Reimagining safety in a pandemic: the imperative to dismantle structural oppression in Canada.

On Apr 4, a Black father was punched and fined $2010 by an Ottawa bylaw officer while in his own neighbourhood with his daughter 4 In Quebec and Ontario, people experiencing homelessness have been fined for being unable to physically distance in public spaces 4 In Ontario, 2 concerning COVID-19-related expansions of policing powers include an order that enables provincial offences officers to require people to produce identification (ID), with fines up to $1000 for failure to do so, and a decision to provide police with access to identifying information and COVID-19 test results 5 Although physical distancing recommendations may not be followed for various reasons, decades of research has made clear that those living at intersections of poverty, racialization and/or Indigeneity, among other forms of marginalization, bear the brunt of policing and criminalization 6,7 Privileged rule-breakers are not punished in the same way, and measures such as fines do not impose the same burden 8 A long history of police violence against Black and Indigenous people and criminalization of poverty in Canada cannot be ignored simply because we are in a pandemic Canadian temporary foreign worker programs force migrant workers into precariousness through lack of secure immigration status, enabling their exploitation: temporary foreign workers do difficult work that most Canadians do not want to do;live in appalling conditions and earn meagre wages;and have diminished employment rights and no access to services or redress when abuses occur 12 Amid widespread COVID19 outbreaks among migrant workers in Ontario, 3 farm workers have died from COVID-19, with activists highlighting preexisting labour and immigration policies responsible for these unjust deaths 13 The Alberta Cargill meat-packing plant outbreak, linked to more than 1500 people with COVID-19 among lowwage, mostly racialized immigrant workers, exposed unjust labour practices and prioritization of profits by the corporation 13 Furthermore, in Quebec, most workers in long-term care homes are racialized womxn, and in Montreal, thousands of refugee claimants work in longterm care homes - many of them undocumented, living in crowded housing and facing poverty 14 This combination of front-line vulnerability and preexisting inequality resulted in an outbreak in the low-income Montreal North neighbourhood 14 Not only are such front-line workers vulnerable to COVID-19, but grave risks are posed to those for whom they care Redefining safety for all Accepting state-defined pandemic safety measures that do not consider multiple real threats to safety can insidiously lead us to accept systems of patriarchal, racist and economic oppression, exacerbating socioeconomic inequities in Canada [ ]we must redefine the meaning of safety ourselves and invest in support for all Farah Shroff PhD MEd Department of Family Practice, and School of Population and Public Health, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC Blessing Nkennor Interdisciplinary Centre for Health & Society, University of Toronto Scarborough, Toronto, Ont