We don’t need the federal government to fix the CRSB, we need the provinces to legislate paid sick days for all

By Jesse Maclaren

According to Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Labour Minister Monte McNaughton “there's no reason for the province to jump in” with legislating paid sick days, because the federal government is already providing the Canada Recovery Sickness Benefit (CRSB). The CRSB is an important retroactive income support, but it does not provide paid sick days. 

As the Decent Work and Health Network explained in its report last summer, paid sick days need to be universal, fully paid, adequate, accessible and permanent. These five principles illustrate why the CRSB is no substitute for paid sick days, and why the solution is not for the federal government to fix the CRSB but for provincial governments to legislate paid sick days for all.

Universal

As Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer of Canada, Dr. Theresa Tam, explained, “no one is protected until everyone is protected.” Like vaccines, paid sick days need to be universal to protect the most vulnerable. But currently half of all workers across Canada don’t have a single paid sick day, and this rises to three-quarters of low-wage workers—disproportionately women, migrant, Black, Indigenous and racialized workers.  

Any policy that does not close this gap will be ineffective. But to apply to the CRSB, workers have to have earned at least $5,000, have a home in Canada and have a valid Social Insurance Number. This excludes undocumented and migrant workers whose precarious work puts them at high risk of COVID-19. Some of the worst outbreaks have been on Ontario farms that exploit migrant workers, who not only are denied paid sick days but told to keep working even after testing positive for COVID-19 if they are asymptomatic.

Migrant workers have highlighted clear solutions: “income support should be made available to workers who may not have valid Social Insurance Numbers.” Whereas CRSB perpetuates exclusions, legislating paid sick days is designed to close these gaps. For example, when New York City legislated paid sick days in 2013, the law covered part-time and undocumented workers. 

Fully paid, by employers 

As the Ontario Medical Association explained, “workers without paid sick leave often feel forced to work when unwell so they can feed and support their families…At a time when we are all working as hard as we can to reduce spread, and protect our most vulnerable, it’s unfathomable to ask to put workers in that position.” But that’s the position that workers are in if they don’t have sick days that are fully paid. The CSRB only provides $500/week, so if a worker earning $15/hr works more than 33 hours/week and has to stay home, they will lose income. If a worker earns $40/hr, they will lose income if they work more than 12.5 hours/week. 

Anything less than fully paid sick days not only punishes workers for protecting public health, but also encourages them to go to work sick. When the German government cut the paid sick day rate from 100% of wages to 80%, more workers with infectious diseases went to work sick. For sick days to be both just and effective, governments need to legislate them at full pay, and employers need to pay. 

When New York expanded paid sick days there were predictions this would invite abuse and ruin small businesses. But as a study and employer survey found the vast majority of employers supported the law, there was no significant impact on jobs or prices, and the only significant abuse was by some employers not following the law. Similarly, the solution to the gap in paid sick days in Canada is not for the federal government to dream up a new program, but for the provinces to close the gap in paid sick days. 

This is exactly what Colorado did in the middle of the pandemic, as a state senator explained: “Sixty percent of Coloradans already have some kind of paid sick leave. The other 40% are the ones we encounter most whenever we leave our homes. They tend to work in restaurants, retail and service industry jobs that put them in close contact with us. And those tend to be the kind of jobs where people can’t afford to take an unpaid day off.” Indeed, in Canada, some of the most notorious employers not providing paid sick days (Amazon, Walmart, Loblaws, Empire) are making record profits during the pandemic. Subsidizing profitable corporations with public money is not the solution. Paid sick days are an investment to our collective health, and would especially protect those who the pandemic has disproportionately harmed - Black, Indigenous and racialized workers, women and disabled workers, and immunocompromised peoples. 

Adequate

With more than 300 workplace outbreaks in Toronto alone, it’s crucial for workers to be able to access the vaccine, get tested for COVID-19 and stay home awaiting results, and to self-isolate for two weeks if they test positive. Income supports need to be adequate for a one-day visit to a vaccine clinic, a two-day period of getting a test and waiting at home for results, and a two week period of self-isolation. But the CRSB only covers the last scenario, because it can only be used by those who are unable to work at least 50% of their scheduled work week. If the CRSB doesn’t encourage vaccination and doesn’t encourage COVID testing, it’s clearly ineffective as a public health measure. 

Paid sick days, on the other hand, have a proven track record in encouraging vaccination and encouraging people to stay home from work and schools when sick. Paid sick days can therefore encourage COVID vaccination, COVID testing and COVID self-isolation. But only if there are an adequate number of paid sick days: like every medical intervention, the dose matters. In 2018 Ontario legislated 10 personal emergency leave days but only two were paid. As a study in the US found  “a moderate number of paid sick days (6 to 9) indicated a significantly higher profile of having accessed preventive services compared with those with 0 to 2 days ... and paid sick days of 10 or more days indicated an even higher profile.” That’s why the Decent Work and Health Network has been calling for at least 7 paid sick days, plus a minimum of 14 days during the pandemic. Colorado did just that, and it’s time for provinces in Canada to catch up.

Accessible 

For the past 10 months, there has been one clear message: stay home when sick. That means that if a worker wakes up with a sore throat and fever, they should not go to work. Yet despite record COVID-19 cases, the number of CRSB applications continues to fall steadily. Why? The CRSB contradicts the basic message of staying home when sick, because you first have to be unable to work at least 50% of your scheduled work week, then fill out an application form, and then hope you get approved.Workers can only apply on the first Monday, after the week they are seeking relief for. If approved, the retroactive payment that could take weeks.  Any income disruption is a disincentive for workers to stay home when sick. Any requirement of an application process or waiting period for payment threatens the ability of workers to use sick days, particularly at the first sign of symptoms, when sick workers are most infectious. This is crucial for an infectious disease like COVID, especially with the emergence of more transmissible strains. 

Half of workers already have access to paid sick days. Why should the other half of workers—disproportionately low-wage, women, migrant and racialized workers—not have the same access? Why should essential workers be denied essential protections? These are the workers who suffered when Doug Ford cut paid sick days before the pandemic, and these are the workers who are suffering by Doug Ford refusing to legislate paid sick days for all. As the new report COVID-19 and Ontario’s Long-Term Care Homes, by the Science Table COVID-19 Advisory for Ontario, explained, “many LTC home staff have part-time jobs without access to paid sick leave, meaning that staff may come to work sick and/or they may be forced to work other front-facing jobs that increase their risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection. More immediate and long-term commitments to increasing the number of full-time jobs with fair pay and benefits including paid sick leave will help remedy the staffing crisis and can also help reduce transmission of SARS-CoV-2 into LTC homes.”

Permanent 

The need to protect public health doesn’t end after a pandemic. On the contrary, pandemics serve to highlight longstanding deficiencies in public health, and should encourage policy-makers to close the gaps so that societies can be healthier between pandemics and more resilient during them. By definition the CRSB is a temporary program that only applies to COVID-19. When it ends on September 25, it will leave the same gaping holes in paid sick days that the novel coronavirus has exploited with such devastating effect. The real culprit is precarious work, and unless this root cause is treated, we will all continue to feel it’s symptoms. Fortunately we have an antidote:, paid sick days are proven and effective. If the pandemic has taught us anything, it is that public health doesn’t need a temporary fix, it needs permanent change—including permanent and adequate paid sick days for all.

The CRSB is an important retroactive income support, but it can never be a substitute for paid sick days. We don’t need the federal government to waste more time trying in vain to fix the CRSB, we need provincial governments to legislate paid sick days for all—and to do so immediately. This is why a coalition of healthcare and social service providers wrote to Premier Ford “to express our urgent appeal for the immediate implementation of paid sick days for Ontario workers, including temporary and precariously employed workers, as a central measure to improve population health and stop the spread of COVID-19. Our request is in addition to the benefit provided by the federal government through The Canada Recovery Sickness Benefit.”

Jesse McLaren is an emergency physician and member of the Decent Work and Health Network.