Many Canadians who’ve never had problems paying bills or accessing food before the COVID-19 pandemic are calling 211 in search of help, according to new data released by United Way Centraide Canada (UWCC) on Thursday. 

Widespread infections, job losses, and the stress of public health regulations, not to mention the 21,000 Canadians who’ve died of the virus so far, are taking their toll on Canadians’ mental health and their ability to access food and other essentials. At 211, a helpline that connects callers with social and government services, call volumes between March and December of 2020 were 30 percent higher than the previous year. And many of those callers are new. 

“211 Navigators — the people who answer the calls — say since the pandemic began, they have received a high volume of callers who have never had to reach out for support before,” said Dan Clement, president and CEO of United Way Centraide Canada, in a statement on Thursday. 

According to a survey and 211 data, a fifth of Canadians surveyed said they have had trouble paying at least one of their bills since the pandemic began last year — a new problem for roughly 70 percent of them. While 12 percent of Canadians in the survey said they’d had problems accessing food at some point during the pandemic, nearly two-thirds of them said they hadn’t had issues doing so before. 

Another one of the main reasons callers are phoning 211 is for mental health support, especially in January of 2021. Navigators with 211 saw a 276 percent increase in calls for counselling compared to last August, along with a 112 percent rise in calls for mental health care facilities and a 105 percent rise in requests for mental health assessment and treatment during the same period. Clement’s statement said 211 navigators are also seeing a spike in the number of people phoning 211 “in crisis.” 

Judy Shum, national director of 211 and community partnerships, told Future of Good that food security has become an especially big issue for callers during the COVID-19 pandemic. She suspects that’s because so many people have lost their jobs, but also because so many food delivery programs, from congregate dining for seniors to lunch drop in programs, have seen their service delivery shift overnight. 

“Many of these new programs have to change to a very different format of delivery, and because the information changes so rapidly, a lot of people may not [know],” Shum said. 

Aside from food security and mental health, the other top reasons for callers to dial 211 are for financial aid, housing support, and COVID-19 information. 

The 211 helpline has offered support to callers in the aftermath of the Calgary floods of 2013, the Fort McMurray wildfires of 2016, and other similar disasters. Navigators offer help with everything from sorting out insurance to finding social services for youth. Unlike those crises, however, the COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t yet moved past the immediate disaster phase and into a period of recovery and rebuilding. 

“That would typically be where we see a really big surge in volume, but the pandemic, I would say, is quite unprecedented,” she said. 

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