Amid growing fears around an outbreak of a new coronavirus, Chinese Canadians and public health officials in Toronto say more must be done to avoid a recurrence of the racism and xenophobia experienced during the 2003 SARS outbreak.
Toronto Mayor John Tory, medical officer of health Dr. Eileen de Villa and the Chinese Canadian National Council for Social Justice (CCNC-SJ) were among those who addressed those concerns at a news conference Wednesday.
They called for a renewed effort to prevent “undue and unfair stigmatization” and the spread of panic during the outbreak.
Reports of discrimination against Chinese Canadians have been growing as news of the virus has dominated headlines in recent weeks.
“We are concerned about the undue stigmatization on Chinese Canadian communities and the potential harm to all Canadians if our public health system is overwhelmed by misguided actions and the spread of panic,” said Amy Go, interim president of the CCNC-SJ, in a statement.
Thousands of parents in York Region, a suburban district north of Toronto with a large Chinese population, recently signed a petition demanding the local school board ban students from school for 17 days if their families had recently visited China.
York Region District School Board chair Juanita Nathan warned parents of demonstrating “inadvertent racism” by making assumptions about certain students and their families.
Toronto city councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam issued a similar warning Wednesday morning while pointing to her memories of the 2003 SARS outbreak.
“People of Chinese background were shunned at school, harassed in the streets, taunted on public transit and many felt more ostracized and isolated from the rest of the city,” she said in a tweet.
The Greater Toronto Area is home to more than 630,000 people of Chinese descent, according to the latest census information from Statistics Canada gathered in 2016.
The new coronavirus has killed 132 people in China and infected more than 6,000 others. The total number of confirmed cases has surpassed the 2003 SARS outbreak but the death toll is lower.
In Canada, there are two confirmed cases and one more presumptive case which has not yet been confirmed.