Government and Democracy

The refrain “if you’re sick, stay home” is not just smart workplace policy, it’s also smart public health policy.

Of course, COVID-19 has elevated the importance of this approach to new levels. Preventing the spread of COVID-19 in workplaces is a matter of life and death.

This month the premier acknowledged the link between provincial workplace policies and public health by legislating paid time off for workers to get the vaccine.

It’s time to take the next step and legislate employer-paid sick leave for all Saskatchewan’s workers.

The past year has laid bare the inequities in our society. 

COVID-19 has shown that workers struggling to get by on minimum wage – from personal support workers, to grocery and warehouse workers – and those in the gig economy are not only essential, but put themselves at risk to keep our communities running during a pandemic.

Working families across our province have been forced to make impossible decisions between staying home when they are sick or going to work and risk spreading a deadly virus to their co-workers. 

This past year, workers experienced unemployment on a scale never before seen in Canada. At its first wave peak in June 2020, some 2.7 million workers in this country had no job. The magnitude of these losses effectively paralyzed the Employment Insurance system, requiring alternative means of income support via the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB).

This column originally appeared in the Toronto Star.

When Canadians need them most, media outlets are being forced to trim their budgets, and newsrooms, as the pandemic continues to hit the bottom line.

The pandemic, now almost a year long with many dark months still ahead, is both the cause of much of media’s immediate troubles, and one of the big reasons we need it.