The impact of COVID

The County Foundation issues report on pandemic

Fourteen months ago, daily life across Canada and in the County became suddenly disrupted as the COVID-19 pandemic made its impact felt. Every area of social, work and family life was affected. Many workplaces were forced to close, travel was curtailed, family visits were severely restricted, playgrounds were wreathed in caution tape, and the entire medical system was strained to the limits of its capacity. The upheaval continues even now, although there is the promise that a new normal is in sight as the vaccine rollout gathers momentum. To gauge the social and economic impact of the pandemic, the municipality commissioned The County Foundation (TCF) to prepare a report on how the community has responded to this crisis. The report covers the period from March 20, 2020 to March 31, 2021. The pandemic has touched the lives of everyone in the County, but some groups have been more adversely affected than others. Inequities that existed before the pandemic have been magnified, and new disparities have emerged. The report was based on TCF’s Vital Signs framework. The Vital Signs series of reports, the last one being issued in 2018, provide a qualitative and quantitative measure of the fabric of life and society in the County. For the present report, TCF staff interviewed 55 service providers representing 44 County organizations, and augmented that with statistical data gathered from national, provincial and regional sources, as well as studies from other communities and regions. “The primary purpose was to look at the overall impact on the County—how did organizations respond, how are people feeling about it, and what could be done as a consequence of that,” said Brian Beiles, TCF president. They issued an interim report to the County in September, 2020, and then continued to gather and analyze data. “We took a deep dive in March on what has happened between September and March. We were then able to capture from all of those organizations local data that was in support of the qualitative information. There are well over 200 data points in the report, and a combination of those came from the interviews and all of the subsequent data we were able to pick up,” added Beiles.

The report has nine focus areas, and they are linked to the United Nations sustainable development goals that were designed to be a blueprint for a better and more sustainable planet. The focus areas include TCF’s top three identified in the Vital Signs Report: food insecurity, education and transportation. Added to these are health and wellness, safety, employment and income, housing, environment, and people, place and culture. “The report was intended to inform priority actions for the County, and it was also intended to provide community organizations with information to support decision-making, and—really importantly— to encourage community members to contribute to the well-being in the community, either by the way of volunteering or by contributing funding,” said Beiles. One of the key findings is that food insecurity has been made worse by the pandemic. “Food insecurity is caused by poverty, low income and underemployment,” explained Beiles. “Underlying that is the root cause, and much of that is around education. Compared to the province, our high school graduation rate is considerably lower. If kids can’t get a high school diploma, the likelihood of them getting sustainable jobs is low, and that translates into various social and economic issues, and ultimately it translated into very little support for their kids, and the whole cycle continues.”

The report does say that the County has fared well in certain areas. “If you look at the report, you can see this is a very resilient and creative and very innovative community,” said Beiles. “When you look specifically at the health data, and compare it to Ontario at large, we are very blessed in many ways. There is relatively low incidence of COVID mortality, and much of that was really due to the health unit and the health team who were very proactive in terms of protocols and orders, as much as they were able. At the local level, our health care providers did an incredible job. It’s a combination of that lower level of COVID itself and the general resilience in terms of how some service organizations had new ways of doing things, new ways of providing outreach to the community in a variety of ways. They did extraordinary work in terms of maintaining connections with clients.” He added that there has been an awakening to the inequities in this community, and cited the Black Lives Matter support rally and the discussion over the Macdonald statue.

“One of the specific things that came out of this was the whole aspect of inequity, and a greater awareness to the inequities that have existed historically and what needs to happen on a going-forward basis, to be not only cognizant of these, but to take concrete actions to address these.” The report also looked at the effect the pandemic has had on the environment. An unprecedented number of visitors came to the County’s beaches and parks last summer, severely straining resources. Overcrowding at beaches, mountains of trash left behind, and property damage exacted a toll on the environment. Single use plastics, take-out food containers and discarded masks and gloves also contributed to the garbage problem. In a positive move, several areas of land on the County’s south shore were designated as conservation reserves and will be protected from commercial development.

The Vic Diner in Picton is among the County businesses that have had to find creative and innovative ways to continue to operate during the pandemic.

The report notes that many innovative changes have been launched, some of which may become permanent as a way of doing business. Remote work has increased, leading to an influx of people from heavily populated urban areas seeking to relocate to the County. An accelerated technology adoption is enabling more online services, but the disparity in Internet service between County towns and rural areas is deepening the digital divide. In addition to the rise in food insecurity, several other areas have had a concerning evolution through the 14 months of the pandemic. Shutdowns and isolations are exacerbating some mental health risks, and there is an increased possibility of domestic and child abuse. There has been a sharp increase in opioid overdoses since the start of the pandemic. The economic prospect remains grim for people who have lost their employment, and the longer the pandemic lasts the greater the risk they will drop deeper into poverty. Affordable housing is in very short supply, and home prices are being pushed higher by increased demand from buyers outside the County. The report notes that the ROC (Recreational Outreach Centre), the Prince Edward Learning Centre and Community Care for Seniors have provided much needed help to vulnerable members of the community during the pandemic, and have done so in creative and innovative ways.

The County Foundation continues to work on the three focus areas it identified in 2014 when the first Vital Signs report was issued. A transportation service has been established and provides options for travel within parts of the County and into Belleville. TCF looked at the aspect of emergency food as far back as April 2020 and helped to establish the County Food Depot as a supplement to the existing food banks. “We felt that the food banks would be really overwhelmed, and that’s turned out to be the case in other places, but not in the County,” said Beiles. “The reason was the establishment of the Food Depot, which for all intents and purposes is like a food bank, and it’s been remarkably successful. The increase in uptake has been over 30 per cent in the last year, but that’s been addressed by the free food at the Food Depot to augment the food banks, where demand has been relatively flat and have therefore been able to cope. Going forward, we are in the process of looking at a sustainable model of dealing with food insecurity, recognizing that the root cause is income security. In the foreseeable future there will always be a need for emergency food, but there are other emergent initiatives, such as PEC Fresh, which operates at PELC and provides fresh fruits and vegetables at wholesale prices.” Work is on progress on the Food Collective, which is a shift to a sustainable empowerment model that provides food to those in need. The third area of focus is in education, and a youth collective called Greater Than aims to improve high school graduation rates in the County, which now ranks 10 per cent below the provincial average.

The COVID-19 Impact Report is available at thecountyfoundation.ca. The full report is 57 pages long, but an executive summary is also available. A special webinar to review the report will take place on May 18. “This report goes way beyond anything we’ve ever done before in terms of its depth and intensity, and what we’re going to be doing is putting this on a digital platform,” said Beiles. “This will enable us to update it periodically and to look at trend data over time. We’ll have an interactive online database which will enable constituents to avail themselves of ongoing data to support the work that they do.”