Thank you for inviting me today and to Blake Richards for Motion 110.
As mentioned, I am a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Toronto. I have a master's degree in social work and am a registered social worker. I hold a Joseph Armand Bombardier Canada graduate scholarship. I am also a parent. I have not lost a child to death.
My dissertation topic—which, to be clear, is in the early stages—is about how bereavement experiences in Canada are accommodated in federal and provincial legislation and workplaces, with a focus on those in precarious employment.
I have experienced the life-shattering grief that comes from love and loss. In one instance, I found myself caregiving for my then-partner's family after his dad's sudden death from pancreatic cancer. Unable to negotiate a leave from my contract position, I left my job for four months to care for the family, entering a precarious situation with my employer. I did not have the capacity to think clearly or consider my financial or career consequences.
Stung by feelings of helplessness at the lack of resources and support, I was motivated to learn about how to better prepare for bereavement. I have now worked for a decade in the bereavement field, including for a suicide loss survivor program in Toronto and Bereaved Families Ontario-Toronto, an agency that for the last 40 years has been dedicated to supporting families grieving all types of losses. Witnessing how underfunded and overburdened these agencies were, I was moved to study bereavement academically to explore the macro forces impacting these circumstances.
I have completed an extensive review of the academic literature and found that the scholarship in this area mainly explores psychological or therapeutic aspects of grief, which does not adequately capture the role of social, economic and political factors that shape the space allotted to accommodate these experiences. However, this is changing, and attention is increasingly being directed to the context of bereavement.
The best Canadian study on this topic that I have come across is by Mary Ellen Macdonald, Susan Cadell—who are here today—and their colleagues. In it they compare and critically analyze Canadian and international bereavement legislation. One important question they ask is why other leaves—parental, maternity and compassionate care leave—are offered generous provisions, but bereavement leave is not. Their answer is that grief is not considered labour or a public good, an attitude that needs to be challenged as it communicates to Canadians that their grief is undeserving of attention and support, forcing people to suffer in silence.
Bereaved individuals often feel pressure to return to work and resume productivity. Prematurely returning to work may restrict some employees' grief experiences, negatively impacting their well-being and mental and physical health. Presenteeism can affect workplace productivity and costs more than absenteeism, meaning that returning to work does not signify that bereaved employees are ready to resume full functioning. Consequently, workplaces may face an increase in sick leaves, lower quality and quantity of work, and lower employee morale.
There is a lack of accountability or funding for bereavement, as it is not under the mandate of any Canadian health system, professional association or government jurisdiction. Alternatively, the American Hospice Foundation argues that offering bereavement programs and flexible leave arrangements leads to improved employee morale and a decrease in sick leaves and staff turnover.
Some employees have access to more generous leave, depending on their employer and labour arrangement. However, those in precarious employment—a work arrangement that offers limited job security, stability or protections—may be more vulnerable to bereavement, given that they have little or no access to standard benefits, facing concerns that taking leave would threaten their job or financial security. In Ontario, for example, precarious employment is increasingly the norm for workers across demographic categories, impacting everybody. Faced with funeral expenses, unpaid time from work, or job loss, individuals in precarious employment may be forced to choose between grief and poverty. Therefore, I want to caution that if EI is the chosen mechanism for a bereavement benefit, there may be a significant and vulnerable group who will not qualify, putting them at risk for further marginalization.
In my notes, I included an appendix—and I don't know if you have access to it—of the Canada Employment Insurance Commission's “2016/2017 Employment Insurance Monitoring and Assessment Report”. It illustrates how large some of these groups are that may fall into the gaps of not being covered by EI.
For my recommendations, I agree with many of the solutions that have been proposed in the past meetings, including training Service Canada employees with a skill set that is compassionate to grief and bereavement;
having a dedicated Service Canada bereavement line, or creating a landing page or one-stop shop for grief and bereavement; preventing Canada child benefit overpayments and clawbacks; and initiating a bereavement awareness campaign to communicate to Canadians that the Government of Canada values and respects grief.
Also, consider introducing incentives for employers or workplaces to support bereavement and examine other models and systems of support for parental bereavement, including the U.K.'s new parental bereavement, the Canada benefit for parents of young victims of crime, and Ontario's child death leave to figure out how they're organizing their policies.
Grief arises out of our humanity and capacity to love and attach to each other. No one should be marginalized or punished for that. We need to value our relationality and interdependence. All levels of government need to proactively take responsibility for bereavement so that we can move past death ambivalence towards respecting grief as one of our greatest expressions of humanity. Taking responsibility for bereavement accommodation can support Canadian families and workers as they adapt to death and transition back to work.
Thank you.