Who Experiences Discrimination in Canada and Where?

As stated above, many people experience discrimination for potentially different uncontrollable aspects of their life such as their gender, their skin colour and more. Given that the collection of experienced discrimination ranges from 2 years prior to the beginning of the pandemic to close to the end of 2020, experienced discrimination can be plotted for that time period.

Note that the term Canadian here is most likely not the best way to characterize these analysis as the participants in the survey are not necessarily representative of the larger Canadian population. There may be biases and therefore we cannot conclusively make a statement about this data's representation of Canadians as a whole. You'll notice as we move forward through the data story, the use of "Respondents" and "Participants" is used more frequently than "Canadians".

While many of the typically discriminated against groups from this dataset showed less than 30% of respondents experienced discrimination, we see that slightly over 75% participants that had a sex of 'female' experienced discrimination either before or after the pandemic has started. We can also see that most of the discrimination that participants experienced occurred in urban areas rather than rural areas.

Now as for location, we see that most respondents with at least 1 experience of discrimination are in Ontario. However, it worth noting again that Ontario also observed the most overall participation in the survey. British Columbia,  Alberta and Quebec follow Ontario in number of survey participants that experienced 

Now that we have a general idea of what discrimination looks like in Canada, let's take a look at how it has changed since the Pandemic.

Are Canadians Experiencing More Discrimination Since the Pandemic has Begun?

At the beginning of the project, I was expecting there to be increased discrimination since the start of the Pandemic due to the the continuous devastating reports of . However, the chart below shows a different story.

Through the plot above demonstrating the decrease in experienced discrimination in the respondents, I realized that I should not be grouping discrimination and racism in the same category. While there seemed to have been an increase in Asian-Hate rhetoric due to the Pandemic, the reports of the violent and offensive acts towards Asian people were absolutely cases of racism, rather than discrimination. However, as we have established, race is not the only target of discrimination. Thus if we think about the way in which Canadians isolated more and kept away from social situations due to the Pandemic, the decrease in the respondents' experiences of discrimination after the start of COVID-19 makes sense. While staying home and avoiding interactions, situations in which a person can be discriminated against by another decreases.

The most intriguing aspect in the change between pre-COVID-19 and after COVID-19 rates of discrimination is that only 4.7% of respondents that did not experience discrimination in prior to the start of the pandemic found himself with at least one new experience after the Pandemic had started. This means that a very small proportion of respondents faced at least one new discriminatory situation after the beginning of COVID-19 while the remaining of respondents that experienced discrimination after the COVID-19 outbreak had already experienced discrimination. 

When comparing these proportions per province, we see that Quebec had 18.19% of its participants that did not experience discrimination prior to the Pandemic, experience discrimination during the Pandemic.

The remaining provinces and territories found that percentage to be less than 1%, with the exception of Ontario, with 2.19% of Ontarian survey participants.

Now, if we go back to examining the the change in discrimination prior and after the start of the Pandemic, we see that almost all types of discrimination had a negative trend (decreased).

The only type of discrimination that increased was the 'other' type and therefore not one that was accounted for in the survey.  Alongside with the 'other category',  the no discrimination category increased as well which is consistent with the finding that discrimination has decreased in the start of the Pandemic.

But let's focus on that 'other' category of discrimination. Could that potential include vaccination status discrimination, or mask wearing discrimination? Discrimination that is specific to the Pandemic experience in Canada? Those questions cannot be answered using the dataset from this project. However, a general analysis of the what the composition of the participants that did experience a different type of discimination looks like. Perhaps there is a pattern that we may see that gives an insight into who these people are.

Who Experiences these 'Other' Types of Discrimination?

In terms of geographical location, we see the proportion of respondents that that experienced new found discrimination experiences is similar across all province with approximately between 3% and 5% of the regions participants. 

What we do find is that Ontario sees the highest number count of respondent.s However, as we have been shown earlier, Ontario had generally higher participants in the survey than any other province/territory. Therefore, it cannot be directly indicative of any trend with the specific information from the dataset.

The community types in which 'other' types of discrimination are found are mostly in urban communities. However similarly to the geographical location of province, this could be due a higher number of participants from the survey that live in urban settings (which is evident by the similar approximate 4% of respondents for participants living in both urban and rural communities). 

Looking at demographic composition of those that experienced 'other' types of discrimination, there is no evident pattern as the proportions heavily follow the same proportions as found in the dataset as a whole.

Additional analysis of the cause of the increased 'other' type of discrimination would be beneficial in understanding the category more. For now, analysis into this topic is halted here given time limitations. 

However, additional analysis into the situations in which the survey participants have experienced discrimination and its potential impact on the level of trust participants express towards certain institutions may provide valuable in understanding in the ways discrimination may impact opinions.

What are the Situations of Experienced Discrimination and what is their Related Expressed Trust in the Institutions in which those Situations Occur?

The distribution of the top situation where respondents have experienced discrimination has not change. While the magnitude has decreased (which is just another confirmation of the decreased experiences of discrimination since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.), the rankings are the same whre the top 5 situatiosn in work related siturations, in stores, banks or restuaransts, on the internet, in public areas and at social gatherings.

Both discrimination experiences with the police and with the courts had low rates compared to the other situations. However what is most interesting is that for both of those situations, we see a strong distrust - Other sources of distrust towards those institutions that may not have anything to do with discrimination. Either way, external analysis and research would be required and unfortunately out of the scope of this project.

When looking at the level of trust of governing institutions, we see the majority of those that have experienced discrimination do not have a strongly skewed outcome, with the majority of counts centered between scores of 2, 3, and 4 (where 1 = not trust at all and 2 = a great deal of trust). This was consistent with every province for trust in local gorverment and federal gorvernment. However, the same cannot be same for trust in Provincial government.

Three provinces stood out the most: British Columbia because it had a surprising high number of respondents having trust rates mostly in scores of 3 and 4 compared to the other provinces. On the other hand, for alberta and Saskatchewan, we see very high counts in survey participants that experienced discrimination that have high distrust towards their provincial government compared to the other provinces. Both taper off as they more towards a score of 5 in trust, which suggests that those that experience discrimination in Alberta and Saskatchewan do not trust their government. This distrust could potentially be symptom of provincial government and their policy and actions that affect groups of people often discriminated against. Mote research would have to be conducted.

However, given that the dataset used also has trust levels for Healthcare related institutions, it is interesting to see how people who have experienced discrimination interact with the healthcare system given the trust in healthcare institutions.

What is the Accessibility of Healthcare Services for those that have Experienced Discrimination?

A very similar pattern for both type of institutions below were found, which makes sense given the similarity and functionality of the two institutions.

When comparing the types of health care services and the difficulty in gaining access to the service, we see that participants that have experienced discrimination and don't trust health institutions, respondents always face issues rather than not for all services types except for Emergency services.