Pandemic bills will be paid by all Canadians By: Editorial Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Monday, May. 11, 2020

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/05/2020 (1594 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Three million Canadians, about 17 per cent of the labour force, lost their jobs in March and April as Canada struggled to curb the spreading coronavirus epidemic. Another 2.5 million people worked less than half their usual hours in April. Never has Canada seen such rapid immobilization of its working people.

'Significant drop': Manitoba lost 64,000 jobs in April

Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Friday, May. 8, 2020

OTTAWA — The number of working Manitobans dropped by 64,200 in April, bringing the province’s documented number of job losses during the COVID-19 pandemic to 89,500. 

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Statistics Canada’s labour-force survey, issued last Friday, gave the country its first careful description of the economic damage Canadians suffered in two months of pandemic-induced lockdown. It also showed, however, that plenty of Canadians are still at work, still getting paid, still generating wealth.

More than a quarter of employed Canadians, the survey showed, quit going to the office during March and April and worked from home. In the fields of public administration, utilities, education, agriculture, professional services, finance, insurance and real estate, the reduction in hours worked from February to April was less than 15 per cent.

On the other side of the coin, the reduction in hours worked was 35 per cent or more in manufacturing, wholesale and retail trade and construction, and close to 60 per cent in hotels and restaurants.

Quebec, which has had the worst COVID-19 experience of any Canadian province, also shows the worst job losses. Manitoba and Saskatchewan, at the other extreme, have enjoyed a relatively smooth ride through the pandemic and suffered the least economic damage.

Employers laid off their lowest-paid workers and kept the higher-paid ones. The surprising result was that average hourly earnings in Canada were 10 per cent higher in April this year than they had been a year earlier. The lowest-paid workers had simply been removed from the equation.

The federal government has launched a whole alphabet soup of programs to benefit the newly-unemployed and the near-unemployed. The purpose was partly compassionate, to help them feed and house their families, and partly intended to keep them from going to work and spreading the virus.

For the time being, the government is simply borrowing the money to pay for these programs. Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux estimates this year’s federal deficit will be $250 billion. Finance Minister Bill Morneau looked like a spendthrift a year ago when he budgeted a deficit of $19.8 billion; now he is overspending his revenue at 12 times that rate.

Like all free-range chickens, however, these ones will eventually come home to roost. The fortunate majority of Canadians who have so far dodged the virus and kept their incomes intact should not expect to slip away to the washroom when the bill is presented. As Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said time and again in his pandemic reports, we are all in this together.

The pandemic has shown there are categories of workers in Canada who often get the short end of the stick. They include the young people who take precarious jobs waiting on restaurant tables and cleaning hotel rooms.

Then there are the less-educated workers, many of them recent immigrants, who are hired by personal care homes and meat-packing plants. Their pay rates suggest a low value is attributed to their work, but if they try to quit their jobs to avoid catching COVID-19 at work, they are suddenly told they are essential workers and must turn up.

The privileged majority, having been spared these misfortunes, will have ample opportunity to contribute when the bills are presented.