B.C. announces new permanent paid sick leave program

B.C. Premier Jim Horgan announced on Tuesday that his government will be creating their own paid sick leave program to help handle the fall-out from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The permanent sick pay program will provide pay to workers who are symptomatic, or who test positive to the virus, and cannot go to work.

Horgan urged the federal government to develop their own permanent national paid sick-day program, “we didn’t get the program we needed at the time we needed it from the federal government, and they’ve done a lot of great things over the past 14 months but this is not one of them,” he said.

The program will be administered by the workplace health and safety regulator, WorkSafeBC. Horgan did not say when the new plan would be implemented.

Currently the federal government administers the Canada Recovery Sickness Benefit (CRSB), which provides income support to employed and self-employed workers who are unable to attend work due to sickness, isolation, or quarantine, or if they have an underlying condition that puts them at high-risk for COVID-19.

B.C.’s plan could put pressure on Ontario to develop its own plan for paid sick days. The CRSB has been critiqued for only allowing employees who miss 50 per cent of their work week to qualify, and for only providing $500 a week in income support.

Currently, Ontario and the federal government are at odds over enhancing the current CRSB program.

The Prime Minister has said the onus is on Ontario to develop its own paid sick days program.

“We need to work together and provinces need to look at the way to deliver sick leave directly through employers, which the federal government can’t do,” he said.

The press secretary to Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, Katherine Cuplinskas, did make a statement regarding the issue, saying that Ontario could force provincially-regulated employers to offer a paid sick program on their own.

Those employers could in turn use the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy to pay for the costs incurred by sick pay.

READ MORE
• Doctor’s notes in B.C.

Last week, Ontario Premier Doug Ford made a statement that his government would be creating “the best program anywhere in North America” to deal with paid sick leave for employees.

Following up on that Labour Minister Monte McNaughton said on Tuesday that currently their only plan of action is to request more money from the federal government to double the income support offered by the CRSB.

Experts agree that the third wave of COVID-19 has been dramatically exacerbated by the lack of paid sick days — workers who were feeling ill but could not afford to stay home went to work and transmitted the virus.

A Peel Region study showed that 25 per cent of people who reported symptoms between August 2020 and January 2021 went to work anyway.

At least 80 people who reported testing positive went to work despite having COVID-19.