The COVID-19 pandemic highlights Canada’s derisory policies for paid sick days

Last month, Niki Gurgen, a personal assistant at a Toronto long-term care home, woke up with a cough and feeling a little warmer than usual. Thought of staying home, but with no paid sick days and unable to afford to give up his salary, he said he has no choice but to go to work.

“You may be tired of a headache and a little cough, but you don’t know if it’s the virus,” said Ms. Gurgen, who, as a cancer survivor, is immunocompromised. “Of course you want to stay home, but you can’t – who’s going to pay you to do it?”

Ms. Gurgen did not test positive for COVID-19, but some of her colleagues did. His case exemplifies the tug-of-war between precaution and a full paycheck faced by many long-term care, warehouse, manufacturing and retail employees as coronavirus cases increase across the country.

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According to a recent report by Theresa Tam, Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer, more than half of Canadian workers over the age of 18 do not have access to paid sick leave. The federal government introduced a sick leave benefit in September, but public health officials and labor advocates say the program is unable to provide workers with mandatory, immediately accessible paid sick days. They are now asking the provinces to close the gap.

The matter is more urgent than ever. Workplaces are playing a more important role in the spread of the infectious disease as the second wave of COVID-19 threatens to overwhelm hospitals in many provinces. In some cases, employers aren’t doing enough to limit risks, medical officials have warned.

Alberta Chief Health Medical Officer Deena Hinshaw said last week that “too many cases” stem from people going to work while sick, adding that 10% of people in the province with active COVID-19 cases they don’t stay at home.

In the Peel region, west of Toronto, the spread of the virus in warehouses and food processing plants has led to community spread among families and other close contacts, according to the region’s health officer. These types of workplaces tend not to offer paid sick leave, and people who cannot afford to lose their wages will work with the symptoms of COVID-19.

“It’s time for employers to choose not to pay employees when they’re sick of putting people on profit,” said Lawrence Loh, Peel’s medical health officer last week. “The cost of spreading COVID-19 in our community far exceeds the price of a few sick days.”

In March, the U.S. government introduced two weeks of paid emergency sick leave at 100% of the person’s salary, up to $ 511 per day, for COVID-related reasons. In the 38 states that did not require paid sick leave, the new regulation resulted in 15,000 fewer cases per day nationwide, or 400 fewer per state, according to an October report in the journal, Health Affairs.

The Trudeau government did not introduce Canada Recovery Sickness Benefit (CRSB) until the end of September. The benefit provides $ 500 per week for up to two weeks for workers who need to take a break due to COVID-19.

But the federal program pays less than what a worker would receive on a minimum wage in most provinces. According to Carolina Jimenez, a nurse and spokesperson for the Decent Work and Health Network, for people living from paycheque to paycheque, any drop in income or delay in receiving government subsidies would cause unbearable financial stress.

Additionally, workers are not eligible for the benefit unless they lose more than half of their hours in a week, making it difficult to stay home for a day or two if they think they have the virus and are awaiting test results.

“If you wake up in the morning with symptoms and there are barriers to accessing a sick day, the workers are not as likely to use the benefit,” Ms. Jimenez said. “People are worried they are not eligible.”

So far, 295,000 applications and $ 147 million under the CRSB program have been approved for nearly 178,000 people, according to federal government data. At the same time, workplace outbreaks continued to grow, raising questions about the effectiveness of the initiative.

“Whatever arrangements are currently in place, they are either not adequate or not properly understood,” Toronto Mayor John Tory said at a recent press conference.

Access to paid sick leave varies widely in Canada. Ottawa requires federally regulated industries – including banks, telecommunications providers, shipping companies, rail and air companies – to provide at least five paid personal days each year.

But this is not the case in many provinces. With the exception of Quebec, where employees receive two paid sick days after three months of continuous work and Prince Edward Island, where workers are entitled to one day after five years, other provinces do not require employers to pay sick days. Ontario had previously imposed two paid personal emergency leave days per year, but Premier Doug Ford’s Conservative government replaced the benefit with three unpaid days for personal illness in early 2019. As the pandemic began, the province extended the policy to an unspecified number of days to allow workers to be isolated without pay.

Some provinces have offered other measures. Alberta introduced emergency isolation pay in early spring, but ended the program after the government lifted the state of health emergency in June. (The state of emergency was restored this week.)

Alberta, British Columbia and other provinces also impose a few days of protected leave, and some have extended the policy to a few weeks to match the isolation periods required during the pandemic. But that leave is unpaid, leaving people with little choice but to go to work sick, according to Canadian Union of Public Employees Alberta President Rory Gill.

“There are people – particularly in long-term care – who may be in their fourth or fifth cycle of isolation,” Gill said. “Our chief health medical officer is telling people to isolate themselves … but if you don’t have sick days or work precariously, then that’s bad luck.”

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