14 Jul An ill-conceived program, implemented backwards

The provincial government has changed the Labour Standards Code to protect the jobs of parents who take time off because their child is critically ill or has fallen victim to a serious crime.

The changes guarantee a parent’s right to return to work at the same pay and working conditions after:

• up to 37 weeks if they have been caring for a critically ill child
• up to 104 weeks if their child has died as a result of a crime
• up to 52 weeks if a child has disappeared as a result of a crime.

Who could possibly question measures to ease the suffering of frightened or grieving parents?

Answer: Only those who think about the issue for five minutes.

First, the program is set up backwards. The most generous leave ought to go to a parent who is actively caring for a critically ill child. A parent whose child has disappeared may warrant similar relief, but it’s hard to see why their entitlement should be 40 percent greater.

The death of a child will alter its parents’ lives forever, but it does the family no service to encourage a two-year break from work following such a death. Surely it would be better to help grieving parents resume the normal external patterns of life after a reasonable break.

Second, how did crime get mixed up in these rules? Why should a parent whose child dies because of a crime get their job guaranteed for two years, when a parent whose child dies from accident or illness gets no job security? Can their grief or their recovery be parsed so differently?

The explanation lies buried in the second-to-last paragraph of the provincial news release:

Nova Scotia is the third province to bring its labour code in line with federal changes in employment insurance benefits.

This is Harperism run amok. Stephen Harper’s Conservative government pandered to the public’s exaggerated fear of crime by extending unemployment benefits in this skewed manner. For reasons that are impossible to fathom, Darrell Dexter’s NDP government decided to play along by altering the Labour Standards Code to match.

Sad to see our society’s television-driven penchant for exaggerating crime and fetishizing grief enshrined in law for crass political reasons.