Liberals

Job postings, according to Indeed Canada, are looking a lot like they did a year ago, before the pandemic.

But solutions for workers in public-facing industries are few and far between.

“To state the obvious, we didn’t figure it out,” said Leah Nord, senior director of workforce strategies and inclusive growth at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.

The Conservatives called the job losses “devastating,” and Leader Erin O’Toole committed to “charting a new course” that sees Canadians put to work by “reshoring” the manufacturing of our own essential goods, rather than importing them from China.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the jobs report was “difficult” and, urging patience, pointed to all the income and business supports the federal government has provided to tide people over.

“We are there to support Canadians and we will continue to be until get through this, with income supports, with vaccines, with health measures, with the supports that people need,” he said.

But actual jobs while we continue to wait for the pandemic to be conquered? Not so much.

Business groups are pushing for the widespread adoption of rapid testing and contact tracing, so that public-facing firms can open up safely and bring their workforces back.

“We need to keep Canadians safe and working,” Nord says.

There’s no doubt that’s easier said than done. Contact tracing becomes cumbersome when case levels are high. And rapid tests can be clumsy and imprecise, leaving many provinces reluctant to deploy them widely. Nord also suggests more aggressive efforts to match job-seekers with job vacancies, and intense retraining programs for long-term unemployed people.

It’s clear that full-fledged recovery efforts can’t start until the pandemic is under control, and that’s certainly not imminent. In the meantime, we owe it to those same groups of unemployed people who are repeatedly pummelled by the pandemic to brainstorm some better answers.

Biding our time in the face of on-againoff-again vaccination schedules and new variants is not an answer.

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