It’s been more than a year since the coronavirus pandemic took hold and air transportation was severely restricted.
Statistics Canada released the latest economic statistics on air travel this week. Unsurprisingly the numbers paint a troubling picture.
Large Canadian airlines carried less than 800,000 people in January. That’s nearly 90% less than the number of passengers the same airlines carried in January 2020.Operating revenues are down 85% compared to January 2020. GDP created by the industry fell even further, to just 11% of pre-COVID levels.
Last week’s budget made some important, headline-making investments, but when you consider the details, these broad announcements still do not cover the gaps that Nova Scotia’s workers need filled.
The budget announced that funding for continuing care, including long-term care and home care would increase by 13% over the 2020 budget plan, topping the $1 billion mark for the first time.
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 column originally appeared in the Globe and Mail
The pandemic has demolished many conventional wisdoms when it comes to our economy, equality and work – especially essential work, so much of which is done by women.
Where would we be without the labour of women this past year? And yet as critical as that labour has been to the well-being of the country, we are still fighting for respect and fair pay.
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.
This column originally appeared in the Globe and Mail
People are going to work sick. They always have. The difference is now it’s deadly.
In Alberta, major outbreaks at a meat packing plant have seen hundreds contract COVID-19 and too many deaths. People reported going to work even as they displayed symptoms, under pressure from their employers to come in.
The lockdowns needed to combat COVID-19 have been costly and difficult for many people across Newfoundland and Labrador.
We’ve stayed away from relatives – older ones who need our help, younger ones reaching milestones we’ve missed – to contain COVID-19. Businesses have shut. Workers have been on furlough or laid off.
We can’t let all this hard work and sacrifice go to waste.
Every day there’s a new study or argument published in newspapers or magazines, demanding paid sick leave to curb the spread of COVID-19 and its super-spreading variants.
