Quebecers are the least likely residents of any Canadian province to wear protective masks, suggests a new survey, even though they account for half of Canada’s COVID-19 cases and more than 56 per cent of the related deaths.

Overall, immigrants surveyed were overwhelmingly more likely to put on a mask than non-immigrants as a precaution against the coronavirus, said the study commissioned by the Association for Canadian Studies and released Friday.

The survey was conducted by Leger through an online panel over two periods, April 3 to 5 and 17 to 19. It interviewed 2,015 Canadians. For comparison purposes, a probability sample of this size would carry a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Over the two-week span, the percentage of mask-wearing respondents Canada-wide rose from 21 per cent to 32 per cent.

Forty per cent of those in Ontario said they wore masks in public areas, followed by 31 per cent of respondents in British Columbia, 30 per cent in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, 28 per cent in Alberta and 27 per cent in the Atlantic provinces, with just 21 per cent of Quebecers saying the same.

When asked if they had worn a mask in the past week, only 18 per cent of francophones said they had, compared to 32 per cent among anglophones and 53 per cent of the allophones, those whose mother tongue is neither French nor English.

“We saw a big jump in the number of people wearing masks in public from March to April after health professionals suggested we do it, giving it legitimacy, but Quebec is a counter culture,” said Jack Jedwab, president of the Association for Canadian Studies, who is himself a Quebecer.

As of Friday, Quebec had reported 21,838 COVID-19 cases, accounting for 51 per cent of the Canadian total of 42,750 cases. The province also recorded 1,243 deaths, or 56.6 per cent of Canada’s overall 2,197 deaths.

Fifty-eight per cent of immigrants in Canada for less than five years said they wore masks in the past week, compared to 48 per cent among those who have been here for longer than five years and 28 per cent among their Canadian-born peers.

Some racial groups were also more likely than others to put on a mask, with Filipinos leading the trend at 76.5 per cent, followed by South Asian (56.9 per cent), Chinese (52.5 per cent), Black (50 per cent), Latin American (46.7 per cent), Arabic (35 per cent) and European/white residents (26.8 per cent).

Jedwab said he believes groups from Asia, South Asia and the Middle East are more accustomed to wearing protective masks due to air pollution in the countries from which their families have come. Previous exposure to SARS, MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) and H1N1 swine flu in those regions has also heightened awareness of pandemic precautions.

“There was certainly a social stigma attached to wearing a mask here in Canada before COVID-19, but it has become more common and visible to people with masks now,” Jedwab said.

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