No four-day work week for now, PM says

The idea of a four-day work week has gained more support as Canadians near the end of Month 3 in coronavirus lockdown, but don’t expect three-day weekends just yet, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said.

“Right now we’re very much focused on getting through this particular crisis, and we’ll have plenty of time to talk about particularly creative ideas on moving forward, but I’m not going to speculate on what any of them might be,” he said in a response to a question from a reporter during his daily briefing on Wednesday.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern recently floated the idea of a four-day work week in a Facebook live video.

Ardern said it would be a boost to New Zealand’s tourism sector, which employs 15 per cent of the population and contributes about $13.8 billion to the country’s gross domestic product.

With the drop in the number of international visitors, domestic travellers could make up the difference.

Similarly, in Canada tourism plays an important role in the economy, where it’s valued at $102 billion a year. Pre-COVID-19, it was the country’s fifth-largest sector,

In June 2018, nearly 70 per cent of Canadians said they would prefer working 10-hour days for four days a week, rather than eight-hour days, five days a week, according to an Angus Reid poll.

The House of Commons, in 2016, contemplated a four-day work week for MPs to better manage their workloads, CBC reported, though it never came to fruition.