Are We Letting this Crisis Go to Waste?

By Sarah Kaplan

We are in the midst of one of the greatest health and economic crises in more than a century. Policy-makers and business leaders are struggling to figure out how we can get the economy back on track while at the same time keeping people safe. We all are wishing we could “get back to normal,” but we have to remember that the old “normal” wasn’t great for everyone.

While we once had thought that the pandemic would be the great leveller because viruses don’t see wealth or gender or race, it turns out that, in fact, COVID-19 has laid bare the economic and social inequalities in our society.

In Canada, the people most likely to be affected by both the economic downturn and the threat of illness are those at the bottom of the income ladder, particularly women, Indigenous people and racialized minorities.

In Toronto, for example, the poorest neighborhoods are the hardest hit. And, when the strict stay-at-home orders were put in place, it led to an immediate decrease in cases in the wealthiest neighborhoods, but not elsewhere. This is because those in poorer areas cannot afford to stay at home. If they were not laid off, their jobs are more likely to be in service industries or care work that put their bodies in harm’s way. They often cannot afford to have groceries delivered and may live in housing situations that put them in direct contact with many other people.

So, in some ways, nothing could be worse than a return to normalcy. We need instead to think about how the grand rebuild that we are undertaking as a country, and as a world, can create a better, more equal society in which we heal the fractures that the coronavirus revealed.

One thing we know about crises: we are able to do things we never thought were possible. We can make changes that had been resisted in calmer moments. At my own employer, the Rotman School of Management, we had debated for years about whether we should add any online offerings for our courses. Imagine many (many!) committee meetings, studies and reports. Then, over one weekend in March, we moved all of our programs to online learning. Crises reveal that radical change is possible.

The Black Death in Europe in the mid-1300s created the conditions for the Renaissance. We have the opportunity to use this crisis to create our own rebirth. We can build back better.

Read the rest of the op ed in The Hill Times. Are We Letting this Crisis Go to Waste?