Published Thursday, February 11, 2021 8:51AM EST A body representing the province’s 34 local medical officers of health is asking the Ford government to permanently legislate paid sick leave due to the COVID-19 pandemic, something Ontario’s finance minister dismissed this week as unnecessary duplication. The Association of Local Public Health Agencies (ALPHA) which represents 34 public health units, their medical leaders and each area’s board of health, wrote to Doug Ford on Tuesday saying messaging and encouragement to self-isolatewhen sick would not be enough to stem the pandemic. “We know that limiting such reinforcement to public messaging is not sufficient and it is imperative that your Government make the healthiest choice the easiest choice,” the letter reads.
A body representing the province’s 34 local medical officers of health is asking the Ford government to permanently legislate paid sick leave due to the COVID-19 pandemic, something Ontario’s finance minister dismissed this week as unnecessary duplication.
iPolitics By Iain Sherriff-Scott. Published on Feb 5, 2021 1:23pm Employment minister Carla Qualtrough said provincial paid sick leave would complement federal supports, not duplicate them. (Andrew Meade/iPolitics)
Federal employment minister Carla Qualtrough is pushing back on Premier Doug Ford’s claim that funding paid sick leave in Ontario would “duplicate” federal supports through the Canada Sickness Recovery Benefit (CSRB).
Over the last month, pressure has been mounting on Ford’s government to bolster the federal program by re-instituting provincial paid sick days, which his government stripped in 2018.
Ford has so far resisted funding sick days because he says they’ll “overlap” with the CSRB a program that provides $500 per week (or $450 after taxes) for up to two weeks. But concerns that the federal program doesn’t provide enough support have intensified calls for the province to step in.
| Updated January 27, 2021
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Canada is facing the spectre of “the greatest rise in inequality on record” as investors’ portfolios soar in value while hundreds of thousands of people join the ranks of the unemployed, anti-poverty group Oxfam Canada says in a new report.
The country’s 44 billionaires ― as listed by Forbes magazine ― have collectively added $63.5 billion in wealth since stock and bond markets began recovering in March of 2020, Oxfam found.
Worldwide, the ultra-rich have recovered from the pandemic’s economic shock, Oxfam said, but for the world’s poor, the group estimates recovery will take a decade.