Monday, February 07, 2022

Young, working Canadians face a dilemma: eat, or pay the bills?

Employment disruptions and dwindling pandemic supports have forced many to cut back on the one cost they can: food

A few months ago, Alex Fecioru was working two jobs, both of which aligned with his long term goals. He spent half his time mixing live music at a local Eastern European music venue, and the rest freelance sound editing on the side. That he was working only two jobs, and that both involved sound production, was a welcome change. Fecioru, 25, graduated four years ago with a degree in sound design with dreams to work full-time in the music business. For most of his adult life, he’s supplemented his music and editing work by hopping from food-service job to food-service job, toiling in kitchens, scraping by on minimum wage while striving to make the leap to his chosen vocation.

The last few months were supposed to be a pivotal stretch in that transition. Instead, they’ve turned into some of the hungriest of Fecioru’s young life. The monthly rent at his small Toronto apartment is $820, a small sum by the standards of his city, but enough to consume the lion’s share of his income. It leaves him with little to spend on other essentials—like food. 

Worse, the pandemic abruptly closed off his other employment options, including his beloved sound work. He’d no sooner found a position in November as a coat-check attendant at a major art gallery than renewed COVID restrictions forced the museum to lay him off. Even the kitchen jobs dried up, as restaurants closed to in-person dining.

RELATED: The Inuk woman using TikTok to expose high food prices in the North

The result has landed Fecioru within a troubled and growing demographic: young, educated, working Canadians who sacrifice food to meet their other financial obligations. Even when he’s had restaurant jobs, Fecoriu has made tough calls at the grocery store, surviving for weeks at a time on pita bread and peanut butter. 

As the Omicron wave lingers on, his crisis has deepened. To keep a roof over his head and the heat on, he has reduced every cost in his life that is not fixed, including what he eats. He tries not to spend more than $5 a day on food—an extreme measure that saps him of energy he needs to do the work that pays his rent. Sometimes, when he’s desperate, he’ll steal away to his parents’ house for a day, Fecioru says. There, at least, he can get precious, nutritious vegetables for free.

Emotionally and physically, it’s a taxing existence. “I’ve been pushed to a point where I’ve broken down mentally,” Fecioru says, referring to times when he’s worked two and even three jobs at once. He pauses, picking his words. “There have been times where it’s hour 14 of a 16-hour day and I just break down in front of customers.”

Fecioru is far from alone. As the pandemic enters its third year, low-income workers across the country are getting caught in a pincer, with the cost of living escalating rapidly and the labour market thrown into flux. Even as employers report a desperate need for workers, repeated lockdowns, and the increased threat of contracting the virus, have made in-person service work more precarious, forcing workers like Fecioru into long stretches without paycheques. 

On top of these myriad obstacles, many workers are no longer able to rely on the COVID income supports that kept many of them afloat for the first year-and-a-half of the pandemic.

 The effects have rattled down to kitchen tables with alarming speed. In a recent countrywide poll, nearly 60 per cent of respondents—including half of 18-24 year-olds—told the Angus Reid Institute that they’re having trouble feeding their families. That’s an increase from 36 per cent when the question was last asked in 2019.

Even before the pandemic, millions of Canadians were struggling to keep food on the table. 2020 StatsCan report found that one in seven lived in food-insecure households, up from one in eight Canadians in 2018—a difference of nearly 700,000 people, and the highest rate since StatsCan began recording the information. The food-stressed do not fit tired stereotypes of people who’d rather collect welfare than take a job: at last count, 65 per cent of food insecure Canadians were in the workforce. 

Alex at home in Toronto (Photograph by Lucy Lu)

Alex at home in Toronto (Photograph by Lucy Lu)

The problem, says Sylvain Charlebois, director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University, is that the cost of food is far outpacing the money people are making. The “inflation sweet spot” for food prices, he says, is about 1.5 to 2.5 per cent. Food prices are supposed to increase at about that rate every year to keep up with the usual level of inflation of the rest of the economy. If they do, groceries should remain affordable.

But in 2022, food is expected to cost anywhere from five to seven per cent more that it did the year earlier, according to the latest edition of Canada’s Food Price Report, an annual look at the year ahead in food security published by Charlebois and his colleagues at Dalhousie. He attributes this increase mainly to the state of supply chains in Canada: food is moving around the country at a much slower pace due to COVID restrictions. As a result, manufacturers and transporters are incurring greater costs, escalating the overall price of the food they’re delivering. 

But grocery prices, Charlebois stresses, are not at the root of the longer-term crunch. “The real problem,” he says, “is affordability.” And he’s quick to offer up what he sees as the solution: “I think it’s high time for our country to have a conversation about a guaranteed minimum income.”

A guaranteed minimum income involves the government paying a liveable wage to those who don’t have the means to survive financially. It is distinct from a universal basic income, where all Canadians periodically receive a cheque from the government regardless of their economic standing. Guaranteed minimum income would, in practice, look a whole lot like the earliest iterations of federal pandemic income supports.

READ: Has enthusiasm for the CERB paved the way for a universal basic income?

The Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB), and its successor the Canada Recovery Benefit (CRB), were vital lifelines to low-income workers during the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021. They provided $500 per week to workers who had lost their jobs or significant chunks of their income for COVID-related reasons, allowing people to focus on staying home and reducing the spread of the virus instead of working dangerous, contagious jobs so they could pay their rents.

They also allowed people to get back on their feet after being knocked down, financially speaking. But the CRB was replaced in late October with the scaled-down CWLB, which is available to workers who have lost work due to regional lockdowns. The federal benefit has been pared back 40 per cent, to $300 per week before taxes. Many people lurching in and out of work don’t meet the eligibility requirements, and if they find employment while receiving the benefit, they might have to pay the money back.

Regardless, the $300 hardly makes a dent in most people’s expenses, and is a far cry from the much more robust programs that preceded it.

Two federal parties, the NDP and the Greens, support a basic income, pointing to CERB as proof that a government-funded income program is both possible to implement and highly effective in fending off poverty. Delegates to a Liberal policy convention last year also overwhelmingly endorsed a basic income program. But the Trudeau government didn’t include it in its summer election platform, and seems focused on other priorities.

“Frankly, in light of our debts and ongoing deficits,” acknowledges Charlebois, “I think it’s going to be a hard conversation to have with Canadians.”

***

Perhaps, but it’s a conversation that could change the course of Rachel McDonald’s life. The 23-year-old works at a small café in Charlottetown, where she was recently promoted from barista to supervisor. For McDonald, the barista job was working just fine—she didn’t go to college or university and only has experience in customer service, so when she was offered a job at the café working for $14 an hour, she took it. 

Then came COVID. It’s cheaper to live in P.E.I. than many places in the country, but the pandemic has hobbled McDonald’s efforts to keep a roof over her head and food on her table. The island’s isolation has spared its residents of the lockdowns plaguing some of the country’s metropolitan areas. But its economy relies heavily on tourism, an industry that effectively came to a standstill when the pandemic began.

McDonald’s hours were scaled back, forcing her to move out of her bachelor pad and into a house with several other roommates. She pays half the rent she did before, but she’s still barely scraping by, unable to squirrel away any money and just making enough to survive. About half her money goes to rent and the rest of it is split between groceries, bills, and minor purchases. 

“A person working minimum wage cannot support themselves living alone,” says McDonald, sighing. “I feel like I have to go out and face the fire just so I can continue to survive.”

This permanent state of fragility carries both economic and human costs, says Frances Woolley, a professor of economics at Carleton University. “We have an economy where things are precarious,” says Woolley, “and when things are precarious and something goes wrong, you may not have the resilience to recover.”

The $2,000 a month that CERB and CRB provided was just around the average living wage for a Canadian, an amount understood to comfortably pay for an individual’s basic needs—food, housing, and child care. But minimum wages in many provinces fall short of living wages for many Canadians, and the gap between what people are able make and what they need to buy food and other essentials has been widening.

Woolley sees the challenge of securing decent wages for all workers as the greatest obstacle in the Canadian economy—one that seems simple to overcome, yet hard to get powerful people to face. “Wages are really sticky,” says Woolley. “As an economist, one of the things that I find the most puzzling about our economy is that when people find it hard to hire workers, they don’t think, ‘Oh, maybe we should be paying people more.’

“It seems to be something about human psychology.”

***

For workers struggling to keep food in their refrigerators, the economic forces Woolley describes—combined with the disruptions of the pandemic—can be crushing. 

Fecioru, for one, thought he’d turned a corner when he landed the coat-check job last December. It wasn’t flashy—a temporary contract at the Art Gallery of Ontario with no guarantee of extension. But it was unionized, and paid a few dollars an hour more than minimum wage. He could pursue his sound-production work free of financial unease, and without gnawing hunger.

The reprieve lasted about a month. In December, as the Omicron variant seeped into Toronto, Fecioru tested positive for COVID. He was forced to isolate just a month after starting his job, and lost two crucial weeks of income. A week after his isolation period ended, Ontario locked down yet again. All of his work ceased. Again.

The day before we spoke, Fecioru received an email from his employers at the gallery. It said if the lockdown in Ontario extended beyond its currently scheduled end date of Jan. 25 then they would be terminating his contract. This was money and work that Fecioru was depending on to survive post-pandemic. As he finished reading the email, he violently paced around his apartment. His anxiety spiked, and at 25 years of age, his heart began to palpitate. 

Mercifully, that worst-case scenario did not come to pass. After Ontario eased restrictions on Jan. 31, the gallery brought him back, and even paid him for the shifts he lost during the lockdown. Still, his hours have been significantly reduced, and COVID still looms, poised to strike as it sees fit.  

“It feels like there’s moments where you can poke your head up above the surface of the water, but then the water keeps rising and you’ve got to keep persevering,” says Fecioru. “There’s not enough time to catch your breath.”

 Saskatchewan

Opposing protests about public health mandates remain peaceful at Legislative Building

Concrete barricades have been put in place to prevent vehicle access

Demonstrators on the edge of Albert Street in Regina within view of the Legislature Building are calling for an end to public health mandates. A smaller group of counter-protesters are asking the government to maintain current measures. (Laura Sciarpelleti/CBC News)

People from two opposing protests are outside the Legislative Building in Regina Saturday afternoon — one group calling for an end to COVID-19 public health measures while the other asks they remain in place.

At about 2 p.m., there were hundreds of demonstrators asking for an end to mandates while a smaller group countered their calls. So far, the conflicting protests appear to be peaceful.

Concrete barricades currently block vehicles from accessing the Legislative Building. 

Some anti-mandate protesters arrived in Regina as part of several convoys. Organizers say they plan to stay in the area until all public health restrictions in Saskatchewan are lifted. 

Demonstrators calling for an end to mandates are carrying signs with messages such as "Unmask the Hoax" and "Vaxx Useless."

Protesters on the edge of Albert Street, where a line of concrete barricades has cut off access to the Legislature Building, bear signs with anti-vaccine and anti-masking sentiments. (Laura Sciarpelleti/CBC News)

Premier Scott Moe has already promised to lift all restrictions soon.

Kristen Dube, an anti-mandate protester who drove to the event from Saskatoon, says she is vaccinated and her partner is not. 

"I think people wearing masks, people not wearing masks, vaccinated, unvaccinated as a couple, we can still unite our country and we can still stand for more than just COVID," Dube said.

"We need to support our hospitals. We need to support our health-care workers that have been on those front lines. And I think that the money that's currently being spent on COVID passports alone should be allocated to things that are more useful to us as a community and as people of Canada and Saskatchewan."

Aran McCallen also made the trip down to Regina from Saskatoon. 

"I believe in freedom of choice. I don't think that the government should be able to force you to do anything," McCallen said. 

Pro-mandate protesters

At the same time, a second protest called Take Action Against COVID is calling for the provincial government to do the opposite and maintain the public health measures that Premier Scott Moe is planning to abandon. 

Organizers of that event say the premier is doing away with mandates to "please anti-vax extremists." They say the vaccine passport has to be kept so that businesses can keep both customers and staff safe. 

"We need public health measures to protect people and our economy in the middle of a pandemic. We need a provincial government that listens to its own experts and does not abandon us or our children to Omicron," organizers said in an email notice about the protest. 

A smaller group of demonstrators is asking the government to reconsider their promise to end public health measures outside the Legislative Building. (Laura Sciarpelleti/CBC News)

"We need leaders who will not let our medical system burn down around us by letting critical-care doctors and nurses burn out at record speed."

Signs carried by pro-mandate demonstrators say "Protect healthcare workers" and "Spread [love]."

Pro-mandate organizers are calling for the premier and his ministers to resign if they do not maintain COVID-19 mandates and restrictions in the province. 

"I'm here because I want the freedom protesters to know that they don't represent me … I believe that with the rights that we do have … we have responsibilities to everybody else that lives in our country, our province, our world," said Krista Notenboom, a pro-mandate demonstrator from Regina. 

"I'm frustrated about the restrictions and the pandemic, and continuing to have to wear masks. But I'm not willing to not look after my fellow citizens to get rid of my mask."

Police are on hand to maintain order among the people gathered outside the Legislature Building on Saturday. (Laura Sciarpelleti/CBC News)

Lukas Miller, a health-care worker who showed up to back COVID-19 restrictions and mandates, says he wants Moe to listen to doctors and scientists. 

"Basically every day of my job since COVID started has been doing research on COVID-19 — efficacy of vaccines, how much it spreads — and I see a lot of that information, and I don't really know how Scott Moe is coming up with the decisions he has, based on what I've seen," Miller said.

"Now, I'm not an expert, but neither is he, so I think people need to listen to our medical community a little closer."

Protesters against, for COVID restrictions gather near Legislature

Saskatoon / 650 CKOM

Protesters near the Legislature in Regina on Feb. 5, 2022. (Dominick Lucyk/980 CJME)

It didn’t bring the kind of massive gridlock and constant noise that the previous one did, but there was another protest against COVID restrictions at the Legislature in Regina on Saturday.

People gathered on Albert Street by the entrance to the legislative grounds to hold signs and wave, while those who supported their cause drove by and honked.

None of those in trucks or other vehicles were able to enter the grounds of the Legislature, because it was blocked off with a concrete barrier. That was because of the Frost Regina winter festival.

There was also another, smaller group of protesters that came to call on the Moe government to keep up COVID restrictions like a vaccine passport and mandatory masking.

It was led by Saskatchewan Liberal Party Leader Jeff Walters.

Former Saskatchewan Party MLA Greg Brkich showed up in support of those who want to end the mandates.

When asked what he thought of Premier Scott Moe’s recent hints at ending COVID restrictions, he said he’d love to see it, but he still felt the need to put pressure on the provincial government.

“It sends a message to him. That’s why I came, (to) tell him it’s time. Instead of waiting two, three, four, five weeks, it’s time now. That’s why I came, to tell him it’s time to lift them. Lift the mandates and move on,” Brkich said.

As a long-time MLA, Brkich believes in getting in touch with politicians when you want to see change.

“I tell people, ‘Phone your MLA,’ because that counts. You may not think it does, but you write down the calls you get, and then you talk at caucus. And all of the MLAs sit around, ‘Yeah, I got 200 calls, I got 100, I got 300,’ ” he said.

Walters was on the opposite end. He said now is just not the time to be easing up on the virus.

“At the end of the day, we’re still in the midst of the peak of a pandemic as we talk right now. To have our leaders in government right now essentially suggesting they’re pulling back everything, in the midst of a raging pandemic, to me just makes absolutely no sense and it goes against the advice of almost every expert on the planet,” he said.

When asked what would be needed to reach a point where restrictions can be lifted, Walters didn’t name anything specific.

“Thresholds are interesting because you can go down that rabbit hole, and you’re never going to please everybody when you talk thresholds. But the point of it is, if you have, say, a health and social policy council made up of experts and advisors that can tackle those issues and give you options, as a leader that makes the most sense,” he said.

“I don’t think politicians necessarily are experts in science or medicine, and I think that we should leave it to the experts to help us guide through it.”

Protesters on both sides who preferred to stay anonymous also shared their thoughts.

980 CJME asked a man in favour of dropping COVID rules why he chose to protest, given Moe’s promises to do just that.

“As long as he’s true to his word. We’ve seen so much lying from politicians all across this country. I hope he’s true to his word, because the Charter of Rights and Freedoms has been stepped on,” he said.

A man on the other side of the debate said now is just not the time.

“I’m all for restrictions being lifted. They have to be lifted at some point. But right now, Saskatchewan is leading the way in hospitalizations, as far as they’re increasing at a faster rate than anywhere else in Canada. We should be looking at hospitalizations and ICU admissions, and then, once those are going down, then we should be looking at lifting restrictions,” he said

 

Opinion: Ditching vaccine passport reduces freedom for the majority
Author of the article:Bruce Ziff
Publishing date:Feb 05, 2022 • 1 day ago • 3 minute read • 111 Comments
A pedestrian makes their way past a COVID-19 sign outside SOHO, 11454 Jasper Ave., in Edmonton Thursday Sept. 23, 2021. PHOTO BY DAVID BLOOM /Postmedia
Article content

The Edmonton Journal reports that there is talk of removing the vaccine passport system in Alberta in the name of freedom. That would be counter-productive and inequitable. Yes, inequitable.

At its core, freedom is about the right to make unfettered choices. Yet, the concept of freedom is more complicated than one might think. Sometimes it refers to “negative” freedom, that is, freedom from state-imposed restrictions. That’s the kind of freedom that truckers and like-minded protesters are so adamant to preserve.

But freedom has another connotation. It means empowerment. For example, those who are wealthy are free to spend their life as they wish. They have plenty of “free” time. It’s no wonder, then, that lottery commercials advise that the real prize of winning the jackpot is freedom. The winner is now more fully in control of their life choices. That kind of liberty is constrained by factors other than the law. We are all free to buy a Porsche; there is no law against it. But not all of us can realistically make that choice.

It is understandable that Albertans want both kinds of freedom, and as much as is possible. But, unfortunately, that is sometimes easier said than done. Consider now the vaccine passport. The premier is considering dismantling the system. Negative freedom is thereby increased. The government loosens its control on where we can and cannot go. But let’s think about how that will affect our individual and collective empowerment on the ground.

I, for one, have felt able to resume some of my pre-COVID activities under the passport system. I can work out at the gym, or go to a restaurant with some level of assurance that I will not contract COVID. When passports are no longer required, more people will be free to exercise or dine out in public spaces including those who are not vaccinated. I probably will not do so. I will choose to forego these simple pleasures. There is no question that my range of life choices is abridged.

For me, the greatest actual limit on my autonomy is not the law, but the well-grounded fear of a breakthrough case of Omricon. (If you doubt that this concern is well-founded, then stop reading now. I read the papers. I know what COVID can do.)

Removing the passport requirement reduces my life choices. So do -30 C temperatures. I am free — in the negative liberty sense — to spend hours freezing outside or sleep under a bridge, but these are not real choices. I am free to mingle with non-vaxxers, but that would entail too much risk.

I am not alone. If non-vaxxers can go to gyms and restaurants, I suspect many of those who are taking sensible precautions will not. It is in this sense that freedom operates like a zero-sum game, where the benefits given to one group are offset by the losses suffered by another.

Of course, we cannot calculate the overall freedom quotient by running data through a Freedomatron-2000 computer, but we at least know that some people will restrict their activities once the passport rules are lifted. Since a majority of Albertans are vaccinated, we are optimizing the choices of an unvaccinated minority at the expense of the majority. We have lost the freedom to dine, et cetera in safe (safer) public spaces. Why does that make sense?

Here is a reality check. Those who prize some general notion of freedom should ask themselves this: since March 2020, what has actually caused you to adjust your lifestyle the most on a daily basis? Is it government action or the virus itself?

Put another way, imagine how life would have been had no government measures been taken to control the spread of COVID? I suspect that each day would have involved an evermore dangerous game of cat and mouse against the Grim Reaper. It’s the plague that is ruining our lives, and throttling our freedom, and those who understand that deserve the larger share of the freedom pie.

Bruce Ziff is a professor emeritus in the faculty of law at the University of Alberta.
Biologists surprised to discover that some "random" mutations may not be so random

A study into malaria resistance in humans spurs a re-evaluation of the neo-Darwinist understanding of evolution

By MATTHEW ROZSA
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 5, 2022 

Evolution of Life on Earth illustration (Getty Images/Man_Half-tube)

A peculiar study into malaria resistance in humans, and where and how it occurs in the population, has unexpectedly spurred a re-evaluation of the neo-Darwinist understanding of evolution.

Neo-Darwinism refers to any branch of science which combines Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection with Gregor Mendel's discipline of genetics. The overwhelming majority of biologists and geneticists are neo-Darwinists, and one primary tenet of neo-Darwinism is the idea that the genetic mutations which cause living creatures to evolve occur randomly. For humans, this means that mutations from the entirely beneficial (opposable thumbs) and the undesirable (say, those which cause obstructive sleep apnea) can be attributed to chance rather than some kind of purposeful direction. The ones that get passed on permanently do so through natural selection — that is, because they just so happen to help their hosts, who then survive longer and have more opportunities to perpetuate the mutation via reproduction.

At least, that was the prevailing assumption. A new study led by researchers from Israel and Ghana and published in the journal Genome Research reveals that, in fact, at least one helpful genetic mutation was not random at all. They specifically studied the HbS mutation, which protects people against malaria, and found that it arose more frequently within a population where malaria is endemic (Africa) than within a population where it is not (Europe). This might cause some of neo-Darwinism's tenets to be revised.

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"The results showed that the malaria resistant HbS mutation arises more frequently in the population and gene where it is of adaptive significance," Dr. Adi Livnat from the University of Haifi, the study's lead researcher and corresponding author, told Salon by email. "This shows empirically for the first time a directional response of mutation to a specific long-term environmental pressure. This sort of result cannot be explained by neo-Darwinism, which is limited to explaining minor, gross-level effects on average mutation rates, not responses of specific mutations to specific environmental pressures. Therefore, the implications are that here there is an empirical finding that neo-Darwinism really cannot explain, which challenges the notion of random mutation on a fundamental level."

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Speaking to The Jerusalem Post, Livnat speculated that evolution could actually be shaped by a combination of "external information" through natural selection and "internal information" that is picked up in the human genome from generation to generation and leads to the creation of mutations.

"The research tells us many things, including the fact that the origination rate of the HbS mutation cannot be explained from the perspective of neo-Darwinism," Livnat told Salon.

Livnat and the team of scientists were able to learn something this monumental once they had developed new technology for detecting de novo mutations, meaning those which are not passed down to the child from either parent. With a higher resolution, the scientists were able to count individual novel mutations on specific areas of the genome where they might find something instructive. The human hemoglobin S mutation (HbS) was chosen as their subject of study; neo-Darwinism contends that it originated randomly in a sub-Saharan African individual and spread in that region through natural selection because (despite being associated with sickle-cell anemia) it conferred malaria-protecting benefits. Yet if that theory were accurate, the mutation would still be random and therefore appear in roughly equal numbers between a population that is not heavily exposed to malaria (Europe's) and one that is (Africa's).

This was not the case.

"The HbS mutation originated de novo not only much faster than expected from random mutation but also much faster in the population (in sub-Saharan Africans as opposed to Europeans) and in the gene (in the beta-globin as opposed to the control delta-globin gene) where it is of adaptive significance," the University of Haifa announced in a statement.

In addition, the study gives scientists strong reason to reconsider their current practice of measuring mutation rates as averages across a multitude of positions on the genome.

"We can definitively see that the picture of mutation origination that is obtained once we examine the resolution of specific mutations could not have been expected from traditional theories or previous empirical studies," Livnat explained. "This suggests that most of the signal of mutation rates is not in the averages of mutation rates across many positions but is rather mutation specific. This means that there is an enormous amount of research to be done on how mutations are generated, and that already at the first time mutation origination is observed at this high resolution, we obtain results that challenge the central neo-Darwinian assumption on a fundamental level."