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A national non-profit group is calling on the federal government to “explicitly acknowledge” systemic racism’s role in forcing visible minorities, recent immigrants and Indigenous people to face more barriers trying to pay for their energy bills.

The report by the Canadian Urban Sustainability Practitioners customized 2016 Statistics Canada data on housing and demographics to examine the state of “energy poverty,” a term for when a household spends more than six percent of its after-tax household income on home energy services (which is roughly twice the national median).

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The group says living in energy poverty can lead to spoiled food and disruptions from abrupt power outages, more respiratory illnesses in children and infants, poor mental health in adults and forgoing groceries or medicine to pay energy bills.

Overall, recent immigrants and racialized households felt the impact in almost every urban region measured in the review.