It’s been seven days since the premier apologized to Ontarians. It’s been 13 days since he did what he apologized for – unnecessarily closing outdoor recreation facilities and giving police the power to randomly stop citizens during the stay-at-home order. And it’s been nine days since Doug Ford went into self-isolation at his mother’s home in Etobicoke, after a member of his staff tested positive for COVID-19. In other words, the premier has not physically served in his office, nor at the Ontario Legislature since a week ago Tuesday.
In other words, technically, Doug Ford has not been at work.
He continues, of course, to be paid… which means Premier Doug Ford is getting paid for sick days!
That means the premier has received nine days of his annual salary – about $5,148 of his $208,974 annual income – all against the stated policy of his own administration. Perhaps, he’ll realize the oversight and, like the time he gave back $10,000 of his salary because the budget arrived in the Legislature later than promised, he’ll return the $5,148 he’s been paid for being away self-isolating.
If there was any question about the Conservatives’ position on paid sick leave, the evidence is legion. In 2018, right after they came into power, they scrapped Bill 148. Among other measures, the Liberals’ Fair Workplaces Better Jobs Act provided two paid, job-protected emergency leave days for all workers. But the Conservatives repealed it.
“Sixty thousand people lost their jobs under Bill 148,” Ford claimed, (which referred principally to part-time positions), “We’re going to create more jobs … unlike the Liberals, who destroyed this province.”
Then came the pandemic. Following Ontario’s March 2020 stay-at-home order, which affected principally women who vacated jobs to attend their families at home. According to the province’s Financial Accountability Officer, Ontario lost 355,000 jobs – the single largest decline on record and nearly six times worse than what Ford claimed was the result of the Liberals’ two paid sick days legislation.
Then, the very day the Ford administration scrambled to put the premier in front of a camera in Etobicoke for his “apology” press conference, downtown those Conservatives on the job voted down MPP Michael Coteau’s private member’s legislation. Bill 247 would have introduced a provision to Ontario’s employment standards to provide up to 10 paid days of leave per year because of personal illness, injury or medical emergency.
“[The Conservatives’] votes are not against an Opposition MPP’s bill,” Coteau told the Toronto Star, “but against the 83 per cent of Ontarians who support paid sick leave.”
The defeat of Coteau’s paid sick leave bill marked the 21st time, either through motions or previous bills, that the Conservative party and the premier have voted against paid sick days. “This is not a partisan issue,” Coteau said finally. “This is about the best science.”
But for some reason, few members of Doug Ford’s cabinet, which (they tell us) regularly receive recommendations from its COVID-19 Science Advisory Table, have taken the experts’ warnings seriously.
As early as January of this year, when Ontario faced a second wave of COVID cases, Dr. Barbara Yaffe, Ontario’s associate chief medical officer of health, said more had to be done “to help residents comply with public health rules … including instituting paid sick days.”
However, instead of putting science first, in my view, the Ontario government has put its self-preservation first. The Ford Conservatives have blamed the Trudeau Liberals for not going far enough. And, sure, there’s plenty of blame to go around. The Canada Recovery Sickness Benefit from Ottawa has assisted some 300,000 Ontarians who received $450 after taxes. Its after-the-fact rollout is clearly not effective either. “There’s $700 million from the federal government sitting there. The system is broken,” Ford said.
But if a year of political ping-pong has illustrated anything in Ontario, it’s proven the paid sick days buck stops at Queen’s Park.
So, 13 days after the missteps against the scientists’ recommendations, seven days after the apology, and 14 months after the pandemic hit, why do Ford and his ministers still tell us (worse, why do we still believe them?) that they’ve got a plan for paid sick days?
In the face of stonewalling against doing the right thing, I think it’s time that the premier, and his entire caucus of 76 Progressive Conservatives pay back the people of Ontario the equivalent of the days when they ignored the science, the days when they failed to vaccinate racialized or hotspot neighbourhoods, or the days when they made silly pronouncements only to rescind them after public outrage – and give the equivalent of their pay back for all those days.
The payback would more than fund sick days lost by Ontario workers, although never compensate the pain and suffering such ideology has hastened.