The one ingredient we must have to spark recovery

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a $4-billion, shared-cost program with premiers on Thursday that the provinces will distribute as they see fit — perhaps to the personal support workers, the cleaners, the grocery store clerks and those who are central to our food supply.

“You deserve a raise,” the prime minister said, and they most certainly do.

They also deserve safe working conditions, especially if they’re going to be convinced to stay on the job or return to their posts from the relative security of their living rooms during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The same could be said for the workforce writ large. Until Canadians have confidence that they can safely go to work without putting themselves or others at risk, the reopening that has sprouted up here and there across the country won’t take root.

A sustained and inclusive recovery will require more than just extra money. It will also need easy access to plentiful and reliable tests, and personal protective equipment for everyone who feels the need for it — with an emphasis on “feels the need,” because confidence is as important to an economic relaunch as good health.

Polling done recently by Abacus Data suggests that we are not feeling confident at all. Just 12 per cent of respondents said they were comfortable enough with the state of the pandemic to go back to the office.

But 81 per cent said they would be comfortable with certain safety measures — extra cleaning, distancing, fewer people and lots of masks.

Public transit is on even shakier ground. Only seven per cent said they’d take the bus right now.

With safety measures such as sanitizing, distancing and masks, 69 per cent they’d hop back on. But a quarter of respondents won’t go anywhere near public transit until there is a vaccine.

That’s not a problem for those of us who can walk to work, or drive. But it’s a big problem for the many people who can’t afford to live downtown, can’t afford a car, and have no other way to get to work.

The polling also shows that parents are iffy about sending their kids back to school, especially in provinces where COVID-19 rates are still high. And that’s a huge conundrum for returning workers who would have no one at home to take care of their children.

That lack of confidence is especially poignant at the centre of the epidemic in Canada; long term care homes.

The personal support workers who keep them running and the residents comfortable and healthy are supposed to have access to all the protective gear they could possibly need — gloves, highquality masks, gowns.

But many of them are coming down with COVID-19. A few of them have died. And many more of them are complaining that in fact they don’t have all the equipment they need to stay safe.

Unions have filed labour board complaints about at least two homes in Ontario where they say safety inspections were not done in person and many problems were overlooked, and where there are now large and deadly outbreaks of COVID-19.

And in Quebec, the health-care system is short 11,600 people, many of them either too sick or too scared to come to work.

Restoring confidence is foremost, for the workers and for any company hoping to find a workforce and a customer base to rekindle an economic recovery.

If Canada has had any success in controlling the spread of the virus, it was based in a common understanding of the need to do whatever it takes to get the upper hand.

That was built on mutual trust. Politicians and public health authorities trusted the public to comply with their advice on how to keep each other safe, and the public trusted them to give them solid guidance based on science.

But as the provinces reopen, that mutual trust risks fraying unless people are able to find the confidence to send their children to school or daycare, take public transit and go into the office.

Yes, politicians are feeling the pressure from constituents whose businesses are about to go under.

But it’s counterproductive to rush the reopening if workers and customers alike lack the supports they need to come back to work with confidence.

That’s not just a message from unions. It’s from big business too.

In a recent open letter, the Business Council of Canada asked for national standards for safety in workplaces and child care settings. It also stressed the need for employees to have easy access to all the protective equipment they want to feel safe.

There’s no shadow of a doubt that the workers who have kept Canada on the right side of disaster deserve better pay, not just now but in perpetuity.

But the extra money also needs to come with ample supplies of top-notch equipment, safe public transit and widespread, reliable child care, with a helpful hand from our governments to source and help pay for the necessary resources.

We have all agreed to do “whatever it takes.” That’s what it takes.