Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Hochelaga.
I would like to acknowledge that I am addressing the House today from the ancestral, traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin nation. It is a unique opportunity to rise in the House today, surrounded by my colleagues who I am really happy to see again, to participate in the second reading debate on Bill C-3.
I will spend the time available to me today to provide some more details about the proposed legislation.
First, it would amend the Canada Labour Code to provide 10 days of paid sick leave per year to workers in the federally regulated private sector. This would affect nearly a million workers in Canada, most of whom work for larger enterprises. However, we also have to take care of the smaller operators and the impact this will have on them. I will have more to say about that in a bit.
Those employed in the federally regulated sector for private enterprise would include interprovincial transportation companies, pipelines, banks, postal services and broadcast outlets, among other things. These are all industries that people count on every day, yet workers in these jobs cannot necessarily count on appropriate support if and when they become ill. If they get sick, they feel the pressure to go to work, because putting food on the table is not a choice. Paying the rent or the mortgage is not a choice.
I know from my past, too many people want to be the hero. They want to go to work and they drag themselves there. As a broadcaster, I remember fighting my way through blizzards and alligators and dungeons and dragons to get to work so I could tell everybody to stay at home. This kind of heroism looks good on the surface, but when it comes to an illness, especially one as critical as COVID-19, it is really not a good attribute to have.
The bill we have before puts people first. As the Minister of Labour has said, people have always been at the heart of Canada's labour program.
Let us talk about the Canada Labour Code. It sets out rules that protect worker health and safety. Today's bill would amend part III of the Canada Labour Code, which sets minimum labour standards for the federally regulated private sector, and it is in part III that we will find the provisions dealing with things like standard working hours, leave, holidays, wages and important issues like sexual harassment. However, today's bill has to do with the leave provisions.
Currently part III of the code provides employees in federally regulated industries with a number of leaves related to personal illness or injury. I will mention three of them now.
The first is personal leave, which provides employees with up to five days of leave per year, the first three of which are paid. This would be for things like personal illness or injury or urgent matters concerning themselves or their families.
The second is unpaid medical leave. Workers have up to 17 weeks if they are unable to work due to personal illness or injury or medical appointments during working hours. Employees may also take up to 16 weeks of unpaid leave as a result of quarantine.
The last leave that I will mention today is leave related to COVID-19. In March 2020, the Canada Labour Code was amended to create this new leave provision. Prior to its repeal law November 20, it allowed for employees to take unpaid job-protected leave for up to four weeks if they were unable to work for reasons related to COVID-19. This leave was designed to align with the suite of Canada recovery sickness benefits, and workers have been able to file claims for income support under that law.
On November 24, the government introduced legislation under Bill C-3, the one that we are debating today, that would reinstate the leave, extend its maximum length to six weeks and ensure it would remain available until May 7, 2022.
Ultimately these leave provisions mean that employees cannot take more than three days sick off work that are paid by the employer. It is clear, especially since the onset of the pandemic, that three days are not enough. Even looking at 2019 data, and that is pre-pandemic, Canadian workers took an average of 8.5 days of leave for illness or issues related to a disability.
What would Bill C-3 do? With Bill C-3, we are taking action to ensure Canadians in federally regulated industries have access to paid sick days. It would amend the Canada Labour Code to do three things.
First, it would make a change to repeal the personal leave that employees may take for treating their illness or injury. This is to avoid duplicating paid leave provisions relating to illness or injury and to set people up to use the new leave that would be created.
Second, on the new leave, the bill would provide that employees might earn and take up to 10 days of paid medical leave in a calendar year. They might take these sick days in one period or more.
Third, the bill would have some built-in flexibility. It would authorize the Governor in Council to make regulations to modify in certain circumstances the provisions respecting medical leave of absence with pay.
Before I conclude, I would like to pause on what is a bit of a sticking point for some. It is one I referenced earlier, namely that the changes proposed today would have an impact on employers, especially of smaller businesses. The government wants to make sure that employers have some lead-in time to handle these changes. That is why the coming-into-force date would be fixed by order in council. We would also commit to engaging in consultations with federally regulated employers to better understand the impact of these changes on their local realities.
There are a few other mitigating factors. The workers covered by these new amendments mainly work in medium- to large-sized businesses where the financial impacts would be more diffuse. For example, 87% of the workers impacted by this are in firms of 100 employees or more. That leaves 13% in smaller companies who would likely feel the pinch of paid absences more acutely. They can also request a medical note from employees when they use their sick days. Again, this is obviously an opportunity, for smaller employers especially, to make sure that the leave being taken is legitimate.
In addition, if an employee has used up all of the leave in the previous calendar year or is a new employee, the employee would start to accumulate paid sick leave at the rate of one day per month. This reduces the exposure for employers. For employees who do not use 10 days in a year, the proposed legislation allows for a limited carry-over of days. This means that the employee is not starting from scratch in a new year. However, the maximum number of paid sick days for the year remains at 10.
The Government of Canada is working hard to finish the fight against COVID-19. However, as we have heard regarding the other part of the bill, there is resistance to this and there are impediments. There are people who, for variety of reasons, be it fear, ideology or just plain stubbornness, do not necessarily want to contribute to the most fundamental of Canadian values: acting for the common good.
Bill C-3 would help both come through. It would make sure that nearly a million more Canadians at least have access to enough paid sick days. This would be more in line with what some of the provinces are doing, such as British Columbia, which allows for five paid sick days and three unpaid sick days. The idea, of course, is that if somebody is sick, they maintain their position in the company, ensuring ongoing employment, especially for employees who are hard to find, talented and technically able. They would be maintained even if they do have to take time off when they are sick.
Bill C-3 would make sure a million or more Canadians have access to enough paid sick days. As the Governor General said in the Speech from the Throne on November 23, “As we move forward on the economy of the future, no worker or region will be left behind.” Bill C-3 is intended to do just that, and I believe the debate and comments we hear from all sides of the House seek to enrich, inform and make this legislation better.
