The annual “Our City” report from Winnipeg, Canada, focuses on well-being in the city and immediate changes that have been documented as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The report also highlights longer-term data trends to watch using the city’s Peg data dashboard.

This sixth annual report pairs data from Peg with emerging insights from verified provincial and national sources. Titled ‘2020 Our City: A Peg Report on COVID-19 and Well-Being Indicators to Watch,’ the report identifies where Winnipeg stood before the pandemic and showcases how the community has been impacted in 2020. Pre-2020, the report notes that Winnipeg was improving on some educational and environmental outcomes, but struggling with issues of inequality.

The report features 14 indicators considered of particular relevance to the ways the pandemic has affected the community and are likely to continue to have an effect. The indicators are: homelessness; food bank use; mood and anxiety disorders; substance use and addiction; unemployment rate; retail sales; collision fatalities; building permit values; child care spaces; readiness to learn; residential waste going to landfill; commuting patterns; charitable donations; and participation in the arts. 

Among the data highlighted in the report are the following: 

• unemployment had dropped to 5.3 percent in Winnipeg in 2019, its lowest point since 2009 and below the national average of 5.7 percent;
• retail sales had climbed to CAD 13.4 billion in the Winnipeg census metropolitan area in 2019; 
• mood and anxiety disorder rates had shown little improvement in the most recent data available; 
• Collision fatalities had risen to 12 in 2018, and 15 in 2019, after reaching a 20-year low in 2017 (9); and 
• median charitable donations had risen to CAD 420 in 2018, above the Canadian average of CAD 310.

The report also shares stories from Winnipeg organizations on the front lines of responding to pandemic impacts. 

Peg is led by two partnering organizations – International Institute of Sustainable Development (IISD) and United Way Winnipeg.