While most Canadians can understand what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is saying during his daily COVID-19 crisis updates, some advocates and experts say people in certain ethnic groups are being left in the dark — because they aren’t comfortable communicating in English or French.

Experts say their concerns about gaps in how critical information reaches non-English and -French speakers across the country lays bare both the need for changes to how government agencies share information and the importance of supporting ethnic media, which is picking up the slack by translating and sharing crucial public-health information.

Some community agencies see people being cut off from essential information because it isn’t readily available in their language, or they can’t navigate government channels which might not have translation options apparent, said Avvy Go, director of the Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic in Toronto.

“There are people who will fall through the cracks,” Go said.

Some people serviced by the clinic are calling about access to benefits like employment insurance, said Go.

“Once we get the information we try to translate them into Chinese and Vietnamese,” she said. “We also send it out to our WeChat (a popular Chinese social-media app) group and people are forwarding it to their friends … People are thanking us for doing this because they had no idea.”

While a fifth of Canadians speak a mother tongue other than English or French, about 6.2 per cent speak a language other than English or French — Mandarin now being the most common — as their sole home language, according to the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages. .

While announcing financial support for journalists on Wednesday, Minister of Canadian Heritage Steven Guilbeault acknowledged that the media are feeling the pinch of declining ad revenue and the pandemic. He said the government is acting “so Canadians can continue to access diverse and reliable sources of news.”

Guilbeault hinted at tax measures being tailored to ease pressures on media companies coupled with the government’s plan to pump $30 million into a public-health awareness campaign.

A statement from Guilbeault’s ministry indicated that “critical information (handouts at airport notably) is translated into many languages and (COVID-19) ads are bought and published, at the moment, on different mediums (radio, print, TV, magazines, online), in community and ethnic media as well (translated).” Some public health information is also posted on the Canada.ca website in multiple languages.

In response to Guilbeault’s announcement Madeline Ziniak, chair of the Canadian Ethnic Media Association, said it “will be important for the government to define their criteria specifically for ethnic media. In past support funding-opportunities criteria was such that excluded a high percentage of ethnic media.

“In several communities there’s still confusion about what you consider a public gathering and communities don’t know who to reach out to to get that clarity,” she said. “This has ramifications.”

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Kiu Rezvanifar is the president of KVC Communications Group, which produces programming for the Persian community; it’s behind the current-affairs TV shows “Iran Zameen” and “Pasargad,” two of the longest-running programs on Omni Television. He says the programs have been telling viewers how to avoid COVID-19.

He said while brands like his get praise for what they do, they don’t ever seem to be on the government’s radar when there’s talk of supporting public-service programming. This time, “I would like to see the process and how it is going to materialize,” he said.