a growing problem.

At Cornerstone Housing for Women in Ottawa, shelter utilization is up 47.5% compared to pre-pandemic, said Executive Director Sarah Davis. The organization now serves about 200 women a day and about 5% of them are frontline workers, including PSWs.

“Women are trying to save money and (living in shelters) is one of the few options they can have,” Davis said.

Cornerstone and three other Ottawa shelters stopped taking on new customers this week due to COVID-19 outbreaks.

In British Columbia, the province introduced pandemic wage increases of up to C $ 7 / hour and guaranteed hours. Ontario, Alberta and others did not protect the hours, resulting in less work and less income for many workers, unions say.

The situation is particularly harsh in Ontario, where rents are high and many for-profit healthcare facilities prefer to have their employees work part-time rather than take on the costs of full-time staff.

“In some of these houses, 70% of the labor force works part-time. Why do they want them part time? Because they don’t have to pay them health and benefits, ”said Katha Fortier, a senior official at Unifor, Canada’s largest private sector union.

Low wages and the precarious nature of PSW work is not unique to Canada. According to a 2019 OECD document, most workers in OECD countries are women and a large proportion of them are part-time. A significant number have multiple jobs to make ends meet.

Still, according to OECD data, Canada spends less than the OECD average on long-term care as a percentage of GDP: 1.3% compared to 1.7%.

In Vancouver, Canada’s most expensive housing market, Agnes Pecson lives in a two-bedroom apartment with her husband, adult daughter and teenage son.

Pre-pandemic, Pecson worked 55 hours a week between jobs. Now she works full-time at one and, even with BC’s wage increase, she is barely making ends meet.

“We just live from paycheck to paycheck,” said Pecson.

($ 1 = 1.2727 Canadian dollars)